Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention (CECEI)

Implementation Evaluation of Maryland Family Network's Strong Families Program

Illustration of two people holding hands

The CECEI is conducting an implementation evaluation of the Maryland Family Network鈥檚 Strong Families program through a Research-Program Partnership. Maryland Family Network鈥檚 Strong Families Department focuses on community-based efforts to prevent child maltreatment and strengthen families.

CECEI will use two strategies to ensure that the evaluation of programs funded by MFN鈥檚 Strong Families Department is both comprehensive and efficient:

  1. The CECEI team will offer technical assistance to grantee organizations needing the infrastructure to develop evaluation strategies and make data-driven decisions through data identification, data collection processes, data management, and data analysis/interpretation. 
  2. Using two overarching research goals developed for this proposal, the CECEI team will conduct a data-driven evaluation of the funded programs, as well as the general effectiveness of MFN鈥檚 funding strategy.

The evaluation will answer four research questions: 

  1. How did each grantee organization implement their proposed intervention and to what extent did they achieve their intended outcomes? 
  2. How did programs address family-level characteristics and functioning as required by the MFN RFP? 
  3. How and with whom are grantees collaborating in an effort to offer, achieve and sustain their desired outcomes? 
  4. Did programs reduce the risk of child maltreatment?

Principal Investigator: Christy Tirrell-Corbin, PhD Investigator: Brenda Jones Harden, PhD Postdoctoral Research Associate: Keiana Mayfield, PhD Funder: Maryland Family Network