Statewide Data Collection on Standardized Home Visiting Measures
The
Maryland Home Visiting Accountability Act of 2012 mandates that all home visiting programs funded through state general funds report on standard measures in five domains of maternal and child well-being: Child Health, Maternal Mental Health, Typical Child Development, Children’s Special Needs and Family Relationships. While each evidence-based home visiting program collects data specific to its funder or program model requirements, the mandated measures allow Maryland to assess the impact of statewide home visiting efforts across models. Data collected is summarized in a report to the Governor and the General Assembly’s Joint Commission on Children, Youth and Families every two years.
Custom Data: Maxwell
Maryland MIECHV’s data system, Maxwell was designed according to the specifications of Home Visitors, Supervisors, Program Managers and State Administrators to meet reporting and programmatic needs regardless of role in MIECHV. This was accomplished through focus groups and interviews of staff during the development of the data system. Maxwell is intuitive and was intentionally developed to improve programmatic oversight at all levels. Prompts keep home visitors on schedule for their families; validated tools automatically calculate when assessments are completed; and missing data can be monitored more effectively as a granular analysis can uncover which construct questions are missing for a particular home visitor. Prior to Maxwell, program data managers could only see if entire assessments were missing, not a specific construct question.
The continued development of Maxwell is led by a workgroup of end users and Maryland MIECHV staff that work together to advise on system advancements and on submitted troubleshooting requests from a workflow and presentation perspective.
Maryland Home Visiting Evaluation
As part of the MIECHV program expansion through the Affordable Care Act, funding is allocated for research and evaluation. States are required to carry out research activities to increase knowledge about the implementation and effectiveness of home visiting programs. Although Maryland has no current expansion funding, and evaluation is not a requirement of formula grants, MD continues to research the projects conducted.
The current MIECHV contract is with researchers at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine and Johns Hopkins University to continue and evaluation of two on-going projects. These researchers have national recognition and decades of experience in designing and testing strategies to advance the field of home visiting.
Current evaluation activities include:
Project 1: Improving home visiting services for parents with learning difficulties -
The purpose of this evaluation was to build on prior evaluation findings to improve services and promote positive outcomes for families enrolled in home visiting in which the primary caregiver has a developmental or intellectual disability or other learning
difference.
The MD MIECHV evaluators at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the University
of Maryland School of Medicine developed a toolkit for home visiting staff that describes the potential
benefits of home visiting for caregivers with learning differences, presents a conceptual model for
supporting and strengthening home visiting services for caregivers with learning differences, and
summarizes resources for models, programs, and home visiting staff to support caregivers with learning
differences.
Please find the toolkit here.
Project 2: Strengthen Coordination Between Home Visiting and Health Care through Health Information Exchange (HIE) -
The purpose of this evaluation is to build on prior evaluation findings to improve services and promote positive outcomes for families enrolled in home visiting by strengthening coordination between home visiting and health care.
