Date: Monday, June 22, 2026
Hi! I’m Charlotte Goff, a macro social worker and Consultant at ORS Impact. Much of my work focuses on community-engaged and systems-change evaluation. Given our current sociopolitical moment and the heightened oppression many marginalized communities are experiencing, I’ve been reflecting on the need for more dialogue in evaluation around care—or the practices that support evaluators to engage thoughtfully, ethically, and sustainably with communities and one another. I’m sharing some concrete tips for prioritizing care at the individual, team, and organizational levels (as my fellow social workers know, we love conceptualizing practice at different levels!).
As evaluators, many of us hear stories of trauma, crisis, institutional harm, and systemic inequity. It is fundamental to engage in this work using trauma-informed practices and, especially for those of us who do not share the social identities or lived experiences of the communities we work alongside, to remain critically reflexive about our positionality and privilege throughout the evaluation process.
At the same time, we also need to more openly acknowledge the cumulative impact of bearing witness to suffering and profound systems failure. Evaluation can involve the emotional tension of deeply caring about communities while recognizing our often-limited power, as external evaluators, to directly change the conditions people are navigating. For example, I recently conducted interviews with teams working to address homelessness while they were navigating devastating funding cuts and instability that threatened critical services and supports in their communities. Those conversations reinforced for me the emotional impact of engaging with communities experiencing crisis and uncertainty. Without intentional care practices, the cumulative emotional weight of this work can contribute to burnout, disconnection, and less thoughtful engagement over time.
Evaluators are not neutral containers; our interpretations, relationships, and decision-making are shaped by what we carry into and out of interviews, focus groups, and community engagement spaces. Some helpful reflective practices include journaling, reflective supervision, setting boundaries around workload, and slowing interpretation down.
We often prepare teams for a project’s methods and logistics, but community-engaged and qualitative work also requires relational and emotional capacity. To create valuable intentional space for teams to reflect and process together, even small practices can make a meaningful difference. Some options are debriefing after interviews, acknowledging emotional weight, or rotating roles during especially intensive periods of data collection.
Project structures and organizational culture play an important role in shaping whether care is possible in practice. Chronic urgency, back-to-back interviews, and productivity-focused expectations can limit opportunities for preparation, reflection, and meaningful engagement with communities. At the organizational level, care may involve creating more sustainable timelines, protecting space for reflection and processing, and recognizing relational labor in staffing and budgeting decisions.
When evaluators have the time and support to reflect, process, and engage thoughtfully, it benefits not only practitioners, but also the communities and partners we work alongside. Please share how you are prioritizing care in your work and practice!
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