Early Care and Education projects

In partnership with Bloom Consulting, PPI recently completed the Strengthening Montana's Early Childhood Systems Needs Assessment and Strategic Plan for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services. The Needs Assessment assessed early care access and quality throughout the state and among key vulnerable populations. It also assessed existing early care workforce capacity, and identified key findings related to system coordination, family engagement and governance.

In partnership with Parsons Consulting, PPI contributed to The Outcomes and Metrics Research to Action project, part of an ongoing effort by Center for the Study of Social Policy and the EC-LINC communities – a cross-national network of early childhood agencies – to improve the sector’s ability to measure the impact of early childhood systems. A primary objective of this phase of the work was the pilot implementation of a set of cross-national, common indicators of early childhood well-being identified in an earlier phase by the EC-LINC communities. The nine identified indicators measured the health, education, and safety of young children. The goal was to demonstrate that participating communities, representing regions in four different states, could effectively create detailed, operational definitions of each common indicator, and then collect and report data. The team also facilitated the identification of “system performance measures,” which could be used to assess the functioning of the early childhood service sector.

In partnership with Bloom Consulting, PPI developed two successful proposals for the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services, including the Perinatal Behavioral Health grant application, designed to provide an integrated behavioral health model to improve timely access to care, health system capacity, and outcomes for pregnant and postpartum mothers experiencing behavioral health issues and their children. The Preschool Development Birth to Five grant application enabled the state to build early care capacity, access, and innovation.

PPI recently served as subcontractor to Abt Associates to provide evaluation and liaison capacity on the U.S. Department of Education’s Study of College Transition Messaging in GEAR UP. This randomized study assessed the impact of mobile phone text messages and two-way advising related to college application and participation logistics, and well as growth mindset, on the enrollment and persistence of first generation, low income college students. Findings from the study will inform future efforts to increase access to and persistence in post-secondary education and training among diverse populations across different service systems.

The goal of Montana’s rape prevention education (RPE) program has been to reduce the statewide incidence of sexual violence through primary prevention efforts focused on influencing knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors to promote healthy relationships and gender equity. Under subcontract to Bloom Consulting, the evaluation used a variety of data sources and analysis methods to understand Montana RPE program’s progress toward goals, including campus climate surveys, pre and post-test analysis, RPE contractor performance measurement data, contractor satisfaction survey data, site visit reports, and coaching call summaries.