Process Evaluation of the Cuyahoga County Children Who Witness Violence Program

A process evaluation was used to determine which areas of the program were meeting the principles of effective classification and intervention and to offer recommendations to improve the program. This was accomplished through focus groups, interviews, observations of program staff, the collection and analysis of data from tracking forms used by the program, and a review of police reports. A second objective of the evaluation was to provide the groundwork for a significantly larger future outcome evaluation through the institutionalization of the necessary process and data collection procedures to make this feasible. In doing so, we put the Children Who Witness Violence Program, Frontline Services, and Cuyahoga County in a strong position to obtain federal funding to support such a large-scale outcome evaluation of the program.