Building an Outcome Culture of Care
Overview:
- By developing a culture of evaluation and outcome measurement, residential organizations can ask critical questions about the process and efficacy of services. By using data to inform practice, organizations can answer questions such as:
- Do organizational practices put a priority focus on ensuring permanency for every child?
- Are organizational practices family-driven?
- Are organizational practices culturally responsive to the youth and families served?
- Are residential interventions leading to lasting, positive impacts for youth and families?
- Ongoing assessment and evaluation processes help an organization to assess the extent to which programs are adhering to and implementing best practices for permanency and family-driven care, which correlate to improved outcomes for youth and families. A culture of evaluation includes continuous quality improvement (CQI) and tracking the long-term outcomes of youth and families to measure the organization’s impact.
- Outcome measurement for residential intervention goes beyond studying youth gains within the residential program; it assesses the long-term impact of residential interventions in the lives of youth and families.
Key Concepts & Definitions
Continuous quality improvement (CQI) is a structured organizational process that is dependent upon the participation of staff at all levels of the organization, as well as families, youth, and other stakeholders. It entails planning and implementing ongoing proactive improvements in processes of care by identifying, describing, and analyzing strengths and problems, and then testing, implementing, learning from, and revising solutions. The strategies in this module address just two components of this comprehensive process: CQI as it pertains to permanency and family-driven care. There are many CQI areas of focus not addressed in this module. These may include specific focus areas chosen by individual organizations, such as addressing cultural and linguistic competence, as well as state licensing and regulatory requirements, such as tracking and reviewing incidents and safety measures.
A data dashboard is an information management tool that visually tracks, analyzes, and displays important performance indicators, metrics, and relevant insights from key datasets to monitor the health of an organization or program. Key residential data points specific to the focus of this family engagement toolkit include areas relevant to achieving permanency and successfully engaging, partnering with, supporting, and offering culturally responsive skill building for families. Data dashboards can also display information related to recidivism; seclusion and restraint; issues of diversity, equity and inclusion; results of follow-up studies; scores on instruments (such as the CANS/CAFAS/ROLES); intake/discharge data; and the financial health of the program.
Long-term outcomes refer to how youth and families are doing at home, in the community, and at school and/or work in the months and years following the residential intervention. Outcome measures most often capture how the youth is functioning, but it is also important to collect data regarding how parents are doing.