Relief Nursery Return on Investment Study
Purpose & Research Question: The mission of Oregon Relief Nurseries is “to prevent abuse and neglect in children birth through 3 by partnering with caregivers committed to strengthening their families.” To do this, Relief Nursery programs provide a unique constellation of evidence-based services to high-risk families with children under age 5, including home visitation, therapeutic child care, parent education classes and groups, case management, and respite care. Evaluation of the Relief Nursery programs suggests that services are effective in reducing family risk factors, promoting family well-being, improving the quality of parenting, and reducing the level of involvement of families with child welfare services. Given these positive short-term outcomes, a key fundamental policy question has emerged: What are the long-term returns on investments that can be expected from the Relief Nurseries? Family Building Blocks (Salem) and the Children's Relief Nursery (Portland) are partnering with NPC Research to develop and implement a Community-Based, Participatory Research (CBPR) project to begin to answer this question.
Project Design: This project will collect information that will be used to form the foundation for legislative and community advocacy to expand support for the Relief Nursery model across Oregon. CBPR is a particular approach to program evaluation and research that is based on the premise that information generated by research will be more useful, relevant, and meaningful when the research itself is designed and implemented in close collaboration with program staff, program participants, and key community stakeholders. Therefore, the first step in beginning this project is to form a Relief Nursery Policy Research Team composed of researchers, program staff, community stakeholders, and participating parents.
Over the course of the project, this group, with assistance from other identified organizations, will: (1) develop, implement and oversee the cost-benefit research; (2) regularly review and analyze cost-benefit results; (3) design an advocacy plan based on a policy analysis of the results of the cost-benefit (and other available) research — including training and leadership development for community stakeholders and program graduates, developing social marketing materials and strategies, and other strategies identified by the team;and (4) implement and evaluate advocacy strategies.
Funding Source: Northwest Health Foundation
Start Date: March 2009
