Family Champions Project

This evaluation uses a formative approach and a descriptive design with repeated measures to assess the efficacy of a Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI) Process to improve services delivered by the Family Champions Project (FCP). The FCP delivers education-based services-TYRO Leadership and Core Communication curricula-with funding from the Office of Family Assistance to low-income fathers and mothers to promote healthy family relationships and economic stability in their households. TYRO Leadership and Core Communication are adapted from the TYRO suite of curricula that were developed by the RIDGE Project, and they are designed to improve the relationships of families affected by the incarceration of a parent and the economic stability of their households. Participants must be at least 18 years of age with a child no older than 24 years and have no open criminal cases (cases can be deferred). Evaluation activities are carried out by Midwest Evaluation and Research (MER) and assess the extent to which our CQI Process is a feasible approach to improve outputs and the outcomes that might be associated with them for an education-based service delivery effort like the FCP. Specifically, study results from formative evaluation will inform practitioners in the field of HMRE about the viability of using a CQI Process like ours to achieve full implementation and provide some evidence about its capacity to improve outcomes. Formative evaluation not only assesses experiences of the CQI Team and front-line service staff while implementing our CQI Process, but also pays attention to the timing and other specifics of any performance interventions that occur over the 5-year project. As a result, performance interventions present opportunities to conduct a series of mini studies to descriptively evaluate CQI Team efforts to improve implementation of the FCP. Performance trends that improve after an intervention indicate the CQI Team was likely successful to more fully implement outputs which should result in a positive effect on retention rates and, in turn, short term outcomes if we assume a sound theory of change for the FCP is depicted in the logic model.