Project

Permanency Innovations Initiative Evaluation

about the project

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Capabilities

Status

Client

Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families

The Permanency Innovations Initiative (PII) is a federal demonstration project designed to improve outcomes for foster care children who face the most serious barriers to finding permanent homes.

Six agencies implemented innovative interventions to help specific subgroups of children and youth achieve permanency in fewer than 3 years. 

The PII Evaluation applied implementation science to develop and test evidence-based programs to address long-term foster care. The evaluation included site-level and cross-site components and examined both implementation and effectiveness. The evaluation team collected, analyzed, and reported site data; studied implementation, administrative, and cost data; reviewed benchmark data; and disseminated findings to policy makers, practitioners, and researchers.

The evaluation was based on the “PICO” framework, referring to population, intervention, comparison, and outcome. The framework guided a participatory process of formulating research questions and designing and implementing evaluation plans to answer them. The evaluation team provided technical assistance to sites through visits and phone calls on such issues as protection of human subjects, randomization, data collection, quality assurance, cross-site evaluation, and cost analysis.

The findings described the PII interventions and the contexts in which they were carried out, the technical assistance models used, implementation, cost implications, and effectiveness in achieving permanency and well-being outcomes.

Staff

  • James Bell, M.A. Founder and President

    James Bell has more than 40 years of experience designing and directing national program evaluations. He started JBA in 1979 to help programs better serve...

  • Chi Connie Park, Ph.D., M.A. Senior Research Associate

    Chi Connie Park has more than 15 years of experience in applied social science research design, program evaluation, and capacity building in the areas of child...

Partner

Westat, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Ronna Cook Associates

about the project

Topics

Capabilities

Status

Client

Children’s Bureau, Administration for Children and Families