Early Childhood System of Care Community of Practice Call
5/04/06, 2:30 ET

Following up on the National Evaluation Meeting

Purpose of this call: In Atlanta at the training for the National Evaluation, there were several forum to discuss fine-tuning for the instrumentation for the cross-sectional and longitudinal studies to address the needs of the sites focusing on young children. This call serves as the first opportunity to follow-up on those discussions.

Discussion:

Two tools that present themselves as opportunities and challenges:

• EQ-R (education questionnaire)
• EDIF

For EQ-R, one challenge is how we are going to define “school” (terminology that is used on this form). For example, the first question is: “has your child been in school this past year?”

Another question (3a) asks for the reasons the child is not in school, these response choices are not all applicable to young children; might need to generate some new response categories to supplement:

• Options included: “too young for pre-school,” “I chose not to send my child to preschool,” “I can’t afford to send my child to pre-school,” “enrolled in a pre-school program that is not school-based”
• Should we take into account other places where families and children spend the day?
• There are lots of kids who would be in Head Start or Early Head Start but there isn’t space for them. How to document this?
• Some kids get pre-screened out of programs. This is something that parents would be aware of and could report on accurately?

EDIF: Intake form for everyone who is enrolled in the cross-sectional evaluation (Question about whether this means: everyone you are serving in your SOC and everyone you screen?)

• Referral services: Is every agency represented in the list on page one?
• Missing childcare provider—general or specific (e.g. Head Start provider)
• Have to take into account adult-serving systems that parents are involved with (how to do that in this format? Might need additional questions on local intake forms?)
• Need to have some separate operational definitions

Issue regarding diagnostic classification: do we want to use DC 0-3 codes and DSM codes because people are going to be using crosswalks (because of the need to bill Medicaid)? Whether to use both, one or the other? Will MACRO be able to know its one diagnosis and not 2?

Issue about whether or not we are leaving diagnostic category blank. Some kids are enrolled who do not immediately get a diagnosis. Is there a response that can be given that is “not diagnosed” to differentiate from missing data?

• If you have staff with expertise in applying the DC 0-3 classification system you may see fewer instances where young children do not get a diagnosis; still reluctance to apply labels to young children, hope they will “outgrow it.”
• In some SOC sites, they have used a classification of “diagnosis deferred.

Other Issues:

Would it also make sense for the sites to collectively define outcome measures? That way, we can compare cross-site data.

• There are opportunities and challenges. If three or so communities chose the same tool, it would be an opportunity to see how these various tools are functioning in sites.
• Some sites have developed their logic models or are in the process of doing so; we may want to use this as a starting point—see where people are now.
• Need to include broad stakeholders such as family members in this discussion

Follow-up tasks:

• Frances will be the funnel for comments, suggestions on the EQ-R. She will send an email to get the ball rolling.
• Tara will start an email to gather comments on the EDIF.
• Deb will gather the comments and prepare a memo to transmit suggestions to the National Evaluation Team.
• Everyone who has developed a cross-walk between DC 0-3 and DSM should send these to Roxane and/the listserv in preparation for the next call (June 1).
• Ideas for future conference calls: Screening tools for young children as well as common ways to measure child-level outcomes
• Set up a call to discuss screening tools, and outcome measures