“My client won’t permit me to do any evaluation. Period. What am I supposed to do now?” Response to Case 9 We wonder why the client has refused so strongly. He or she may have been “burned” by other...

“My client won’t permit me to do any evaluation. Period. What am I supposed to do now?” Response to Case 9 We wonder why the client has refused so strongly. He or she may have been “burned” by other evaluation or research experiences, but if you have tried your best to show how monitoring and evaluation will help you to provide better services, and the client still refuses, then by all means agree that you will not do any formal evaluation. However, consider how would you do practice without identifying a target and monitoring the progress of the target over time until resolution? This doesn’t mean that you won’t do whatever good practice calls for, and part of good practice requires that you know what the problems are that require service, and how your interventions are affecting them. Consider the full range of unobtrusive and nonreactive measures—those that truly do not involve the client in participating in any evaluation process. Your evaluations are then part of case records only, as tools to guide practice interventions. We believe that this suggestion for unobtrusive evaluation, without the client’s participation or knowledge, fulfills the ethical obligations of good practice since evaluation is vital for the conduct of effective practice. However, if you feel that this indirect evaluation violates your agreement with the client, then you have several final options: (a) do not do any evaluation whatsoever (although we hope that having gotten this far in this text, it may be hard for you ever to go back again to practice without thinking about clear identification of targets and monitoring their changes); (b) terminate the case because you cannot practice without knowing exactly what the problem is or how well your intervention is working; or (c) transfer the case to a practitioner who is willing to work under these limiting restrictions.