Juvenile Welfare Board Hosting Communities of Learning

The Juvenile Welfare Board of Pinellas County has been hosting Communities of Learning for all of its funded programs. They began by grouping all of their funded programs into four clusters; home visiting/case management, behavior health, early childcare/quality early learning, and school support programs. They then invited each agency or organization to send an executive director, program director, and researcher/evaluator for a full-day kick off session. The session began with a discussion about why evaluation is important from a results-based perspective. The groups then participated in an afternoon session focused on answering a specific set of questions designed to learn more about what information the agencies would need to be able to to better evaluate their programs. They also discussed what they currently do to evaluate their work, how they think their audience is evaluating their work, and what are the best practices that should be elevated to the rest of the group. This first round of meetings were held in January/February on separate days for the four clusters. The clusters will continue to meet on a smaller level, building off the first one. These sessions provide for a lot of cross-learning within the groups, and the Juvenile Welfare Board hopes to bring the clusters together on issues that affect multiple groups like family engagement.