(DISCUSSION) Report from 5 CBOs providing intensive home based supervision to youth in the Dept. (Instituto Familiar de la Raza, Morrisania West, Potrero Hill Neighborhood House, Samoan Community Development Center, Vietnamese Youth Development Center).
Comm Hale reviewed that this grew out of the committee’s concern about those that did not have significant data for the PrIDE report. Liz Jackson-Simpson said that there were some other IHBS providers who had comments to make on this issue.
Lonnie Holmes reported that the Samoan Community Development Center and Potrero Hill were not present.
Alfredo Bojorquez, Youth Program Coordinator for IFR, explained to the committee that IFR has been on record as opposing the PrIDE program in its invasiveness and cumbersomeness. It was not done with their approval and lacked cultural and linguistic sensitivity and really didn’t help them in their services (the PrIDE people asked them to clean up the translations, rather than doing it themselves) in fact, interfering with their efforts to develop a close rapport with their youth. With all the problems this evaluation program possessed, it was not possible to do the data collection they demanded. (there is also a waiver that excused youth from participating in this data collection). And the data set that PrIDE used doesn’t even truly represent the total client population they work with, because PrIDE only wanted data within a specific timeframe that didn’t encompass all of their clients served.
He also mentioned that there have been relatively few referrals from the Dept recently.
He felt that the money used for this could have been better spent and in fact the dept. still needs to develop its own ability to compile and track data on its contracts.
Maria Su, VYDC, said that they did complete 80% of the PrIDE paperwork, but there were problems with the data forms. Translations were left to the case manager to do, questions were complex and invasive and youth were resistant to giving up information. Worked against building trust and relationships.
Yen Ding, clinical services director, VYDC, said that they have always had problems administering the questionnaires, for all the reasons already presented, as well as the respondents not having a reading level that allowed them to do the questionnaires. These questionnaires duplicated much of what they already do, so were redundant.
Charles Dixon, Morrisania West, said this was a surprise to him because he has communicated to Liz Jackson Simpson and the previous chief, and La France about this survey. He questioned the changes made to the instrument. He said that much of the information asked for already is contained in PO records. He said that they submitted all the forms asked for. He disclaimed any non-compliance. He said that PrIDE lost many of their survey forms. He said that there have been few report backs to the CBOs through the course of the year so they couldn’t benefit from any understanding of how the “evidence” said they were doing. He said the money could have been better spent. He said the IHBS program was really subsidized with funds from other programs they operate.
Liz Jackson-Simpson said that at times IHBS are asked to do work outside of their contracted work plan. She said that because of the transitory nature of their population, the process of data collection for PrIDE did not fit. She was not aware of their lost forms, but said that this was a common occurrence.
Lonnie Holmes, management analyst, said that the PrIDE “program” was crammed down the throats of the CBOs here without any consideration with what would work locally.
(public comments)
Tracy Taper, BAG, spoke about the problems of the PrIDE reporting processes. She agreed with the comments of others regarding the negative experience with the evaluation process. It was not an accurate picture of what they had done in their program.
Shawn Richard, BAG, also echoed the previous comments.
Jay Smith, BVHP Fdn, had the same problems others had with the PrIDE process. Like others, their numbers of referrals from the Dept have declined in recent years.
L. Holmes said that referrals are made arbitrarily.
The Chief said that in the future there will be performance indicators enumerated in RFPs and work contracts. The purpose is to evaluate the end result, not to punish providers.
L. Holmes commented that there are many other firms that can provide evaluations at a far lower cost (eg. Davis Ja and Associates).
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