Safe Start Initiative: Demonstration Project, Promising Practices III (2006), Report # 2007 - 3

• NCJ Number: 248607
• Date Published: November 2007
• Length: 30 pages
• Grant Number(s): 2004-JW-MU-K001
• Agencies: OJJDP-Sponsored
• Publication Type: Report (Study/Research); Report (Grant Sponsored); Program/Project Evaluation; Program Description (Demonstrative)

Annotation

This report identifies and discusses promising practices of seven sites of the Safe Start Demonstration Project, based on site visits conducted by the National Evaluation Team in 2006 after projects had been fully implemented.

Abstract

The National Safe Start Demonstration Project, funded by the U.S. Justice Department's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, was implemented in 2000 to create a "holistic approach to prevent and reduce the harmful effects of exposure to violence on young children by improving access to, delivery of, and quality of services to children and their families at any point of entry into relevant services." This report focuses on Safe Start grantees' site-specific Phase III (full implementation) practices that contributed to the successful collection of data from or about children exposed to violence and their families. A "practice" is defined as "a data-collection activity or strategy, not a particular tool, type of analysis, or data standard." Overall, in the 5 years of the demonstration project, the Safe Start grantees developed multiple innovative practices in support of data collection. This report documents these successful practices, expecting that other communities may want to explore and implement these practices when collecting data from or about children exposed to violence and their families. Five promising data-collection practices were identified: 1) engaging and retaining families in data collection; 2) engaging service providers in data collection; 3) maximizing data collection; 4) managing data collection; and 5) data-based decision-making. Each of these promising data-collection practice is described in detail for each of the seven demonstration sties. The report also describes the methods used by the National Evaluation Team to identify and analyze these promising practices. 1 reference and appended matrix of promising practices