Author: chadwick.69

Introducing a New Needs Portal Staff Member

We are excited to announce a new Needs Portal staff member, Ian Murphy. Ian earned his MPH in Behavioral and Community Health Sciences from the University of Pittsburgh. He will be a liaison between Needs Portal users and the evaluation team. Ian will also be conducting Needs Portal training.

If you need to reach any of the Needs Portal staff, you can email us at needsportal@osu.edu.

Welcome to the team, Ian!

The OhioSTART Oct 2018 Interim Evaluation Report Reflects on Progress Made and Points to Future Directions

In early 2018, the OhioSTART intervention counties trained their employees on the new OhioSTART program and found partner agencies to implement the intervention. The purpose of the interim report is to evaluate OhioSTART thus far and confirm the project is in line with the long-term goals.

OhioSTART created a data use agreement with the Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services to obtain SACWIS data and is in the process of analyzing that data. A plan for monitoring data fidelity is also in the development. The Needs Portal will be used for information management and data collection.

Front-line workers, supervisors, and administrators of OhioSTART were surveyed. The results of the survey showed there was an increase in collaboration between child welfare agencies and behavioral health agencies. The survey also found that family peer mentors bridged the gap between parents and child welfare agencies. When surveyed about OhioSTART training, some workers felt that they weren’t learning new information. OhioSTART parents were also surveyed. There was some difficulty getting the participants to respond, so it is necessary to continue to offer incentives.

The future for OhioSTART includes assessing the well-being of family peer mentors and the fidelity of interventions across sites, continue to encourage parents to participate in surveys, and monitor changes in child welfare outcomes – especially reunification.

You can find the full Oct 2018 report under “Publications” or click here.

OhioSTART Dashboard

OhioSTART is excited to announce that we now have a dashboard that gives you information on START cases in a way that’s easy to understand. You can find the Dashboard under the Evaluation menu or click here.

Information can be separated by county. Blue counties show data from Cohort 1 counties, orange shows Cohort 2 counties, and white counties are ones that are not a part of OhioSTART. Just click on the county you are interested in or choose one from the “Select County” drop-down menu, and the dashboard will only show data from that county. You can also hover over bar graphs for the exact number.

We will continue to add information to the Dashboard so that you can keep track of the cases and timelines. Feel free to contact us with the information you would like to see reflected in the Dashboard.

For more information, please refer to these two documents. The “Getting Started” document will help you start to navigate the Dashboard. The “Explaining the Numbers” document will help you better understand the data on the dashboard.

We are excited for you to see the progress OhioSTART is making!