New Report on Cuyahoga Partnering for Family Success Process Evaluation
The Poverty Center has released its first Briefly Stated report of the year on the process evaluation of the first two years of Partnering for Family Success (PFS), a five-year randomized control study underway in Cuyahoga County, Ohio. The program is a partnership between FrontLine Service, Cuyahoga County Division of Children and Family Services, Ohio Department of Jobs and Family Services, Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority, the Domestic Violence and Child Advocacy Center, and Enterprise Community Partners, Inc.
Using the evidence-based Critical Time Intervention framework, and focusing on homeless caregivers with children in out-of-home placement (OHP), the PFS program seeks to safely reduce the number of days that children spend in OHP. The overall program goal is to safely reunite families quickly by providing families with housing, and offering supportive services, using avoided foster care costs to serve families more effectively. Data from multiple sources indicated that the PFS program helps to stabilize families in the treatment group through providing housing and increased levels of public assistance. Treatment group families also show less involvement with child welfare and decrease their contacts with case management services over time. However, clients’ experiences with domestic violence and service coordination across agencies were identified as important challenges.
The report was authored by Rong Bai, MSSA, MNO, Cyleste C. Collins, Ph.D., David Crampton, Ph.D., Chun Liu, MSSA and Rob Fischer, Ph.D.
The report’s authors appreciate the assistance of Brianna Andrie who conducted two of the interviews. Dana Santo of FrontLine Service, and Karen Anderson at DCFS helped to arrange the interviews. Poverty Center researchers Tsui Chan, Marci Blue, and Nina Lalich assisted with and/or conducted the analyses.