Frequently Asked Questions for Staff
The Understanding and Expanding the Reach of Home Visiting (HV-REACH) project is taking an in-depth look at centralized, coordinated, and collaborative ways of screening families and matching them to home visiting programs in their community. So far, the project has released a literature synthesis of factors that support family engagement in home visiting and a series of graphics showing how key factors influence home visiting engagement. We are currently developing a toolkit with resources that home visiting programs can use to improve family engagement.
The purpose of the case studies is to explore and report on how staff and families think centralized intake systems promote and expand family enrollment, and to improve understanding of families’ experiences with the systems. We cannot do this without your assistance. Your participation will help the field learn about and ultimately improve these systems and families’ experiences with them.
The Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is sponsoring the project in collaboration with the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Mathematica, an independent research organization, is conducting this project in partnership with the Brazelton Touchpoints Center and Social Grove.
We are contacting you because your organization operates or participates in a centralized intake system that we want to learn more about. We would like to understand how different systems screen families and match them to home visiting programs in their community. We also want to learn about families’ experiences related to being screened and enrolled into the home visiting program. We are hoping to hear from up to seven centralized intake systems from around the country.
We will conduct a virtual site visit to the organization operating the selected centralized intake system and to two of its home visiting programs. The site visit will include interviews (over phone or video) with key staff at the organization operating the centralized intake system; at the home visiting programs (including their directors, home visitors, and outreach staff) who are knowledgeable about the centralized intake system; and with families in the home visiting program who were referred through the centralized intake system. We will also ask that you share with us any relevant documents about how the centralized intake system operates. Although we have planned on conducting virtual site visits for the data collection, we may be able to conduct all data collection activities in person if a site prefers this mode.
We will begin these activities in [month year]. All activities will be conducted remotely (either online, by phone or video) and will be scheduled at times that work best for participants. We may be able to conduct data collection activities in person if a site prefers this mode.
There are no risks associated with participating in the project. Those who participate in the interviews will receive tokens of appreciation for their time and expertise.
Centralized intake administrators and other staff will receive $60 for completing a 90-minute interview.
Home visiting program staff and families will receive $40 for completing a 60-minute interview.
Each participating home visiting program will receive $200 for helping schedule interviews with staff and recruiting and scheduling interviews with families. The home visiting program staff person who assists us in coordinating project activities will also receive $100 for their time.
Participation in this project will support efforts to improve the processes used for outreach, screening, referrals, and enrollment of families in home visiting programs, particularly families who are not being consistently reached.
No. Choosing not to participate will not affect your job or organization in any way. However, your participation will help us learn important lessons about how staff and families think centralized intake systems like yours influence outreach, screening, referrals, and enrollment into home visiting programs.
If you do choose to participate, you can change your mind about your participation at any time and for any reason. During the interviews, you can decline to answer any questions that you feel uncomfortable answering.
Before we begin each interview, we will collect consent from all interviewees. The consent will include the purpose of the interview and how we will use the information collected from the interview. We will also remind all interviewees that their participation is voluntary and ensure that all information they share is kept private to the extent permitted by law. We would only share information if interviewees indicate that they have harmed or express an intent to harm themselves or someone else. We will summarize and combine what we learn from all the interviews in written reports. We will not use anyone’s name in our reports.
The HV-REACH project has obtained a Certificate of Confidentiality from the National Institutes of Health and has been given Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval by Health Media Lab Institutional Review Board. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information unless it displays a currently valid control number from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The OMB number and expiration date for this collection are OMB #: 0970-XXXX, Exp: XX/XX/XXXX.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Harshini Shah, the survey director, at hshah@mathematica-mpr.com or (617) 674-8360.
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| File Title | Mathematica Memo |
| Subject | memo |
| Author | Mathematica |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2024-09-13 |