Evaluation & review
Therapeutic Court Supportive Engagement
Therapeutic court best practices consistently address monitoring, review, and evaluation. Review of policy and outcomes strongly relates to better outcomes! To help you with that, we offer different types of technical assistance. Each review type is part of an overall cyclical process of therapeutic court review and evaluation. Our approach is to meet with each team to set goals, create a plan of action, and review progress.
Each technical assistance project will start with a Scope of Work that details the process for that type of engagement and support. The template will be tailored to reflect each court’s specific goals and keep the engagement moving forward. Each technical assistance engagement will include a summary and recommendations to sustain teams in their movement toward improvement. Our approach is to meet with each team to set goals, create a plan of action, and review progress. Overall, the process is led by the individual court’s goals.
This type of review relies on quantitative data (things that are readily countable). We focus on entrances (e.g., timeliness, referrals, and acceptances), outcomes (e.g., completions, terminations, and withdrawals), recidivism, and differences across groups defined by race, ethnicity, gender, or other demographic characteristics.
Some of the questions we might address together:
- What data is available?
- What is the completion rate of the program?
- What racial disparities are there in the entrances and exits of the program?
- What is the recidivism rate of participants that enter the program?
EXAMPLE SCOPE OF WORK
How do you know if this is the right approach for you?
A performance and outcome review is appropriate at any time. However, if you are debating between starting with a performance and outcome review or a process and implementation review, the performance and outcome review might be best for you if you agree with the following:
- You want to develop continual data collection and review.
- You already have data collection on entrances, exits, and participant demographics.
- It’s been 1 year or more since the last internal review of your data.
- It’s been 3-5 years since the last outside performance and outcome review.
- Recent policy or practice changes may have impacted participant outcomes.
- Program process and implementation review (or a similar process review) was recently completed.
This type of review uses qualitative information gathered from team member interviews, staffing and court observations, and participant focus groups to help determine the extent to which the program is implementing policies and practices as intended, with a focus on how the program policies and practices are experienced by the team and participants.
Some of the questions we might address together:
- What do participants like the most about the program? What do they like least?
- What types of incentives and sanctions do participants receive (or observe) most often?
- What types of incentives and sanctions do they think are most effective? Least effective?
- How are team members and/or participants treated by the program staff?
- What suggestions or ideas do team members and participants have to help improve the program?
- How often are participants:
- Receiving drug tests during the program?
- Attending individual or group treatment sessions?
- Receiving incentives for positive behaviors?
- Receiving responses for negative behaviors?
EXAMPLE SCOPE OF WORK
How do you know if this is the right approach for you?
A process and implementation review is appropriate at any time. However, if you are debating between a performance and outcome review and a program process and implementation review, a program process and implementation review might be best for your court team right now if you agree with the following:
- You want direct or more immediate feedback from participants or team members.
- You have specific policies, procedures, or best practices that you want to address (admission/entry process, drug testing, staffing or court procedures, delivering appropriate incentives and responses, etc.).
- You have specific areas of concern related to the team (collaboration, decision-making, communication, etc.).
- Performance and outcome review (or a similar outcome review) was recently completed.
