Georgia

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• Georgia
• KIDS COUNT Advocacy Evaluation
• Pilot Project

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Who We Are

• Family Connection Partnership (FCP) is a state
  intermediary working with the 159 Georgia county
  collaboratives and has been the KIDS COUNT
  grantee since 2001.
• Collaboratives are focused on improving results
  for children and families.
• 50 indicators of child, family and community
  well-being are tracked by FCP and local
  communities.

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Who We Are

• FCP has a team approach
• KIDS COUNT work is joint effort of Public Policy
  Team and Evaluation Team.
• KIDS COUNT team has expertise in epidemiology,
  data analysis, evaluation, marketing,
  communications, editing, public policy, and
  advocacy.

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Organizational Culture

• Team work
• Data oriented
• Community focused
• Evaluation

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Results Orientation

• Data driven decision making
• Indicators
• Evaluation plans
• Evaluation reports
• Benchmark reports
• KIDS COUNT
• Theory of Change for Community Decision-making
  developed in 2001

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Community Setting
FAMILY CONNECTION COLLABORATIVE Structure
Function



Systems Changes
Decision Making

Finance
Strategy Mix
Activities / Programs
Indirect
Direct
Results for Children, Families
and Communities
Community Setting
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Advocacy Evaluation Process

• Brought the two teams together --- beyond the
  KIDS COUNT team
• Reviewed organizational goals and strategies
• Reviewed work in evaluation thus far
• Gaps/strengths/opportunities
• Sticky wall with everything up.

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Advocacy Evaluation Process

• Whoa.had to scale back.
• But..lightbulbs went off.
• Team committed to another day of brainstorming to
  develop an Advocacy Theory of Change.

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Advocacy Evaluation Process

• Realized it was critical to connect the teams and
  keep everyone on board.
• Refined outcomes map
• Focus on advocacy but keep the bottomline in
  mind..improving results for children and
  families.
• Focused on organizational capacity and
  strengthened alliances.

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Compile, manage, disseminate and promote the KIDS
COUNT data and its use by collaboratives, state
partners, and media.
Connect the changing conditions of children,
families, and communities with the impact of
public policy.
Counties have access to/are able to effectively
use data to inform strategies/discussions.
Counties are better able to implement effective
strategies.
County strategies can bring about positive change
for children and families.
Counties can become stronger partners.
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Children/families in each county are more likely
to show gains in results areas Increased
chance of healthy start Increased strong
families Increased school readiness Improved
family economic Increased school success
self-sufficiency
ULTIMATE IMPACT Georgias children/families show
improvement in or maintain strong outcomes.
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Next Steps

• Outcomes and measurement
• Do more buckets
• Flesh out so that chains to illustrate
  connections between KIDS COUNT short term
  outcomes and longer term outcomes
• Review/revise Theory of Change outcome map for
  FCP (the whole enchilada)
• Use process to inform strategic planning

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What We Learned

• Important opportunity to do work we may not have
  done otherwise.
• Expanding our thinkingthinking in different
  directions.
• Educational for cross-team members. A learning
  opportunity.
• Helped us articulate the usefulness of broader
  purposes of evaluation.
• Provides significant input into our strategic
  planning process.

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Success Factors

• Commitment to evaluation
• Willingness to broaden our scope and effort
• Technical assistance to help us think outside our
  normal organizational box

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For more information contact Julie Sharpe
or Taifa Butler jksharpe_at_friendlycity.net
or taifa_at_gafcp.org www.gafcp.org