Children and Families
OMNI supports organizations that seek to promote family health and well-being, reduce intergenerational cycles of poverty, and create more equitable educational systems. Our research and evaluation services are designed to strengthen programs and services in two core areas:
Family Support and Strengthening – spanning approaches that support families to build their strengths, and increase their health, well-being, and economic security.
Education and Early Childhood – with a focus on interventions and initiatives to increase the accessibility and effectiveness of learning opportunities for children at home and in care, and inside and outside the classroom.
Family Support
The Family Support and Strengthening Field seeks to build healthy families and communities through family-centered, strengths-based approaches. Programs and services are designed to prevent child abuse and neglect, and to enhance family resiliency and connectedness, parenting skills, economic security, and family health and wellbeing.
OMNI advances the evidence base of family support and strengthening efforts at national, state, and local levels. Our services for Family Support organizations and networks span from measure development and testing to systematic design and implementation of controlled research and field evaluation studies, all with the goal of improving outcomes for children and families.
We ground our work in essential research-informed frameworks such as the Standards of Quality for Family Strengthening and Support, the Center for the Study of Social Policy’s Protective Factors Framework, and the Two-Generation Approach as defined by Ascend at the Aspen Institute.
Project Examples
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Impact of Family Development Services on Family Health and Wellbeing Study
OMNI designed and is executing the Impact of Family Development Services on Family Health and Wellbeing study, funded by Evidence for Action, a Signature Program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The study examines the degree to which a scalable, community-based model of family supportive services is effective at improving family health and well-being.
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The research is being conducted in partnership with Family Resource Center Association and implemented at three Family Resource Centers in Colorado – Sister Carmen Community Center, Mountain Family Center, and La Plata Family Centers Coalition, each of which has decades of service in their communities.
The study uses a multisite parallel-group randomized design to test whether goal-setting meetings with a family development worker using a strengths-based and family-centered approach leads to improved family health and wellbeing.
Findings will provide critical information on the degree to which enhanced family support leads to the individual and family conditions that determine health outcomes, and specifically whether this impact is greater than that of simply providing families with access to services. In turn, it can provide the evidence-base to inform statewide and national investments in Family Development Services by disseminating findings to community-based organizations, policy-makers, funders, and the scientific community.
Family Resource Center Association: Using a Collective Impact Model to Strengthen and Expand Family Resource Centers
Using a collective impact model, the Family Resource Center Association (the statewide intermediary of Colorado’s 30+ Family Resource Centers), seeks to strengthen and expand Family Resource Centers through program fidelity standards, program quality monitoring, outcome measurement and reporting, state and national level advocacy, and more.
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In our 15 years working together, OMNI has supported the Family Resource Center Association (FRCA) to make significant advances in refining and evaluating its unique model of Family Development Services, through model development, evaluation studies and research. For example, OMNI’s work with FRCA has included:
Literature reviews on key components of FRCs and effective practices that has been used in the field to help shape FRC programming.
Measurement development via a collaborative process to create and test the Colorado Family Support Assessment (CFSA 2.0), a reliable index of family functioning, strengths, and areas for growth that is used to examine outcomes for FRCA and several other state-funded programs.
Support with model development, including designing FRCA's Family Pathways Framework, developing a standardized screening tool, and initial design of a fidelity monitoring tool.
Advanced analysis and annual aggregate and site-level reporting demonstrating positive outcomes for families served by member FRCs.
National Family Support Network & Robert Wood Johnson Foundation: Advancing the Family Support and Strengthening Field Project
The Advancing the Family Support and Strengthening Field Project was funded through the National Family Support Network and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to increase understanding and raise awareness of Family Support and Strengthening programs for families and the Networks that support them, as well as to inform strategic directions for the field moving forward.
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OMNI developed a survey that was administered to representatives from backbone organizations of statewide Networks to obtain an understanding of: Commonalities and variation in Network structures, history, and composition; Network approaches to direct-service worker training and professional development to ensure quality practice; Network service delivery areas, in particular the areas in which Networks develop intentional strategies to improve family outcomes; and Network impact, including evaluation practices and areas in which Networks have demonstrated positive outcomes for families and communities.
OMNI developed a report and presented findings at a national convening of vested partners in Washington D.C. Results were used to inform the National Networks strategic directions.
Determining Social Return on Investment: Family Resource Centers Save the Child Welfare System Millions
With support from Casey Family Programs, the National Family Support Network (NFSN) contracted with OMNI to explore opportunities to leverage existing research, evaluation, and data to quantify the economic return on investment that FRCs provide to child welfare systems.
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OMNI quantified the savings to the child welfare system for Teller County, Colorado from investment in Community Partnership Family Resource Center (CPFRC) and Orange County, California from the investment in the Westminster Family Resource Center.
To calculate the return on investment for the child welfare system, we used a social return on investment, or SROI, approach to measure the impact of the FRC. An SROI describes the impact of a program or organization in dollar terms relative to the investment required to create that impact. For every $1 invested in an FRC in Orange County, California, resulted in $3.65 of savings for the child welfare system, and every $1 invested in an FRC in Teller County, Colorado, resulted in $2.92 of savings for the child welfare system.
Education and Early Childhood
We work with organizations and agencies focused on improving educational outcomes and providing safe and supportive school and early care settings for all children regardless of their background, economic status, or learning challenges. Our research and evaluation work in education helps clients understand their needs, identify best practices for success, and determine if their methods and strategies are working. OMNI also has extensive experience evaluating other educational programs, including those administered by Departments of Education, school districts, private schools, and non-profits and community organizations that support the education system.
Through our work, we’ve:
supported programs in their efforts to recruit, train, support and retain high quality teachers in Colorado classrooms
examined issues related to out-of-school learning opportunities and the needs of students with disabilities
conducted rigorous research on programs designed to improve childhood literacy rates for low-income and rural students
Project Examples
High Quality Educators in Every Classroom
Colorado, along with much of the nation, has a goal to recruit and maintain a high quality workforce so that every child has access to a great teacher. Effective and responsive teacher preparation and training programs are a key mechanism to achieving this goal. Since 2013, OMNI has been evaluating effective practices for educator preparation programs. For the Colorado Department of Education, OMNI conducted multi-year, mixed-methods evaluations of the Quality Teacher Recruitment Grant Program (Senate Bill 13-260).
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We tracked retention and effectiveness ratings of six cohorts of teachers across three programs, and collected quantitative and qualitative data from teachers, principals, district representatives, and program staff. Findings were used by educator preparation programs to improve programming, and by the Colorado legislature to monitor the impact of the funding stream on its goals to retain high quality teachers in historically hard-to-serve Colorado school districts.
OMNI has also worked with PEBC (Public Education and Business Coalition), a nationally recognized educator development program, to support their efforts to provide outstanding preparation and professional learning opportunities to teachers, and to serve as the external evaluator for their Teacher Quality Partnership Grant through the U.S. Department of Education.
Evaluating Early Literacy Programs for Low-income and Rural students
There are persistent achievement gaps in our public education system, and effective strategies that reach low-income children and families in rural areas are critical to increasing statewide reading proficiency and reducing disparities. OMNI designed and implemented rigorous research through a quasi-experimental and a randomized controlled trial to examine the impact of two programs on literacy skills of participating children. The research was funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) via the Mile High United Way (MHUW).
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Findings from both studies were reviewed by CNCS on national standards and resulted in an increase in the level of each program's evidence from preliminary to moderate, indicating that both programs are promising strategies to improve young children's literacy outcomes. Findings were also disseminated to the research and practitioner community via peer-reviewed journal publications.
Supporting Students with Disabilities in Colorado Schools
The Colorado Developmental Disabilities Council partnered with OMNI to identify currently available resources and tools recognized as promising or best practices for individuals with disabilities and their families, with a particular focus on resources and support for communities of color.
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This research consisted of a literature scan, as well as focus groups and key informant interviews with community members impacted by the issues. In order to best support children with disabilities in Colorado’s schools, OMNI presented recommendations based on this work to the Council.
Recommendations included ideas to promote the development of culturally responsive resources, opportunities for the Council to engage in systems-level changes that will better serve students of color with disabilities, concrete information that families and all vested partners would like to see to make resources more user-friendly and accessible, and strategies that promote peer-to-peer support and empowerment.