This report presents a descriptive study of characteristics of persons using a family court service. A comparison is made between persons using the service and a sample of the population whom the agency was designed to serve. The purposes of the study were to determine if the agency was serving the client population it was designed to serve and to provide a socio-demographic data base for further research and planning at the agency.

This report describes a consumer evaluation study of the Clackamas County Family Court Service, a court-connected marriage and divorce counseling agency near Portland, Oregon. A questionnaire was mailed to 168 individuals who had participated in counseling at the agency between November 1, 1976, and November 1, 1977. The questionnaire focused on former clients' perspectives on agency helpfulness, satisfaction with counselor’s assistance, accomplishment of agency identified objectives for counsel1ng, and suggested areas for program improvement.

This study is an attempt to develop, design, and implement procedures for better data collection in the future and for an evaluation of the services provided in the past. Conciliation Courts have developed across the country on the notion that case work services can, at best, save a marriage from divorce and, at least, can do no harm. Evaluation of the effectiveness of conciliation services is limited and contradictory. This practicum is an attempt to develop a research design which can measure the effectiveness of conciliation service. We consider the first priority to develop a work­able design which will insure response. A second priority, which will hopefully be developed next, is a value system which will give us data concerning what is effectiveness and which kinds of things need to be and can be measured by a client feedback system .