Welcome! These slides are designed to help you think through presenting your benchmark planning and progress. Feel free to pick and choose the slides that are appropriate for your presentation. Whether you use one slide or all of them, we hope you find it helpful. Some of the language or content in the presentation may not fit your community or the particular audience. Don’t be afraid to edit any of the content, provide more explanation, or use different examples when you present. This can be technical information and you will be the best judge of what works for your audience. Don’t forget to save this as a new document, change the background and erase the notes, brackets, and examples prior to presenting!

Guide to the Slides The BLUE slides are designed to provide standard language regarding the Tribal MIECHV grant and benchmark requirements. These can be used without edit if you choose. Throughout the GREEN slides you will see brackets ([ ]) that instruct you to insert content on your benchmark planning process and results. The YELLOW slides are designed to give you examples of ways to think about presenting the material.

What are Benchmarks (i.e., performance measures)?

MIECHV Benchmark Requirements The legislation for the Tribal MIECHV grant program requires that grantees collect, track and report on benchmarks in six key outcome areas related to home visiting: 1.Improved Maternal, Newborn and Child Health 2.Prevention of Child Injuries, Child Abuse, Neglect, or Maltreatment, and Reduction of Emergency Department Visits 3.Improvement in School Readiness and Achievement 4.Reduction in Crime or Domestic Violence 5.Improvements in Family Economic Self-Sufficiency 6.Improvements in the Coordination and Referrals for Other Community Resources and Supports

Purpose of the MIECHV Benchmarks Through technical assistance and grant funding, build the capacity of our tribal community to develop and implement performance measurement systems Track and measure program progress Provide data to monitor and improve the quality of services Develop a data collection and management information system to support benchmark data collection and analysis Provide information about program performance

What Benchmark Data Can Tell Us Collecting benchmark data helps us know whether our program is making progress. Here are some examples: Are we conducting important screenings with families? Substance abuse, domestic violence, maternal depression, developmental delays Are we referring families to necessary services? Are key maternal and child health indicators improving? Are families learning important parenting skills? Are families receiving critical health services? Prenatal and postnatal care, medical home Are families making gains in their socio-economic status? Are we collaborating with other agencies to improve coordination of services?

What Benchmarks Cannot Tell Us The benchmark data are helpful for monitoring and understanding services, but there are some things the data can’t tell us The data aren’t helpful for understanding program impact. For this a comparison is necessary (i.e. are families in our program doing better than those that didn’t participate in home visiting?) The benchmark areas are set by legislation, and cannot be adjusted. Programs may want to know something about our families or program that isn’t within the scope of the benchmarks. The benchmarks are mostly short term goals. Programs may not see some of the long term outcomes during the scope of the project (i.e. school performance, child development gains)

The [insert program’s name here] Benchmark Plan

Developing the Benchmark Plan Upon completion of our community needs assessment and selection of the home visiting model, our team began developing our benchmark plan Benchmark plan development involved community feedback [Describe the way your program consulted with the community during the planning process; change graphic as needed to reflect process] Team drafts benchmark plan Community feedback on focus of plan and measures TA Feedback Community feedback on changes to plan

Using Benchmark Data within our Home Visiting Program Program monitoring [Describe ways in which your program has used (or plans to use) benchmark data to ensure fidelity, maintain staff accountability, etc.] Supervision [Describe ways in which your program uses (or plans to use) benchmark data in supervision with staff] Program improvement [Describe continuous quality improvement efforts you currently undertake (or plan to) to target specific benchmark outcomes for improvement.]

Using Benchmark Data within our Community Recruitment [Describe ways in which you have (or plan to) use benchmark data to talk about the important work the program is doing with families] Building partnerships [Describe ways in which you have (or plan to) share data with other community programs for grant writing or other efforts] Keeping the community informed [Describe ways you use benchmark data at community events to describe your program and the important progress being made]

[Choose an example construct or two] [Describe Benchmark constructs you plan to focus on in the presentation How did you choose to measure this construct? Why did you choose this measure? How were data collected and measured? How are you using this information in our program? How has this information been a benefit in your community? ]

What we’ve learned What we learned from the process [Describe what your program learned from developing the benchmark plan, training staff, collecting data, etc.] What we learned from the data [Describe what has been exciting about the data, what has been disappointing, what has surprised you the most, etc.] [Transition to example of improvement made]

Possible Example: Breastfeeding Our measure: Percentage of moms that breastfeed for at least one month We chose this measure because moms in our community tend to initiate breastfeeding but stop within the first month. Home visitors will emphasize the importance of breastfeeding longer. During each postnatal home visit, moms are asked if they are breastfeeding. Home visitors record this info on a postnatal tracking form. This information will help our program track our progress supporting moms through the initial months of breastfeeding. Our community will have more data on breastfeeding patterns which could inform future programs and grant applications.

Breastfeeding Results– Line Graph Example

Breastfeeding Results– Table Example Benchmark Construct MeasureYear One [Insert dates] Year Two [Insert dates] Improvement? BreastfeedingPercentage of moms that breastfed at least 1 month 40%70%YES [Insert other benchmarks] [Insert performance measure information from benchmark plan]

Next steps What we plan to do next to continue to improve our program [provide some examples of specific next steps for how data will be used, or of programmatic changes that will be made]

The Tribal Home Visiting Evaluation Institute (TEI) is funded by the Office of Planning, Research and Evaluation, Administration for Children and Families, Department of Health and Human Services under contract number HHSP WC. TEI is funded to provide technical assistance to Tribal Home Visiting grantees on rigorous evaluation, performance measurement, continuous quality improvement, data systems, and ethical dissemination and translation of evaluation findings. TEI1 was awarded to MDRC; James Bell Associates, Inc.; Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for American Indian Health, and University of Colorado School of Public Health, Centers for American Indian and Alaska Native Health. For more information on TEI contact: Nicole DenmarkKate Lyon Federal Project OfficerProject Director Office of Planning Research and EvaluationJames Bell Associates, Inc.