Ohio Intimate Partner Violence Collaborative: Final Evaluation Report of the Safe & Together Training Program
From 2010 to 2013, the Safe & Together Institute provided extensive training, including trainer certification, in all 88 counties of Ohio. In 2014, the National Center for Adoption Law and Policy (NCALP), the Healthpath Foundation of Ohio, and ODJFS collaborated to conduct a third-party evaluation of the training to reveal improved child welfare practices following training.
The evaluators, Sheri Chaney Jones and Kenneth Steinman, used five data collection activities:
An online pre-/post-test survey of 837 CPS caseworkers and supervisors
Semi-structured interviews with 16 supervisors
Semi-structured interviews with eight community stakeholders
Desk reviews of 191 CPS case files
A review of written policies from 15 counties that had completed Safe & Together training.
They collected data from three groups. First, they collected data from 12 of the counties trained during 2013. Second, they collected data from 12 Ohio counties that had participated in Safe & Together training during previous years. Last, they collected data from seven local child protection offices from counties that had not yet participated in the training.