Quality Assurance

PERFORMANCE-based STANDARDS
The Alabama Department of Youth Services (DYS) believes in delivering effective and safe rehabilitation and reentry services for youth in custody. The DYS Office of Quality Assurance is responsible for the implementation and oversight of the agency’s quality control measures to increase accountability, accurate data reporting, and transparency. The overall goal for the office is to ensure agency goals are met and that all programs consistently provide effective services that help our youth achieve meaningful outcomes.
Resources
Serves as a resource to aid productivity across all divisions and facilities;
Information
Provides information across Divisions to improve the quality assurance process;
Data Management
Works collaboratively with the data management team to verify the accuracy and quality of the information about youth contained in the various DYS databases;

Checks and Balances

Provides an objective view of operations, processes, policies, and procedures for increased checks and balances agency-wide;
Identifies Needs
Identifies training needs and best practices across the variety of agency disciplines;
Improve Work
Identifies techniques to improve work culture and employee morale with the goal of reducing turnover;
Identifies Issues

Identifies potential issues before significant systemic problems occur and determine the level of changes, needed to correct the deficiencies;

Office of Quality Assurance Monthly Newsletters

In 2016, the Alabama Department of Youth Services chose to be a part of the national Performance-based Standards (PbS) community. PbS provides a wealth of information about what happens daily in residential facilities and programs essential for ensuring the safety of youth and staff, for data-driven decision-making, demonstrating accountability, and reporting successes. PbS also describes the quality of life in facilities through timely, quantitative, and qualitative data showing change over time and performance in comparison to other facilities and programs across the country.

WHAT IS PERFORMANCE-based STANDARDS?

In 2016, the Alabama Department of Youth Services chose to be a part of the national Performance-based Standards (PbS) community. PbS provides a wealth of information about what happens daily in residential facilities and programs essential for ensuring the safety of youths and staff, for data-driven decision-making, demonstrating accountability, and reporting successes. PbS also describes the quality of life in facilities through timely, quantitative, and qualitative data showing change over time and performance in comparison to other facilities and programs across the country.

WHY PERFORMANCE-based STANDARDS?

The Alabama Department of Youth Services (DYS) believes in delivering effective and safe rehabilitation and reentry services for youths in custody.

DYS values youths’ constitutional rights to reasonable safety, adequate medical and mental health treatment, rehabilitative programming, and education.

DYS values youth input for information about the facility or program safety, quality of services, and staff relationships to provide a comprehensive picture of facility life.

Data on how youth, staff, and family members view the facility or program has; led to increased focus on improving practices that directly relate to positive outcomes for youth.

WHAT DOES PbS MEASURE?

The PbS program for correction facilities provides more than 100 outcome measures. The outcome measures show how a facility’s services and performance meet the PbS standards in safety, order, security, programming (education), health/mental health services, justice, reintegration and connection to family and social supports. The outcome measures are available as easy-to-read bar graph reports available twice a year showing change and improvement every six months as well as performance compared to similar facilities.

The outcomes are derived from information collected from surveys:

  • One administrative form to collect general information about the facility, population, procedures, and staff;
  • All incident reports filed during each of the data collection months to provide the facility with the ability to analyze the frequency and kinds of incidents that are occurring;
  • A minimum random sample of 30 youth records to capture information about the youths’ experiences and services received during their time at the facility;
  • A minimum random sample of 30 surveys of youth and staff to gather feedback about facility conditions, quality of life, staff-youth relationships, and services;
  • Surveys of all families of all youth leaving the facility to learn about the families’ experiences with the facility, relationships with staff, and ability to stay connected to their child; and
  • Exit interviews of all youth released to provide a youth’s perspective on his or her experience while at the facility, programming, staff, and preparedness for leaving.

All PbS facilities are provided with a PbS coach, a juvenile justice expert who provides support throughout the year by telephone and email and who visits once a year to guide implementation of PbS. The coach works with facilities to use the data reports to develop Facility Improvement Plans (FIPs), which are entered into the PbS website and shared widely to engage agency leaders and staff in its implementation. Agency leaders, facility staff and the PbS coach monitors the FIP using on-line comments that create a living document for reform and records change strategy.

PbS uses data to provide the Alabama Dept. of Youth Services with outcome measure reports on a variety of areas including:

 

Safety
Family
Behavioral Health
Justice  
Order
Reintegration
Programming
Security
Health 

THE PbS DATA-DRIVEN IMPROVEMENT MODEL PROVIDES:

k

Goals & Standards

A set of goals and standards that agencies, facilities, and residential care providers strive to meet.
i

PracticeS & Policies

A blueprint of best practices and policies to implement to meet the standards.

Information architecture

Outcome reports and data summaries of the quantitative and qualitative information collected.

Improvement Planning

Improvement plans guiding the steps necessary to use the outcomes and information to create successful and sustainable reforms.

Networking

A national network of professionals sharing information, tools, and approaches to provide the highest quality of life and services.

PbS INTEGRATION

Training, technical assistance, expert coaching, research, and resources to support PbS integration.
PERFORMANCE- based STANDARDS

Improvement Cycle

1. Data Collection

Twice a year PbS participants collect information by surveying youth, staff, and families, reporting administrative data, unusual incidents, and services offered by the facility or program. The information is entered into the PbS website or transferred using the PbS application program interface.

2. Analyzing Performance Outcomes and Summary Data Reports

At the end of each data collection period, PbS reports show how a facility’s services and performance meet the PbS standards in safety, order, security, programming (education), health/mental health services, justice, reintegration, and connection to family and social supports. Participants are given analysis tools to identify what works and what needs to be improved. For example, participants see outcome data compared to their previous data collections and to the PbS field. PbS also provides summary data reports for every data collection form that shows the total responses for each question and provides details that help diagnose outcome results. PbS Teams look at the reports, align the information with agency and facility goals and strategic plans, and identify specific areas and outcomes they want to improve.

3. Creating Improvement and Reforms

Using the analysis of the data, participants work with a PbS coach to develop an improvement plan that sets the targets for change and the strategy and individuals to implement the improvement plan. The improvement plan is entered into the website and monitored for effectiveness by staff, agency leaders, and the PbS coach. The plan becomes a living document for the PbS Team to measure successes and ensure the facility is meeting its goals and PbS standards.