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Connecticut
Case Management Protocol
Evaluability Assessment Site Visit Report
In 1994, Connecticut received approximately $90,000 in CIP planning funds that were used to support the State's CIP assessment. The State's assessment was conducted by the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Organizational Improvement of the Edmund S. Muskie School of Public Service. Since the initial federal grant award, Connecticut has received approximately $150,000 annually in CIP funds that has been used to support a range of reforms including the case management protocol (the focus of this report), mediation services, professional training and improvements to the court's automated system.
This report summarizes the feasibility of conducting an evaluation of the case management protocol being implemented by the Connecticut Superior Court for Juvenile Matters. The protocol involves both a pre-hearing conference of professionals held just prior to the Orders of Temporary Custody (OTC) hearing and the expanded availability of parent counsel. Typically, case management meeting participants include attorneys for all parties (child, parent and agency), the child welfare caseworker and a trained facilitator. The purpose of the meeting is to try to address all early procedural requirements of the case (notice, paternity, testing, reasonable efforts, among others) and to work out an agreement about next steps outside of the court hearing process.
Data for this feasibility report was collected by a James Bell Associates team who visited the Juvenile Matters Division in Hartford, Connecticut in July 2002. A list of individuals interviewed for this report is included in Appendix A. This report concludes that a full-scale rigorous evaluation of this court improvement project is feasible. The recommended evaluation approach is to conduct a matched comparison group study strengthened with a pre/post component. The matched comparison would involve all families participating in OTC hearings in two, large, urban judicial districts - Hartford and New Haven - during calendar year 1999. Outcomes for families receiving the pre-hearing conference in Hartford would be compared to outcomes for families in New Haven who did not have access to the conference. Hartford had implemented the reforms in 1997 and New Haven did not implement the reforms until 2000. The research design will also compare the same case outcomes, pre- and post- implementation of the reforms, in both sites. The two cohorts in Hartford will be 1996/97 and 1999. The two cohorts in New Haven will be 1999 and 2000/2001. To help explain findings from the outcome study, a descriptive analysis is also recommended. The descriptive analysis will focus on project implementation, and contextual factors that might also impact outcomes (e.g. agency policies and practices, community resources, etc.) as well as other court reforms undertaken.
The report is presented in five sections. Section A presents a brief overview of Connecticut's case management protocol, and describes how it fits into the State's judicial child protection system. Section B presents a detailed logic model for the evaluation. This model defines the inputs and outputs from the case management protocol, and immediate, intermediate as well as the long-range outcomes of the intervention. Section C presents the recommended evaluation approach, including research design parameters, sub-population analyses, sample size, and data sources. Section D identifies three, relatively minor outstanding issues to resolve before proceeding with the evaluation. Section E concludes with an assessment of the feasibility of a full-scale rigorous evaluation of this site, including strengths, weaknesses, and key stakeholders' willingness to implement the proposed evaluation design.
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