CCNY, Community Connections of New York

Do you want to have a voice in your community?
Do you want to help your peers?
Come join us and bring a friend!

Youth in grades 7 to 12, Come out and join us for our first Youth Empowerment and Leadership Board Meeting!!!
If necessary, transportation will be arranged.  Please RSVP no later than November 10th, 2009 to arrange transportation.
Mentors or Care Coordinators are welcome to attend with their clients.  Please RSVP to Hillary Worthington at 822-0919.

Date: Thursday, November 12th
Time: 5:30pm-7:00pm
Location: Joan A. Male Family Support Center (60 Dingens St. Buffalo, NY 14206)

Contact Info:
Hillary Worthington
Youth Coordinator
60 Dingens St.
Buffalo, NY 14206
716-822-0919
716-570-2621
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Contact Info:
Eric Jackson
Youth Specialist
60 Dingens St.
Buffalo, NY 14206
716-570-9570

Who doesn't love to celebrate Samhain? The time when we rejoice in the "dark half" of the year by wearing goulish costumes, telling stories of young Fionn Mac Cumhail around the bonfire, and bobbying for....oh wait. Heidi, our Executive Director, just informed me that we are celebrating Halloween. Whoops, my bad. It's a common mistake with us Irish folk.

As I was saying, who doesn't like to celebrate Halloween? What better way to enjoy it's spooky goodness than to come to the CCNY office, enjoy some free food, and laugh at our crazy costumes and scary offices? No really! On Friday, October 30th from 2 - 4, we will be hosting a spook-tacular office party for anyone who wishes to enjoy the fall season with us. Come join us for food, entertainment, and shenanigans - we might even throw in some hijinks.

So that we can order the correct number of coffins (cuz them things is expensive), email This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and let her know you'll be coming. Please remember to take the pre-scare evaluation on the way in, and the post-scare test on the way out. We will collect and compare this data with the Terror Index Scale to determine the success of our programming. Data, that's how we roll.

The latest issue of The Link, CWLA's juvenile justice newsletter, is now online.

Highlights of this issue:

 -- Mental Health and Substance Abuse Issues in the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act – Prepared for ACT 4 JJ

 

-- Registering Harm: How Sex Offense and Registries Fail Youth and Communities

By Nastassia Walsh

 

To download and read the latest issue of The Link, go to:
http://www.cwla.org/programs/juvenilejustice/jjdnewsletter.htm

 

 

The Family Voices Network's Summer 2009 newsletter featured an article on CCNY's upcoming asset map of Erie County called L.I.N.K.s (Linking Information and Neighborhood Knowledge). If you would like to see it, go to their newsletter online.

The CCNY team's work on evaluation design and evidence-based practice has lead us to believe that there are valid models beyond the experimental methodology. The Malcom Wiener Center for Social Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government posted a working paper titled "A Lot to Lose: A Call to Rethink What Constitutes “Evidence” in Finding Social Interventions That Work" by Katya Fels Smyth and Lisbeth B. Schorr, January 2009. This paper challenges the dogma regarding the use of experimental design as the only real methodology to judge a social program. We look forward to following its reaction in the social policy and social work learning communities. Below are quotes from the article, the abstract, and a link to download your own copy.

 Quotes: 

"In assessing the success of efforts to improve outcomes for vulnerable populations, experimental methods must not be the sole arbiter of effectiveness."

"Interventions whose program design will not allow experimental evaluation, meanwhile, are deemed unproven—and, to many funders, “unproven” equates with a passing fad or an idea that is unlikely to deliver concrete results."

"While it is reasonable to expect that a laboratory test conducted in Omaha will be replicable in a similarly equipped laboratory in Ottawa or Oslo, it is harder to conceive that an intervention for suspected child abuse will translate exactly from the South Bronx to Sausalito to San Antonio."

Abstract:

A growing emphasis on accountability has led policy makers, funders, practitioners and researchers to demand greater evidence that program models “work” and that public and private dollars invested are generating relevant results that can be directly attributed to the given intervention. The gold standard for making these judgments is presumed to be the experimental–design study. In this paper, the authors suggest that the underlying assumption that everything that “works” can be judged with the same methodology has dramatic negative consequences for the field, for funders, and for those that desperately need high quality programs. The authors describe the characteristics of What It Takes organizations, which their work suggests support lasting change in the lives of highly marginalized and vulnerable people. They describe the ways that experimental methodology is a poor fit for judging the impact of these program models, while they find insufficient use of more appropriate ways of assessing their impact. They identify the risks inherent in the continued privileging of experimental designs over all others, and suggest that the risks are heightened in periods of great economic stress, when the pressure for accountability is increased. The authors suggest a set of starting points for rethinking evaluation to ensure greater accountability without reducing the chances that those who need help the most will have access to programs that support meaningful, lasting change.

"A Lot to Lose: A Call to Rethink What Constitutes “Evidence”in Finding Social Interventions That Work." (LINK TO PDF FILE)

Co-authors Mansoor Kazi, University at Buffalo School of Social Work, Brian Pagkos, Community Connections of New York's Evaluator, and Heidi Milch, Executive Director of Community Connections of New York, have been notified that their article titled, "Realist Evaluation in Wraparound: A New Approach in Social Work Evidence-Based Practice," has been accepted for publication in the Research on Social Work Practice Journal. It will be published by the end of 2009. The Research on Social Work Practice Journal is ranked one of the top ten journals in the field of social work for 2007 as measured by the overall influence their articles receive, and value all articles published in the journal in 2007. This journal has a high impact factor and Eigenfactor score. Below is the abstract:

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to develop a realist evaluation paradigm in social work evidence-based practice. Methods: Wraparound (at Gateway-Longview Inc., NY) used a reliable outcome measure and an electronic database to systematically collect and analyze data on the interventions, the client demographics and circumstances, and the outcomes.

Results: Research designs (e.g. single-system, group) can fall into place naturally, and patterns in the data can be investigated using data analysis approaches such as binary logistic regression.

Conclusions: Realist evaluation can be performed at regular intervals when an outcome measure is repeated, with the purpose of investigating what interventions work and in what circumstances.