I appreciate your point about what may seem like a hermetically sealed four-day change process. Clearly the constituencies you mention must have their concerns represented in these deliberations. But from an organizational capacity-building perspective, it strikes me as worthwhile to put the burden for doing so on the organization that wants to deliver value to these groups. Such organizations should be out and among the people they want to help, engage them and ask for their viewpoints and insights as a matter of routine. If they don’t do so, they can’t be working at high levels of quality – and quality is a key issue addressed in these workshops. However, and this may rub some folks the wrong way, I do hold social service agencies accountable for knowing about relevant research and professionally endorsed good practices that may not be known to their intended beneficiaries but for certain should be used in the design and delivery of social services in order to make sure they can deliver what they promise to the people who are enrolled in them.

Again, thanks for your kind and encouraging words.