Evaluations of Home Visiting and Family Support Programs
TIER has deep expertise in the areas of family support and home visiting programs and initiatives. For the past two decades, TIER has worked with national, state, and local program partners to evaluate existing home visiting programs, plan for new home visiting programs, and engage in home visiting system-building initiatives. TIER has strong ties with the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) program, both locally and nationally, and has been the lead evaluator for the Massachusetts MIECHV program since its inception, including implementation studies, quasi-experimental studies, needs assessments, and participation in two Coordinated State Evaluations. TIER also conducted a longitudinal randomized controlled trial of Healthy Families Massachusetts (HFM), the largest home visiting program in Massachusetts, and continues to conduct applied mixed methods evaluation studies with HFM partners.
Learn more about our evaluations of home visiting and family support programs here.
Evaluations of Programs for Families Experiencing Involuntary Systems-Involvement and Other Challenges
Many of the programs that TIER evaluates serve populations facing significant structural and systemic barriers to their well-being, including families involved in the child welfare system, families experiencing challenges related to substance use, and parents and young adults involved in the adult or juvenile criminal justice systems. TIER’s evaluations are framed by multi-level contexts that influence child and family development and well-being, striving to avoid focusing on individual-level factors as explanations for the challenges families face.
Evaluations of Community-Based Initiatives and Early Childhood Systems of Care
Over the past two decades, TIER has built relationships with state agencies, home visiting and family support programs, and community-based organizations across Massachusetts. TIER has in-depth knowledge of Massachusetts communities and the families living in them, including their core strengths and persistent needs, as well as the availability and accessibility of services to support families in those communities. TIER’s team has developed several novel methods to map and measure the ways in which families move through community systems of care, and the role programs play in connecting families with services.
Community-Engaged and Participatory Evaluation
Through a range of participatory approaches, TIER works to meaningfully engage families, staff, and other interested parties in our evaluation designs, data collection strategies, interpretation of findings, and reporting. The participatory method and approach varies based on the project goals and questions, and has included: hiring, training, and mentoring community members with lived experience relevant to project topics to work as Community Evaluators who design studies, collect and analyze data, and translate data into meaningful policy and recommendations; convening evaluation working groups and advisory committees to inform evaluation questions, protocols, and the interpretation of findings; and facilitating action-oriented learning communities with providers from a range of program contexts to identify key issues and solutions.
Learn more about community-engaged and participatory evaluation here.