Best Practice Model Training Evaluation Research and Demonstration Sites
Through a competitive Request for Proposals process,the QIC-ChildRep sought two entities delivering legal services to children in child welfare cases who are willing and able to implement the QIC-ChildRep Best Practice Model of Child Representation and who will fully cooperate with efforts to measure the effectiveness of the QIC Best Practice Model of Representation. Full cooperation includes random assignment of lawyers and cases to two groups, treatment and control, supporting the implementation of the trainings and coaching, and supporting data collection efforts as directed by the QIC-ChildRep and its evaluation partner, Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago.
As a result of the RFP, the following two partners are serving as our research and demonstration partners:
1. The Georgia Supreme Court Committee on Justice for Children, in the Administrative Office of the Courts of Georgia. This is Georgia’s Court Improvement Program, which has been committed to improving the representation of children since it was created in 1995. The Georgia QIC Team includes Michelle Barclay, Patricia Buonodono, Melissa Carter, Jane Okrasinski, and Araceli Jacobs.
2. The Center for Children & Youth Justice (CCYJ), as staff to the Washington State Supreme Court Commission on Children in Foster Care. The Commission’s mission is to provide all children in foster care with safe, permanent families in which their physical, emotional, intellectual, and social needs are met. The Washington QIC Team includes Justice Bobbe Bridge, Jim Bramberger, Tim Jaasko-Fischer, Rob Wyman, and Hathaway Burden.
These two states agreed to an ambitious and thorough data collection plan. Approximately 125 lawyers in Georgia and Washington who represent children in child welfare cases were identified and randomly assigned to control or treatment groups. The treatment group attorneys in both states received two days of training in Spring 2012 and case assignment began in the first quarter of 2012 in Georgia and the second quarter of 2012 in Washington State.