Altarum will guide Title II grantees through the process of developing their evaluation plans, with full plans ready for submission to MDHHS within 14 days of their grant start date. Documenting and operationally defining the program and evaluation goals, specific activities, and their timing and hypothesized outcomes are of paramount importance. The well-crafted evaluations will yield data relevant and necessary to document accomplishments, identify areas for improvement, and enhance sustainability and scalability moving forward. If possible, given Covid-19 realities, Altarum’s Project Manager (PM), Rachelle May-Gentile, Evaluation Lead, Dr. Christine Stanik; and Juvenile Justice Subject Matter Expert, Lisa Greco will meet with each grantee in person at the time of their start dates. If in-person visits are not advisable, they will host video meetings using Microsoft Teams or Zoom to interact face-to-face with grantee staff. Dr. Stanik is currently hosting remote discussions for a similar project with six grantees, and the protocol has been highly successful. During initial meetings, Dr. Stanik and Ms. Greco will facilitate information gathering discussions with grantee staff to acclimate to the grantee programs, including program background and context, goals and objectives, target audience, key activities, and desired short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes. They will walk grantee staff through each component of the evaluation plan, designing and assist grantees as they begin to develop their plans. Altarum will document these planning meetings and provide detailed notes to the grantees capturing all decision points and action items. Through these meetings, the Altarum Team will develop the following specific evaluation plan components: Logic Model, Evaluation Goals and Objectives, Evaluation Research Questions, Evaluation Design, Process and Outcome Performance Measures, Data Collection Sources, Tools, and Methods, Data Reporting, Data Analysis, and Evaluation Report and Other Products.
