Local Government Systems Interview Guide

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

Virtual Site Visit

Local Government System Interview Guide

Overview

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

• Respondents: Personnel from local government systems who interact with TVAP and/or Aspire, e.g., child welfare, law enforcement, public benefits assistance.

• Scheduling activities:

• TVAP/Aspire Regional Coordinators (RCs) and Tier 2 Regional Case Managers (if applicable) within the ACF regions where site visits are being conducted will assist in identifying potential 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.

• The evaluation team will work with the RCs/case managers to determine how best to refer to the TVAP or Aspire program (e.g., program name, organization name, specific personnel). Use this wording wherever “[TVAP/Aspire]” is noted in 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 within select U.S. regions to understand how TVAP and/or Aspire personnel and service providers interact with other state or local agencies and organizations to support TVAP and Aspire clients. This may include state or local law enforcement, child welfare, public assistance, etc. The purpose of this interview is to understand your experience with TVAP and/or Aspire, including how you’ve been involved, benefits and/or challenges you’ve experienced, and potential areas for improvement. This information will help to 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 "external collaborator." 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.

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 Agency Background

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

1. Can you tell us about your professional background, including your title and role in your agency/organization?

   1. [If not addressed] Can you describe your experience working with people who have experienced human trafficking?

2. Can you briefly tell us about your agency/organization?

3. 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?

4. [If not addressed] We’ll ask for more details in a bit but, broadly, what is your experience 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/Aspire in any capacity?

5. [If not addressed] Are there ways in which you have worked with populations similar to those that receive TVAP and/or Aspire services? E.g., people who have experienced human trafficking.

Part 2. Respondent Role in TVAP and/or Aspire

Now we’d like to learn more about your experience interacting, coordinating, or otherwise working with [TVAP/Aspire].

6. How did you first learn about and get involved with [TVAP/Aspire]?

7. What are the primary activities you’ve been involved in with [TVAP/Aspire]?

8. [If not addressed] Do you work directly with TVAP and/or Aspire clients?

[If yes, ask:]

1. How are you first connected with TVAP and/or Aspire clients?

2. How do you typically work with TVAP and/or Aspire clients?

3. From your perspective, what are TVAP and/or Aspire clients’ primary needs, and are their needs being met?

4. How does your experience working with TVAP and/or Aspire clients compare to other clients/people you work with?

1. [If not addressed] Have you provided any training, technical assistance, resources, education, and/or other support to TVAP and/or Aspire personnel or service providers? [If yes] To who and what support have you provided?

2. [If not addressed] Through your work with [TVAP/Aspire], have you learned anything that may help you support TVAP and/or Aspire clients or similar populations in the future?

   1. What are the most helpful things you learned, and how did you learn them?

   2. Are there any additional resources, training, or other supports that would be helpful to you?

3. From your perspective, are there any external factors that are a barrier to TVAP and/or Aspire clients receiving the support they need? E.g., federal/state policies, local service capacity.

Part 3. Collaboration

Now we have a few questions about collaboration and communication with certain groups related to TVAP and/or Aspire.

12. 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 Q12 for each of the following groups:]

1. OTIP

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

3. Service providers, both TVAP subrecipients and non-subrecipient service providers, that assist TVAP and/or Aspire clients

4. Other 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. Wrap-up

Thank you for sharing your experiences related to TVAP and/or Aspire. We’re going to end our interview with a few wrap-up questions.

15. What benefits or successes have you experienced by working with [TVAP/Aspire], if any?

16. Are there any other challenges you’ve experienced that we haven’t discussed already?

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

18. 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?

19. Is there anything else we haven’t discussed about TVAP and/or Aspire that you’d like to share?

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

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