Measuring program impacts and outcomes

Children and Family Futures provides training and technical assistance on evaluation methods, data access, collection and analysis, and performance measurement systems to help tribes, states, counties, and community agencies build their capacity to become data driven. Our evaluation- and performance measurement-related assistance has focused on early childhood development (including cognitive and school readiness), child and family services, community development, health issues, educational services, and equitable outcomes for families. cultural competence.

Evaluation and performance monitoring are at the heart of improving programs and systems, and identifying disparities and disproportionality. High-performing programs and agencies use data and feedback to continually assess progress, ensure accountability, and make policy and practice changes to better serve all children and families. Collaborative partners must agree upon a set of performance measures to jointly monitor family outcomes, such as safety, permanency, and well-being for children, and substance use treatment completion and recovery for parents. Establishing a regular review of data via a data dashboard or report card allows agencies to share progress with collaborative partners and identify any needed program and practice modifications to ensure positive outcomes for families.

CFF ACTIVITIES

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CFF has disseminated over 2,200 materials related to evaluation and performance measurement since 2016
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CFF has responded to nearly 1,100 technical assistance requests about evaluation and performance measurement since 2016

FEATURED PUBLICATIONS AND RESOURCES 

Through federally- and foundation-funded projects, Children and Family Futures and its small business subsidiary, Center for Children and Family Futures, produces publications, reports, Technical Assistance tools and web-based learning for the field. The following are featured resources from our work. For more resources or information related to a specific topic, please visit our resources page or click the “Request Assistance” button below or at the top of the page.

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Children Affected by Methamphetamine Program: Implementation Progress and Performance Measurement Report

This report provides lessons, project design and implementation, and grantee performance of the Children Affected by Methamphetamine program. Priorities include improving the safety, permanency and well-being of children affected by methamphetamine and their families including recovery for their parents.  

Click here to view on the NCSACW website

Data Capacity: What Is It and Does Our Family Treatment Court Team Have It?

This brief describes the 10 building blocks of data capacity, discusses how FTC teams can assess their cross-systems data capacity, and provides selected tips to help teams with concrete next steps to strengthen their data capacity. 

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Intro to Cross-System Data Sources in Child Welfare, Alcohol and Other Drug Services, and Courts

This publication describes the primary data-reporting systems used in the child welfare, alcohol and other drug services, and court systems. 

Click here to view on the NCSACW website

National Quality Improvement Center Collaborative Community Court Teams Evaluation Brief

This brief highlights the efforts of 14 demonstration sites to enhance and expand their capacity to support and improve safety, permanency, well- being, and recovery outcomes for infants, families, and caregivers.  This brief, developed in collaboration with Advocates for Human Potential, highlights quantitative cross-site evaluation outcomes and findings. 

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National START Model Overview

This overview provides the goals, structural and practice components, and proven results of the Sobriety Treatment and Recovery Teams (START) program. START is a specialized child welfare service delivery model that has been shown, when implemented with fidelity, to improve outcomes for children and families affected by parental substance use and child maltreatment.

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Practice-Level Strategies to Create Systems-Level Change: Results-A Technical Assistance Brief

This brief examines how using cross-systems data to create shared goals and outcomes can inspire meaningful change for families at a program level, and how those results can bring about long-term practice and systems-level changes. The need for a collaborative approach to mapping and collecting available data across systems and the use of data to decide where to direct resources is emphasized. The importance of facilitating practice improvement within a continuous quality improvement framework, and with a focus on identifying and resolving racial, ethnic, and other disparities is described. This brief provides examples of successes and challenges in using results to sustain systems change by Regional Partnership Grants.

Click here to view on the NCSACW website

Related Projects and Web-Based Learning

Learn more by exploring related projects and web-based learning.

Related Projects

Web-Based Learning