Each year the American Evaluation Association (AEA) holds an annual conference at which evaluators from around the country gather to discuss and reflect on evaluations. A large portion of the conference is devoted to evaluators sharing their knowledge with others through poster presentations, round-tables, and paper presentations. And being a presenter at AEA’s conference is a competitive process: Evaluators submit short briefs of their proposed topic which are reviewed and rated by AEA members.
Recently ACET staff learned that two of their proposals were accepted for the November, 2010 conference in San Antonio. Kirsten will be presenting a paper on the evaluation of a Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs (GEAR UP) grant currently implemented by the Minnesota Office of Higher Education. The presentation will emphasize the initial findings of the impact of GEAR UP on student academic success, review evaluation successes and challenges, and describe lessons learned. Stella will also co-present a paper on Incarnation Family Connections, a child welfare demonstration program implemented by The Wayside House. This presentation will summarize findings from the first six months of the program, the evolution of the evaluation design, considerations made in selecting the final design, and lessons learned.
Recently, I attended the Combined Discretionary Grantee Meeting in Washington D.C. with The Wayside House, Inc., a chemical health organization dedicated to providing treatment for chemical abuse exclusively to women. They received a grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children & Families Children’s Bureau, to create a residential family treatment program. The program, Incarnation Family Connections (IFC), is a family treatment program with housing options. IFC enables parents and their children to live in a safe environment for a period of not less than six months. IFC provides onsite substance abuse treatment services and children’s early intervention services that are designed to provide comprehensive treatment that supports the whole family unit. ACET was contracted to evaluate the IFC program, implement a quasi-experimental design to measure impact, and contribute to cross-site evaluation efforts.
This video, which describes Wayside House and its programs in detail, was played for a national audience at the Grantee Meeting: