Instrument 2. Grant subrecipient staff interview protocol
This protocol provides a guide for facilitators leading a Diaper Distribution Pilot interview during the implementation assessment site visits.
Interviewers need to request participants’ permission to audiorecord the interview.
Interviewers: ________________________ Date: ___________
Grant Recipient: ______________________________
Subrecipient: ________________________________
Location: ______________________ Time: ___________________
Introduction
Hello, thank you again for agreeing to speak with us today. My name is [interviewer] from [Westat or Public Profit], and my colleague is [colleague]. We are part of the team conducting the assessment of the Diaper Distribution Pilot program. The [grant recipient and local diaper program] is a part of this larger Diaper Distribution Pilot program. We have been asked by the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) that funds your diaper distribution program to study how the program operates, how it serves families, and what lessons you’ve learned from implementing the program. We are visiting other diaper programs across the country to learn more about the different approaches to diaper provision and how to meet families’ needs. We are not here to evaluate whether you are doing a “good” or “bad” job; we are here to learn more about your program and how your work could be applied to other diaper distribution projects.
We’re excited to learn more about your work and experience today to help us get a better understanding of the specific work you do at [local diaper program]. We’re going to ask you about—
The role your organization plays within the [grant recipient and local diaper program]
How your work has changed, if at all, as a result of conducting the [grant recipient and local diaper program] with federal funding
What it’s like for families to be involved in the [grant recipient and local diaper program]
Your experience, successes, and challenges in doing this work
Informed Consent
As a reminder, your participation in this interview is voluntary, and you can skip answering any question you do not wish to answer. We estimate this interview will take about 90 minutes to complete. We will be taking notes as we go along. With your permission, we would like to audiorecord this conversation. The recording will be used to back up our notetaking and ensure we have fully captured your comments and ideas. We will not share the audiorecording or notes with anyone outside the study team, and we will destroy both at the conclusion of the study.
We will develop a report for the funding agency that summarizes the information you and other program partners share with us. We may use excerpts from your interview in written deliverables, including quotes from what you share with us today. We plan to identify the organizations and job titles of staff participating in these discussions. Although you will not be identified by name, readers may be able to determine your identity through this information. If there is anything you want to share with us but would like it to remain anonymous—for example, shared without your organization name or your title—please let us know, and we will do so. If you prefer to be acknowledged by name, please let us know.
There is no anticipated risk to your participation in this interview. There is also no benefit to your participation; however, we will use the information you provide us to design an assessment of the Diaper Distribution Pilot.
Can we proceed with the interview? Can we start the audiorecording?
Do you have any questions for us before we get started, either about today’s interview or about the assessment as a whole?
Staff Introduction
Before we start, it would be helpful to get a sense of your position and background with [organization].
What are your job title and responsibilities at [organization]? What are your responsibilities on the [grant recipient and local diaper program]? (Alternate: What does daily work look like for you with [grant recipient and local diaper program]?)
How long have you been with the organization? How long have you been working in your role with the [grant recipient and local diaper program]? (Alternate: When did you join the organization? Have you had these responsibilities with [grant recipient and local diaper program] since the start of the program? If not, when did you start working with [grant recipient and local diaper program]?)
What do you enjoy about working with the diaper program? Have you ever worked with a diaper program before? How does it fit in with your current or original duties? (Alternate: What made you want to work with [grant recipient and local diaper program]? Do you have previous experience with diaper programs or something similar?)
Organization Characteristics
It would also be helpful to learn more about your organization as a whole.
What is your organization’s mission? (Alternate: What are the aims and goals of your organization?)
What is your organization’s role in the [grant recipient and local diaper program]? (Whom does your organization serve, and what services do you provide?)
What other services or programs does your organization provide beyond distributing diapers and diapering supplies? (For example, tax assistance, financial planning, SNAP enrollment, child care?)
Do you provide referrals for services your organization doesn’t directly provide?
Program Design
Our first set of questions starts with the planning process because we’d like to understand how the [grant recipient and local diaper program] was designed and what role you and your organization play in its development.
Going back to the start of the program, were you part of the process when [grant recipient] was preparing the grant application for this program, or do you know the history of this process?
[If yes, they were involved in the application process, go to question 9.]
[If no, they were not involved] Is there another staff member you would recommend we speak to about the grant application and planning process? [Then skip to question 11.]
Could you tell me more about your organization’s history of services and how it came to join the [grant recipient] proposal team?
What aspects of the grant appealed to you? How does participation in the grant further your organization’s mission?
How did you determine what role your organization would play in the grant?
Did your organization have any experience with diaper distribution prior to this grant? If not, what made you want to be involved in this service?
How many diapers do you provide for each family during each distribution (for example, per month if you do monthly distribution?) How many diapers do you provide for each child during each distribution? How did you determine how many families [subrecipient organization] could serve with the grant dollars? Does the grantee have any requirements about how many diapers each family can receive and how often or is that left up to the sub-recipients (You have a finite amount of money from this grant. How did you determine how many families you could distribute diapers and supplies to with that money?)
What are the eligibility criteria for participating in the program? How did you determine family eligibility criteria? (How did you decide what families would be eligible to receive diapers and diapering supplies? For example, two extremes might be participants themselves determine whether their household income is low, or your organization formally verifies the family’s income compared with the federal poverty income calculations.)
Does your program allow families who are not eligible for TANF, WIC, EBT, etc., to receive diapers or supplies if they are in need?
Does your program include older children (4 years or older) who might still need diapers, pull-ups, and diapering supplies?
[If they say “yes” to including older children] In general, are there enough diapers and diapering supplies for younger and older children (4 years or older)?
How does diaper need affect the families you serve? How does it affect different families differently? How do you think the [local diaper program] can help ease the needs of the families?
What would you say are the overall goals of your current diaper program? Have they changed since the start of the grant?
Implementation Rollout
Thank you, that’s helpful context. Let’s shift gears now to the start of your grant, so we can get a sense of the rollout of the work and how it’s been going so far.
Program Startup
Between the start of your grant and when [grant recipient and local diaper program] first started distributing diapers and diapering supplies to families, what kind of planning did you do? (For example, putting together a first diaper order?)
What went as planned? What didn’t? Did you need to make any pivots or adjustments? Tell me about them.
Tell us a bit about your first purchase or order of diapers and diapering supplies.
[For diaper and diapering supplies purchasing partners only, such as diaper banks] How and from whom did you purchase diapers and supplies? Is this the purchasing partner you still use, and if not, why?
[For diaper and diapering supplies purchasing partners only, such as diaper banks] What strategies did you use to get the best prices for diapers and supplies? Has anything changed about these strategies since then? (For example, have you found ways to get better prices for diapers and supplies?)
How did you determine the sizes and amounts of diapers and diapering supplies to order? How does this compare to your current process? Do you provide larger-sized diapers (particularly pull-ups) for children over the age of 3?
Where did you store these diapers and diapering supplies? Is this still where you store your diapers and supplies, or has this storage location changed?
How did you inventory these diapers and supplies? Do you still track your inventory this way, and if not, how has your inventory process changed?
[For diaper and diapering supplies purchasing partners only, such as diaper banks] How did you get diapers and supplies to the distribution partners? Has this process changed at all as you’ve continued your program? How often did you plan to transport diapers and supplies to distribution partners, and has this pace changed?
[For diaper distribution partners only, such as Community Action Agencies (CAAs)] When did you receive the diapers and diapering supplies? How often did you plan to receive orders of diapers and supplies, and has this pace changed since then? (For example, did you plan to order diapers and supplies every two months, but now order and receive diapers and supplies monthly?)
How is the transportation working out? Has that changed since the beginning of the program?
Are there any other lessons you have learned related to procuring and storing diapers and diapering supplies?
Do you have any plans to expand or modify your diaper procurement model or logistics in the future?
General Implementation
What month did you start serving families? (When was the first month you distributed diapers and diapering supplies to families?)
How do you define program participation—when are families officially “enrolled” in the program? When do you identify they are “inactive” in the program? (Are families enrolled after they receive diapers and supplies once? After they sit for a needs assessment or a case management discussion?)
How did you initially plan to distribute diapers and diapering supplies to families (for example, delivery of diapers and supplies to participant homes, pickup at food banks, pickup at partner offices)? What methods do you use now, and why?
[For partners that distributed diapers and supplies prior to this program] Did becoming a part of the federally funded [local diaper program] program change your diaper distribution at all? (For example, did working with [grant recipient and local diaper program] change your distribution model, eligibility criteria, staff roles, the number of families you can serve?)
If yes, how did it change your diaper distribution? (For example, how many families were you serving previously, and how many families do you serve now?)
We understand you collect the following data; do you collect on service delivery (interviewer to add based on documentation, e.g., number of diapers requested by families each month, types of more and less common service referrals, how frequently they use the service)? How do you use this information to inform program implementation? (For example, do you analyze the data to adapt your approach? To plan for the future? To identify families that are dropping out? How do your data lead to adjustments to the program? Do you share any of your information with partners, subrecipients, or the public?)
How often do you provide these data to the lead grant recipient? How do you provide these data to them? (For example, by email in an Excel spreadsheet?)
Do you receive any data back from [grant recipient]? If yes, how do you use them? Who reviews these reports? (Probes: Do you receive summary reports, Excel spreadsheets, etc.?
Do you get any real time data on program operations (e.g., through Salesforce or Google spreadsheet)?
Is there any information you wish you could collect to monitor the [grant recipient and local diaper program]? (In an ideal world, what data would you want to have to help manage and monitor your diaper program?)
How has diaper distribution been going so far?
To what extent is the implementation going as planned? Have you had to make any pivots, improvements, or adjustments to your original plan? If so, what changes have you made?
How has working with [grant recipient and local diaper program] affected your organization? (What about staff time or engagement of families or caregivers with your organization? Has it brought your organization more visibility or more participants; has it modernized your approaches? Has it stretched staff too thin or raised participant interest in the program to a level that they can’t meet?)
Have you encountered challenges with staffing on [grant recipient and local diaper program]? (For example, not having enough staff, not being able to find staff, or frequent staff turnover?) If so, how have you tried to address these challenges?
[For purchasing partners only] What has been successful in procuring, storing, shipping, and inventorying diapers and supplies?
[For purchasing partners only] What challenges have you encountered with procuring, storing, shipping, and inventorying diapers and supplies? How have you tried to address these challenges?
[For distribution partners only, such as CAAs] What has been successful in distributing diapers and supplies to participants?
[For distribution partners only, such as CAAs] What challenges have you encountered with distributing diapers and supplies to participants? How have you tried to address these challenges?
Now I’d like you to think about the partnerships you have built with the lead grant recipient and other subrecipients in the program. I'm going to use the term partners for simplicity but understand there are distinctions between subrecipients that receive some grant funds and partners that do not. Think about both of these types of partners for most of the following questions, and then we can focus on unpaid partners later. How has that partnership worked so far?
How does [your organization] work with the lead grant recipient? (How often do you meet? Do you have a memorandum of understanding or another agreement that describes how you work together?)
How is the [local program] communication system working for you? (How often do you communicate with [lead grant recipient]? Do you feel like you know what [lead grant recipient] is doing? How about other subrecipient organizations? What tools do you use to communicate and exchange data?)
What strategies have helped your partnership with [lead grant recipient] succeed? (For example, is there anything that helps you coordinate work or determine responsibilities?)
What, if anything, has been challenging about working with [lead grant recipient]? (For example, have you encountered any challenges like logistic issues or organizational capacity? How, if at all, did you solve these problems?)
How does [your organization] work with other subrecipients on [local program]? To what extent do you have flexibility or input in program rules or guidelines? Are there rules or guidance that the grant recipient requires all subrecipients follow? (How often do you meet? What kind of information do you share? Do you work closely with other subrecipients in your geographic area? How about other subrecipients that may be working in a different area in the state?)
What strategies have helped your partnerships with other subrecipient partners succeed? (For example, is there anything that has helped you coordinate work or determine responsibilities?)
What, if anything, has been challenging about working with these other subrecipient partners? (For example, have you encountered any challenges with program partners, like logistic issues or organizational capacity? How, if at all, did you solve these problems?)
Do you work with any unpaid partners for [grant recipient and local diaper program]? What role do they serve in [grant recipient and local diaper program], and how did they come to be a part of the program?
In a moment we’re going to turn to some questions about how families experience your program, but is there anything else you’d like us to know about the implementation of the [local diaper program] so far? Other successes? Other challenges?
Family Experience and Service Delivery
[Only for subrecipients that distribute diapers to families] Now we’re going to discuss what it looks like for a family to participate in your Diaper Distribution Pilot program, from initial outreach and enrollment to receiving diapers, diapering supplies, and other services. We’ll start at the beginning, thinking about the families that need diapers and supplies but have not yet found your program.
How does such family find out about your program? (What are your outreach and recruitment procedures? How could the family find out about your diaper program?)
What other methods do you use, or have you tried, to raise awareness of the program among families? Were any of them more successful? Less successful?
Once families have found the program, what does their first appointment or engagement with the program look like? (What does their intake look like? Do families walk in or make appointments? Do they meet with staff they know [like their Head Start teacher] or start a new relationship? Can families apply online?)
How do you determine if they’re eligible to participate, and when (and how) is this information conveyed to them? (If they’re completely new to your organization, how do you determine if they are eligible to receive diapers? When do you let them know they are officially eligible to receive diapers? If they’re not new to your organization and receive other services through you already, how does this process work?)
How do you handle situations where a family may need emergency or immediate diaper assistance?
How do you serve families who speak languages other than English?
If the family is found to be ineligible, do you offer them any other supports or services? If so, which supports or services? (What happens if they aren’t eligible to receive diapers or diapering supplies under the diaper distribution program? How do they get connected with other supports?)
What strategies have you found helpful for retaining families who are participating in the program? (For example, do you have a case manager periodically check in with them? What happens if a family misses diaper distribution—does anyone follow up with them, and what does that look like? If you refer them to another service, how do you help them follow through on that referral? Does anyone check or encourage them to attend other support services?)
You mentioned earlier that participants receive diapers and diapering supplies through [diaper distribution methods]. What methods do you use most often and less often? What methods do families prefer?
How often do families receive diapers and supplies? Does this differ by the distribution method?
How many diapers and how much supplies do families receive per child? Do you typically serve all children who use diapers or pullups with an enrolled family? What happens if families run out of diapers or supplies before the next official distribution?
Do you distribute full cases of diapers, or do you repackage diapers into smaller amounts? How do you handle open packs of diapers?
What happens if a family needs a different size of diaper? What if a family needs pull-ups or large sized diapers?
Have you encountered any challenges distributing diapers and supplies to families? Any successes?
How do you handle feedback or complaints from partners or families about the distribution process? Is there a system in place to address their concerns?
Let’s say a family enrolls in the program and has received their first distribution of diapers and diapering supplies. Our understanding from your proposal is that this family could potentially be connected to [wraparound services for this program].
If this family is new to your organization (this is the first program they have enrolled in), how do you determine what additional services the family is interested in and eligible for?
If this family has already received other support from your organization, do you still use this as another opportunity to make more referrals? How do you continue to connect this family to wraparound services?
How do you make referrals?
Do you encounter any challenges during this process—from enrollment all the way to maintaining participation? Tell me about them.
For example, do you find it difficult to make contact with families for regular diaper distribution?
[If the program has a limit to the diapers distributed] Sometimes a family may ask for more diapers than your program expects to provide. How often does that occur? How do you handle such situations?]
Have you encountered any challenges with referring families to services, such as families not following through on referrals?
In general, what feedback have you received from families?
What do families like about the program? Are there any stories they have told you about how the diaper program has positively affected their lives?
What do they think should be different? Is there any constructive feedback or stories families have told you about how the diaper program could be improved?
Do you think there is greater engagement of families in other programs and services because of the diaper program? [Do you think families follow through with social support services more often, such as attending a job training program after receiving a referral?]
Additional Implementation Support
We just have a few last questions for you, this time about how the Diaper Distribution Pilot is supporting you, and how it could support you better in the future.
Can you tell us a bit about any technical assistance you’ve received? It could be from your program specialist or other staff at the Office of Community Services, their contracted technical assistance provider (i.e., SupplyBank), another partner like the National Diaper Bank Network, or even informal, like another diaper bank or CAA? (For example, what was most helpful about the session? What could you use more information on? These sessions could be in person or virtual.)
What technical assistance information did you find most helpful? Why? (For example, is there anything you need help or further training on related to the [local diaper program]?)
What advice or lessons learned would you share with other organizations that are beginning or expanding a diaper distribution program?
Closing
Before we finish, do you have any advice or suggestions for the funding agency as it considers how to best support diaper distribution programs in the future?
Is there anything else you would like to share that I haven’t asked about, or anything you would like to elaborate on?
Thank you for taking the time to speak with me today.
PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT OF 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) STATEMENT OF PUBLIC BURDEN: The purpose of this information collection is to help the federal program team understand diaper need in communities across the country. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average one hour per respondent, including the time for reviewing instructions and responding to evaluation team questions. This is a voluntary collection of information. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The OMB # is 0970-0531 and the expiration date is 9/30/2025. If you have any comments on this collection of information, please contact Erin Cannon at erin.cannon@acf.hhs.gov
| File Type | application/vnd.openxmlformats-officedocument.wordprocessingml.document |
| Author | Monirah Al-Abdulmunem |
| File Modified | 0000-00-00 |
| File Created | 2024-10-07 |