Evaluation of the Juvenile Diversion Team

Haven House has provided the Juvenile Diversion Team for over 10 years. Young people are typically involved in the program for 3-5 months, have regular weekly meetings with their case manager, participate in the Step-It-Up-2-Thrive (SIUTT) curriculum, and participate in other activities as defined by an individualized plan. The ultimate goal is that young people have no future court involvement.  

 Interim outcomes for youth clients toward and concurrent with this goal include:  

• Improved school performance
• Completion of grade level/high school
• Increased safety, stability, and supportiveness of their home/living environment
• Increased independent living success 

Partners for Impact is designing an evaluation to determine how the JDT is helping achieve these outcomes.

What is the problem we are trying to solve?

The JDT program is designed for youth ages 6-18 who have not had direct court involvement. These young adults present with a variety of behaviors that place them at risk of becoming court-involved. This list includes, but is not limited to, school suspension and/or truancy, running away from home, challenging parental authority in extreme ways, and inappropriately using technology. While many youth enter the program because of these behaviors, the staff at Haven House often discover underlying substance use disorders and/or mental health diagnoses when they begin working with the participants. Because the solution to these behaviors and their underlying cause is NOT incarceration, JDT and other Haven House services are available to support the young adult and prevent their entry into the criminal justice system.  

Our Process:

The single largest activity for this project  will be building a data set from the electronic health records (EHR) that allows the evaluation team to analyze variables of interest. Partners for Impact has identified variables of interest that have some quantitative measures and also information in progress notes. These notes will have to be read, coded, and possibly quantified. After further discussion with staff, we will limit our analysis to roughly 120 participants.

Once the data set is created, the evaluation team will analyze the data to look at relationships between the activities of the program and the outcomes being achieved. We will create a preliminary report/powerpoint to share with all program staff in a sense-making meeting. This meeting will be used to verify whether these results align with the staff’s intuition and assumptions about the program. We will also determine if there are any missing elements that need to be examined before the final report is completed.

The Result: 

Evaluation Report