Tuesday Travel Tip - Rental Cars

Worried about getting “dinged” by the rental car company for damage to the car that you did not cause?  Use your cell phone to take pictures of each side of the car and close ups of any damage. Make sure you also note any damage on the form you give the gate attendant.  Having pictures of your car can also help you remember what it looks like so you don’t have to walk around a parking lot clicking your remote looking for flashing headlights! 

Coffee Break Fun - If you are up at four in the morning, you may not be alone.

Poet Rives discusses a series of coincidences surrounding that most surreal of hours, 4 o'clock in the morning.

http://www.ted.com/talks/rives_on_4_a_m.html

Tuesday Travel Tip - Tipping

Peeling off dollar bills for tips throughout a trip can be painful, but many people in the service industry rely on tips to supplement low wages.  But what to tip and when?

Here is a site that gives you some guidelines.  A couple of things to keep in mind: leave a tip for the hotel housekeeping staff daily, as the person cleaning your room may change during your stay.  Be sure and leave a note with the tip so the housekeeper knows it is okay to take the money.   http://www.itipping.com/tip-guide-travel.htm

Perception Versus Reality – Why Evaluation is Important

With all of the things that have to be done to keep your Children’s Advocacy Center up and running, taking the time to evaluate the effectiveness of the programs and services you provide can get pushed to the back burner, or off the stove entirely.

Evaluation matters, especially in an era when funding is becoming increasingly scarce and funders and policy makers want to make sure their money is being used to create the outcomes they anticipate.  In addition, it is good stewardship to make sure you are actually getting the results you promised to produce.

It is easy to fall into the trap of looking at anecdotal information and assuming it gives you the full picture.  One example of that is the DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program.  This program was provided in over 70 percent of schools across the country.  When multiple independent evaluations showed that the curriculum was ineffective in terms of impacting smoking, marijuana use, and drinking among middle school students (the target audience), there was significant resistance to dropping this popular program, even after the U.S. Department of Education prohibited school districts from using DOE funds to pay for it.  Why the resistance?  It was primarily because those implementing DARE in schools saw that children, faculty, and the community liked the program – the anecdotal evidence seemed to suggest that the program was effective.  Multiple evaluations showed it was not, and in fact, some evaluation results indicated that it actually did more harm than good.  Although initially resistant to the evaluation findings, the DARE organization revamped the curriculum in an effort to increase effectiveness and the new program became an evidence-based practice approved by SAMHSA.

Often there is a perception that evaluation has to be expensive or complicated.  That is not necessarily the case and in fact a number of tools exist for conducting evaluations that are inexpensive and that will produce data that is relatively easy to analyze.  The Department of Justice developed a manual for evaluating Children’s Advocacy Centers (see link below) that discusses how to conduct evaluations and includes dozens of evaluation tools including surveys for MDT members and clients.  

When thinking about conducting an evaluation, it is important to consider a number of things:

• Who is the audience for the evaluation – will the results be shared with individuals and groups outside of the organization or be limited to in-house consideration?
• What questions are you trying to answer – what is your program trying to change and what are the anticipated outcomes?
• What data will you collect and what tool will be used to collect the data?
• Who will you collect the data from?
• Who is going to conduct the evaluation?
• How will the data be analyzed?
• How will the data be used in considering program design or continuation?

When conducting an evaluation, it is important to remember to include a focus on what works.  Looking at what’s wrong tells you what not to do.  Looking at what works tells you what you should do more of.

All too often, we can get stuck moving in one direction, thinking we are making progress, only to find we’ve been going the wrong direction, not unlike this seagull - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfPzd7PZ_eM

Taking the time to get feedback from team members and clients helps us better understand the value of the work we do, celebrate our successes, and feel confident that the services we provide are truly making a positive difference.

For more information on how to conduct an evaluation, check out the resources below.  You can also contact WRCAC staff for help on how to get started.

Resources:

A Resource for Evaluating Child Advocacy Centers

https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/192825.pdf

Basic Guide to Outcomes-Based Evaluation for Nonprofit Organizations with Very Limited Resources

http://managementhelp.org/evaluation/outcomes-evaluation-guide.htm

Kellogg Foundation Evaluation Handbook

http://www.wkkf.org/knowledge-center/resources/2010/W-K-Kellogg-Foundation-Evaluation-Handbook.aspx

Coffee Break Fun

Click on any combination of squares and click the play button. You can continue to add squares as you go along.
http://www.earslap.com/projectslab/otomata

Long-term Effects of Childhood Trauma

As researchers continue to look at the long-term effects of childhood trauma, one thing is clear - what happens to us as children can have a lasting impact in our lives both physically and emotionally.  Robin Karr-Morris and Meredith S. Wiley, known for their earlier work, Ghosts From the Nursery (still on my bookshelf after many years), have released a new book entitled Scared Sick: The Role of Childhood Trauma and Adult Disease.  You can find an interview Salon.com did with Karr-Morris about this topic at http://www.salon.com/2012/01/02/how_stress_is_really_hurting_our_kids/singleton/.  As in their earlier work, the authors focus on the impact on a child in the womb, when their mother experiences trauma, and in the early years of life when the child is directly exposed to traumatic events.

Another resource for looking at the physical and behavioral effects of adverse childhood experiences, can be found at www.acestudy.org.   The Adult Childhood Experience (ACE) Study is a collaborative effort between Kaiser Permenente and the Centers for Disease Control.  The study is the first of its kind and looks at the relationship between childhood trauma and behavioral and physical conditions later in life. As the old saying goes, the mind forgets but the body never does, and researchers are finding links between those things that can be traumatic to children (abuse, neglect, divorce, family violence, substance abuse, etc.), and significant health problems such as heart disease, lung disease, and other health issues that can result in impairment and/or early death.

If your center or chapter has a prevention program, this information can help inform community members, policy makers, and funders of the importance of prevention and early intervention of child abuse and neglect. 

Thanks to the Children's Advocacy Center of Jackson County in Medford, Oregon for posting the Salon.com link on their Facebook page.