Upcoming Webinar: Evidence-Based Decision Support for the Social Sector
Friday, September 7, 2018
1:00 – 2:00 PM ET
Click HERE to register
In partnership with the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, researchers from Chapin Hall’s Center for State Child Welfare Data will discuss how they have worked with private child welfare agencies to support evidence-based policy and practice decision-making. Presenters will give examples of tools and techniques that the Data Center has implemented with other organizations, covering three types of work central to the problem solving challenges that agencies face today:
- Performance measurement. Here we will talk about the Data Center’s work with Necco — a foster care provider agency operating in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, and Georgia — to develop a performance measurement system that enabled the organization to measure mission-critical outcomes, identify opportunities for improvement, and track change over time.
- Implementing theoretically sound interventions. In this segment, we will discuss the Data Center’s work with the nationally renowned Harlem Children’s Zone to help the organization codify the essential elements of its “pipeline” of programs. This effort involved working with the organization to operationalize the theories of change that underlie its core programming; document actual, on-the-ground implementation relative to those theories; and map the extent to which the agency’s existing data collection efforts were sufficient to allow the organization to determine program effectiveness.
- Education and training. Using evidence to make decisions requires certain skills. In addition to having a firm understanding of the cyclical process of improvement, staff at all levels of an organization need to have role-relevant skills in accessing evidence, interpreting it, and applying it to problem solving tasks at hand. This segment of the webinar will cover the Data Center’s educational and training opportunities, which range from the technical to the applied and may be tailored to individuals in various roles.
To learn more about this work, check out this article by Chapin Hall researchers Sara Feldman, Emily Rhodes, and Lily Alpert, featured in the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities’ e-newsletter.