Firearm Violence Research Group (FVRG) Meeting Minutes - 5/17/22

Meeting Minutes

Date: Tuesday, May 17, 2022

Time: 9:30am - 11:00AM

Meeting Information

via zoom

Roll

Attendees: Joe Hoereth Tammy Kochel, Andrew Papachristos, Dana Kelly, Daryl Kroner, David Olson, Ericka Woods (Civic Consulting Alliance), Kim Smith, Roy Rothschild, Soledad McGrath, Christopher Patterson, Timothy Lavery, Anna Katter, Aaron N, Karrie Rueter

Absent: Dr. Jon Patterson, Dr. Lance Williams

Welcome/Roll Call/Approval of Minutes

Meeting Called to order @9:35am

Dana Kelly from IDHS introduced Ericka Woods from Civic Consulting Alliance. Ericka has been helping with some of the intergovernmental work and is listening in this meeting to help move that forward.

Meeting minutes were approved by consensus with one correction

? Acronym from YAZI to YASI

Public Comment

No public comments received

Discussion and Work Items

Assistant Secretary Christopher Patterson:

Spoken words of welcome and shared with FVRG update on Local Advisory Council

  • Local Advisory is in the second round of funding. We did something unique and opened NOFO for funding opportunities and kept them open with no closing date. NOFO will be kept open until funding resources run out.
  • Secretary Patterson would like to focus on the data evaluation and discussion that will be discussed during this meeting.
  • Secretary Patterson is excited because we are getting closer to that mark. He just wants to make sure that we're setting our providers up for success. We're also setting our programs up for success and we could save lives.

Facilitator Hoereth:

First agenda item is an update from the office regarding its activities to date and where it's going moving forward. Facilitator Hoereth introduced Dana Kelly, Chief Policy Officer for the Illinois Department of Human Services to FVRG.

Office of Violence Prevention Update:

Dana Kelly shared PowerPoint presentation with FVRG

Dana Kelly:

State of Illinois-Violence Prevention Strategy

? We are addressing this as a multifaceted challenge, a multi-faceted challenge that requires a comprehensive solution. The RPSA dollars that are being invested is $250 million and are supplementing that with other areas of investment. We are working to make sure that those resources are getting into the community right now.

Snapshot of Current Investments

  • Give everyone a snapshot of where our current investments are, these are dollars that we're getting into the hands of organizations right now.
  • FY2022 ends June 13th we invested $73 million to support youth development and youth employment providers but that was a 25% increase over previous years in terms of investment.
  • IDHS is launching $10 million in additional funds. This is new money that is being infused in providers right now to fuel existing youth development providers and $16 million to fund programming to meet the needs of ultra-high-risk youth for a total of $26 million that is not ARPA funding and not related to RPSA Act.
  • First round of our funding is being distributed for our RPSA and that's a total of 46 million so that funding is being launched as we speak, and contracts are drawn that is money that will be getting out this summer.
  • We did reopen violence and prevention youth development through a different NOFO model to ensure we get more organizations to apply for funding.

Increased IDHS Youth development Spending FY19 to FY22

? This shows that in FY22 investment we had in youth development and the growth that we've seen in that investment over time. Since FY19 we have definitely grown 25% we've grown about $15 million since FY21.

RPSA Grant Programs that are being funded with the $46 million

  • Training & Technical Assistance
  • Community Convener
  • Violence prevention services
  • Youth development programs
  • High-risk youth intervention

Eligible Chicago Neighborhood Areas (for RPSA)

? RPSA will fund 22 communities in Chicago and 15 in Greater Illinois.

Expansion of Eligible Communities-5 New Areas(for RPSA)

? Based on some additional data analysis and work to make sure that we were fully identifying communities, all types of communities of color, particularly looking at Latinx communities and ensuring that they had coverage under the act. We are adding 5 additional communities which are allowed under the RPSA.

  • Greater Illinois
    • Rock Island
  • Chicago
    • Northside Cluste - Belmont Cragin, Hermosa, Logan Square, Avondale, irving Park, Albany Park
  • Southwest Cluster - Lower West Side, Brighton park, Gage Park, Mckinley Park
  • Ashburn
  • South Deering

Violence Prevention First Round Response-Chicago

? Violence prevention NOFO was only released in Chicago and we definitely received applications and we're funding neighborhoods except for Burnside and Riverdale. We should be funding a minimum of 2 organizations per community and a maximum of 6 so there was a need to re-release the NOFO. The act says we should be funding 4 and up to 8 organizations per community.

Youth Development Greater Illinois-RPSA and Summer Expansion Response (Number of Applications)

? We released only youth development direct service NOFO's. They have yet to apply for violence prevention funding, because we're working with the local advisory councils to gain their recommendations.

Evaluating NOFO Response

  • A survey was conducted to gather suggestions for how to improve future RPSA NOFO processes.These are the top 3 survey findings and opportunities.
    • Application was complex and many potential applicants could not fulfill all program components.
      • Shorten and simplify application
    • Not enough time to complete. We had a 35 days window for response which which alot found challenging.
      • Provide more time for response. It is open until further notice and there is no timeframe on when you would need to submit applications and consider on first come first serve.
    • Lack of Awareness
      • Build Awareness

Local Advisory Council Update:

  • RPSA requires the OFVP to convene LAC in each of the RPSA designated services areas. Each council will be comprised of a minimum of 5 members appointed by the Assistant Secretary, OFVP
  • Each LAC will make recommendations to the OFVP on how to allocate violence prevention resources based on the information provided by the OFVP, local law enforcement and other available data.
  • OFVP will consider the recommendations and determine how to distribute funds through grants to community-based organizations and local governments.

Dana Kelly opened up for questions or comments

Questions from Members

  • Is there anything being provided that helps them to analyze or examine in more detail the extent of violence or gun violence?
  • Yes, everything they can find is on the website. We provided a first round of this data profile to the agency or test to each local advisory council in March.
    • Facilitator Hoereth added we are our first kind of wave of support here is just to get just basic demographics and statistics about crime or shooting things to all of the LAC's so we're trying to set a baseline standard that we provide to all of them but this is an ongoing process. The challenge really is in some of the detail around the shooting incidents themselves, and getting data related to that and also just some more specific health data.
  • How were memberships put together? 
    • It was really based on recommendations we received from a broad swath of individuals. The membership had to be composed of one elected official, one non-elected but government official, individual, who works within violence, prevention, or public health, or for an organization that represents that and 2 community members. We did end up getting a different kind of make set of recommendations for each community, some of which included police presence and others that did not cause law enforcement was not a required one of those members in the group.

Comments from Members

  • Member is leading a team in Carbondale this summer to do a needs assessment on our gun violence problem where SIU is located and it's the larger city level schools statistics and crime data that isn't going to help. We have been working with a crime analyst trying to explain how to pull data. One on one interviews are being with key personnel in the area who are working already to address gun violence to get a sense of experience as well as a community survey. I don't think you're going to be able to provide them with a link to something that will help them solve their gun violence problem. They need to better understand what's happening locally.

Data and Evaluation Overview and Discussion:

Facilitator Hoereth:

At our last meeting, we had a discussion around the role this research group could play in advising OFVP with regards to data collection, evaluation, and so forth and there has been more progress on the thinking around that, as well as starting to build some infrastructure in the office for it.

Dana Kelly and Kim Smith presented:

Data Collection and Reporting Progress

? Building quarterly reporting templates

  • Structure of QPRs will allow us to add data elements and revise some performance measures
  • IDHS is participating in intergovernmental conversations related to streamlining reporting metrics and ensuring gramtee reporting burden is minimized, while the value of the data we collect is maximized.
  • IDHS is interested in exploring possible methods for evaluating our $250 million investment.
  • We tried to articulate a rough version of a theory of change or kind of a logic model towards change that we are pursuing but want to understand before we get going with further discussions about evaluation. What are the data points that we would need to bring to you? Or what are the questions we would need to answer for researchers like yourselves to come up with a meaningful evaluation of this investment?
    • The ARPA funded additional staffing and resources for youth activities that were promoted, which are street outreach, case management, victim services after school programs, youth employment and high-risk interventions. We are promoting CBI programs through our NOFOs, and they have some level of effectiveness.
    • The short-term outcomes we are looking to achieve are that more youth this summer will be engaged in more activities that will reduce violence.
    • Long term outcomes more communities will see reduction of violence in their community and allowing families to thrive.
  • The mayor's office, IDHS and the county will be making investments given the overlap. What information would the FVRG need to evaluate the IDHS investments?
  • Through the NOFO and the Earnest and Your process we are collecting basic information under activities. Has that been aligned across all the various sites?
  • How is it being collected?
    • This is something IDHS is still working on. We have been focusing on getting contacts out there. We will put reports on paper together. We will work with Earnst and Young to digitize all the information.
    • For the violence prevention we are trying to get into more detail with kids specific data to be able to lift stuff out and also data points that will feed into performance measures and capture basic program intake information.
  • We can't underestimate how complex the data collection and the whole process is, whether it's just for gathering performance metrics or conducting evaluation. It would be helpful for us to provide more specific guidance or recommendations to understand exactly what you're looking for in terms of evaluation. You can get more from this group if we would get more context.
  • This is a complex process not just looking at the performance but more of the process evaluation. What are the barriers to integrating already existing services with this new infusion of services? Questions like that would help the sustainability of the money if you sort through and understand what some of the initial barriers are to just integrating through multi levels of services that are already being provided.
    • A process evaluator might be a good way for the first 2 years of programming
  • We want to be extremely cautious on evaluating any success on aggregate crime rates even at community levels. Figuring out the right method and right outcomes that you want to look at. We can track aggregate rates but in the history of these kinds of evaluations during the middle of a national gun surge I would just be cautious. We're going to say the outcome is no matter what actually happens at a smaller level.
  • If we are going to compile the information. What are the questions we can come up with?
    • If you're investing in a program that you want individuals to stop carrying a firearm or you want kids to re-enroll in school or use a particular service service that's the immediate behavioral change so you can be in a program.
    • I think there are lots of lessons learned from people on this call about smarter outcomes that can tie to direct investments.

Facilitator Hoereth

? FVRG has been very helpful and will keep this dialogue going in between this or our next meeting.

Next Steps

  • Share a summary of the recommendations we do receive for the summer with you in our next meeting.
  • Will follow up with information on the next meeting.

Adjourn

Meeting adjourned at 11:01

Proposed Next Meeting Date/ Time

  • Tuesday, July 19th 9:30am
  • Meetings will be bi-monthly moving forward possibility for quarterly