Best Practices and Evaluation Processes

By Clare Ryan, Promise Fellow

YIPA’s yearlong look into best practices and evaluation processes in early intervention is complete! We believe that this member’s only material will help to shape a key element of YIPA’s purpose in the coming years: Supporting youth intervention program assessment and improvement and showing the world evidence that early intervention is powerful and effective.

You may be thinking that in this economy you cannot afford to take a closer look at your program, that you are in survival mode and that doesn’t leave time for evaluation and best practices. Not so! We believe that now more than ever you cannot afford to NOT take a closer look at your program. Public and private funders from the Office of Justice Programs to the Greater Twin Cities United Way are looking more and more deeply at evidence-based and quality programs. This emphasis on showing success, whether through outcomes measures or through quality measures (or both), is not going away and we need to be able to show how powerful early intervention can be.

That is why YIPA is meeting with funders and evaluators, members and other stakeholders to stay on top of new tools for evaluation and new evidence about best practices. This year’s research is just the first step, but it is an important step because it helps sets the stage for where we are right now with best practices in early intervention.

The project consists of four related documents. There is a literature and web review of sources related to evaluation, best practices and quality measures in a variety of fields related to youth work, but with an emphasis on early intervention programs. Second, we have an article based on interviews with YIPA member organizations and other relevant individuals about how evaluations of youth intervention programs are conducted in Minnesota today. Then, there is a short piece on possible next steps for YIPA and for our members based on our plans for future work around quality and evaluations. Tying this all together is the executive summary that outlines the main points from each article. The executive summary is available to all our readers on our “News” section of our website, while the more specific documents are reserved for YIPA members and are available in the “Members Only” section of www.mnyipa.org.

We hope that reading these materials will inspire you to take a deeper look at how your organization conducts evaluations and how you can strive to make your program better for the young people you serve. Here a four ways that you might be able to use this material for your organization.
1. Convince other program staff to take the time to re-think how your program evaluates its success.
2. Use up-to-date ideas and language when looking for grants and writing grant proposals.
3. Learn something more about how to read studies without getting lost in all the statistics.
4. Find your place in the bigger picture of evaluation and best practices.

YIPA wants to know: How is your organization utilizing best practices in evaluation?