Other Service Provider Interview Guide

Evaluation of the Trafficking Victim Assistance Program (TVAP) and Aspire: Child Trafficking Victim Assistance Demonstration Program (Aspire)

Virtual Site Visit

Other Service Provider Interview Guide

Overview

• Purpose: Conduct a 1-hour, semi-structured virtual interview with personnel from non-subrecipient service providers to learn about their involvement and experiences with TVAP and/or Aspire.

• Respondents: Personnel from service providers who serve people referred from TVAP and/or Aspire but are not official subrecipient partners (i.e., they do not have a Memorandum of Understanding or receive TVAP and/or Aspire funding).

• Scheduling activities:

• TVAP/Aspire Regional Coordinators (RCs) within the ACF regions where site visits are being conducted will assist in identifying respondents for recruitment and provide an introduction via email.

• The evaluation team will schedule virtual interviews directly with respondents and email them information about the interview (see Introduction and Consent information below) before.

• Pre-interview & Interview activities:

• The evaluation team will review the programs’ progress reports to inform the interview.

• INTERVIEWER NOTE: We are not expecting that every respondent will speak to every question and every prompt. Move on to the next question/section if the respondent doesn’t seem to have input to provide on a certain topic. Use your knowledge of the programs to help guide the interview. If needed, review the guide beforehand to identify priority questions for each respondent.

• Respondents will be given a $40 token of appreciation.

Respondent ID
Agency/Organization
State, ACF Region
Date
Interviewer(s)

Part 0. Introduction and Consent

Thank you for speaking with us today. My name is [NAME] and this is my colleague [NAME]. We are part of the team at RTI International, a nonprofit research organization, that is conducting the evaluation of the Trafficking Victim Assistance Program (TVAP) and Aspire: Child Trafficking Victim Assistance Demonstration Program (Aspire). This evaluation is overseen by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation (OPRE) in partnership with the Office on Trafficking in Persons (OTIP) at the Administration for Children and Families in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

We are conducting interviews with service providers in your region that receive client referrals from the TVAP/Aspire Regional Coordinator, [NAME]. The purpose of this interview is to understand your experience related to TVAP and/or Aspire, including your organization’s relationship to the programs, how you receive client referrals through TVAP and/or Aspire, how you assist these clients, and how you collaborate with various groups related to TVAP and/or Aspire. This information will help improve the TVAP and Aspire programs.

Do you have any questions about the purpose of this interview or the evaluation?

Before we start, I want to share some guidelines.

• We anticipate this interview taking approximately 1 hour.

• You will receive $40 as a token of appreciation. When we finish the interview, I’ll email you a link to get your gift card.

• Your participation in this interview is voluntary. There are no right or wrong answers, and we can skip any questions. You can also end the interview at any time.

• The information we collect from you is private to the extent permitted by law. We store all materials associated with your interview on a secure computer drive that only our RTI team can access. These materials will be stored securely until the project ends in 2028, and then we will delete it.

• We will not identify you individually by name or connect anything you say directly to you. When we share information in reports or presentations, your answers will be summarized with answers from other people we interview. We may use quotes from this interview, but we'll remove identifying information and describe you using general terms like "service provider." Please tell us if there is anything you do not want us to quote, and we will delete it from our notes and not include it in any reporting. We will never share what you say in a way that identifies you directly to OTIP or TVAP and Aspire program leadership.

Do you have any questions about these guidelines?

Lastly, we would like to ask your permission to audio record your interview. This will allow us to create a transcript of your interview and accurately capture what you shared. You can ask us to stop or pause recording at any time or ask us to delete something from the transcript. If you prefer not to be recorded, we will take electronic notes instead. We will delete the recording after it is transcribed.

Is it okay if we record the interview?

The last thing before we begin—I’m required to let you know that 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 OMB control number. The OMB number for this information collection is 0970-XXXX and the expiration date is XX/XX/XXXX.

[If consent was provided, start the recording. Let the respondent know the recording has started and remind them that they can ask you to turn it off at any point.]

Part 1. Respondent and Provider Background

Thank you again for agreeing to speak with us today. To start, we’d like to learn more about you and your organization.

1. Can you tell us about your title and role in [SERVICE PROVIDER]?

2. How did you come to work at [SERVICE PROVIDER]?

3. Can you briefly describe your organization?

   1. What are your organization’s primary activities?

   2. Who does your organization serve?

   3. What grants and grant programs does your organization have?

4. Can you tell us what you know about TVAP and/or Aspire?

   1. What is your understanding of the purpose and goals of TVAP and/or Aspire?

   2. How did you first learn about TVAP and/or Aspire?

5. Can you briefly describe your organization’s relationship with TVAP and/or Aspire?

   1. Do you have experience with one or both programs? Which programs?

   2. About how long have you worked with TVAP and/or Aspire in any capacity?

   3. Who are the key TVAP and/or Aspire personnel with whom you interact?

6. Has your organization considered serving as a formal subrecipient partner to TVAP and/or Aspire? Why or why not?

   1. Were you previously a subrecipient partner? If so, can you describe briefly your experience as a subrecipient partner?

Part 2. Referrals and Service Delivery

Next, we’d like to learn more about how you receive referrals from and make referrals to TVAP/Aspire and how you serve referred clients.

7. How are potential clients typically referred to your organization from TVAP and/or Aspire?

   1. About what proportion of referred clients are you able to serve?

   2. What factors do you consider when deciding to accept a TVAP and/or Aspire referral? E.g., client characteristics and needs, organizational capacity and funding.

   3. How do you determine which of your grants or programs are a good fit for referred clients?

   4. Do you ever refer people to TVAP and/or Aspire for services?

8. Can you describe the clients who are referred to you from TVAP and/or Aspire?

   1. How many of your clients are referred from TVAP and/or Aspire?

   2. How frequently do you serve clients who are referred from TVAP and/or Aspire?

   3. How are these clients distributed between adults/TVAP and children/Aspire?

   4. Have you noticed any trends among these clients (e.g., types of trafficking experienced)?

9. What are the primary service and benefit needs of the TVAP and/or Aspire-referred clients you serve?

   1. How are these needs determined?

10. What services do clients referred by TVAP and/or Aspire typically receive?

    1. What services are most challenging to provide to TVAP and/or Aspire-referred clients? How do you address these challenges?

    2. What services does your organization provide directly versus through referrals to external organizations?

    3. How does your experience working with TVAP and/or Aspire-referred clients compare to other clients you assist?

11. How do you close out a case for TVAP and/or Aspire-referred clients?

    1. What does that process entail, including connection to post-discharge services?

    2. Do you ever connect clients back to TVAP and/or Aspire?

12. Do you collect client feedback regarding the services they received via your organization? If so, please describe how.

13. Through your relationship with TVAP and/or Aspire, have you learned anything that may help you support TVAP and/or Aspire-referred clients or similar populations in the future?

    1. What activities, resources, or support helped you learn these things?

    2. Are there any supports you need or would like that you haven’t received?

Part 3. Collaboration

14. About how often do you collaborate or communicate with [GROUP] on TVAP and/or Aspire related activities?

[If more than never/not at all, ask:]

1. Can you describe this collaboration/communication?

2. How effective do you think this collaboration/communication is?

[Ask Q14 for each of the following groups:]

1. OTIP

2. TVAP and Aspire program leadership, regional coordinators, or case managers

3. Other service providers that assist TVAP and/or Aspire clients

4. Government agencies and entities in your local jurisdiction and/or state

1. How would you describe your relationships and experience working with these groups on TVAP and/or Aspire activities?

   1. What has worked well?

   2. What has been challenging?

   3. What could be improved?

2. Are there any other agencies, organizations, or entities that you think are helpful to ensuring TVAP and/or Aspire clients receive the support they need?

Part 4. Feedback and Wrap-Up

Thank you for sharing your experience as a TVAP and/or Aspire service provider. We’d like to end our interview with a few wrap-up questions.

17. From your perspective, what motivates your organization to continue serving clients referred by TVAP and/or Aspire?

18. Are there any other challenges you’ve experienced that we haven’t discussed already? If so, what are they and how have you addressed them?

19. Do you have any suggestions to improve the TVAP and/or Aspire programs that we haven’t discussed already?

20. From your perspective, are the TVAP and/or Aspire programs achieving their goals?

    1. What has helped the programs achieve their goals?

    2. What has been a barrier to the programs achieving their goals?

21. Is there anything else that comes to mind regarding your experience as a service provider that you’d like to share with us today?

Thank you again for participating in this interview. Have a great rest of your day.

Page 5 of 5