OFVP Firearm Violence Research Group Meeting Minutes, September 17, 2024

Date: Tuesday, September 17, 2024

Time: 9:30 am

Meeting Minutes

1. Welcome/Roll Call/Approval of Minutes
   • Meeting Called to order @ 9:33am
   • FVRG Members Present: Joe Hoereth, Timothy Lavery, Maryann Mason, David Olson, Soledad McGrath
   • FVRG Members Absent: Andrew Papachristos, Kim Smith, Lance Williams
   • Other Attendees: Quiwana Bell, Kari Branham, James Pagano, Stephanie Jones, Kevin Brown, Fernando Constabile, Kathryn Strimbu, Ana Genkova
   • Notetaker: Jessica Cortez
   • Meeting minutes were approved by consensus for March 19, 2024 and June 18, 2024
2. Public Comment - No public comments received
3. Discussion and Work Items
   1. Facilitator Joe Hoereth welcomed FVRG members to the meeting.
   2. Office of Firearm Violence and Prevention Update
      • Assistant Secretary Bell introduced herself to the FVRG group and also provided an update on OFVP along with Kevin Brown, Senior Policy Advisor, Office of Firearm Violence Prevention, Illinois Department of Human Services.
      • Assistant Secretary Bell: OFVP is in year 3 now and our whole portfolio is looking to re-NOFO. All of the existing grant contracts and existing programs have expired as of June 30th. OFVP has extended some of the contracts from last year specifically around CVI youth development for 6 months. Everything is coming back up for re-NOFO in January. As OFVP thinks through how to reissue the new opportunities OFVP wants to come back and meet with FVRG to discuss some of the things that have been on OFVPs' minds around How do we hone our own strategy to be more effective and be more impactful.
      • One of the things OFVP is also looking at in this iteration is, how do we partner with government or other intergovernmental partners, the county, ICJIA and the city to look at this landscape that we call CVI.
      • OFVP is determining what in the statute gives OFVP a lot of latitude. When we talk about CVI, we're talking about street outreach, case management and victim advocacy and services. But the statue also allows us to look at workforce development and legal aid and housing and behavioral health.
      • Our situation in year three is a bit different than the situation in year one. We wanted to get the office established and we had 250 million in ARPA that needed to be put to work quickly. At this stage where ARPA is going away and we have to advocate for sustainability in our programs, a lot of that is proven that what we're doing is working as well as saving the state. These monies are a good investment for the state.
      • For this current fiscal year we're looking at an investment of around 135 million, of which we are thinking maybe around 45 to 50 million may go specifically to CVI and based upon the redeterminations that were just offered by the FVRG it looks like were in the 40 plus communities across the state.
      • Kevin Brown, Senior Policy Advisor, OFVP introduced himself to the FVRG.
      • Kevin Brown: Would like to raise to the FBRG a couple of issues that are important to Assistant Secretary Bell.
        • Research on illegal gun trafficking. We go on the streets and talk with providers and young people who are telling us that crates of guns have been left in the neighborhoods.
        • The methodology and approach for determining allocations of resources from our office, from IDHS and other state agencies and thinking about what we're doing in SC 2 where we look at where there are high levels of violence, gun violence, and possibly surging resources to those particular communities and determining whether or not we can resolve some of the issues by the surge.
      • Kari Branham, Administrator of Research, Evaluation, & Innovation, OFVP gave a follow up on the eligible communities discussion that was had back in June 2024 FVRG meeting and also shared PowerPoint presentation "Expansion of Eligible Communities".
   3. Performance Measures & OFVP Theory of Change Work Presentation
      • Kevin Brown: Initially the theory of change that we wanted to share provides a strategic roadmap for how the Reimagined Safety Act can lead to meaningful and sustained reductions in gun violence in Illinois.
      • James Pagano, Senior Policy Advisor, IDHS to focus on the PPR.
      • We are in the middle of daring to rebid our violence prevention services grant which is the heart of what OFVP funds. That means we also have an opportunity to rethink the data that we've been asking our grantees to collect over the last three years. We recognize that we're probably not going to be able to directly connect our programming through reductions in firearm violence, but that we can hopefully try to start to point to other positive indicators in the community or in the lives of individuals and share with the people who are making decisions about making these investments.
      • James Pagano shared OFVP 2025 Proposed Performance Measures and Standards document with FVRG.
      • Facilitator Hoereth shared PowerPoint presentation OFVP Performance Metrics Questions for FVRG Input.
      • Overarching Question: How can OFVP collect information on the outputs and outcomes of the services that it is funding to demonstrate some type of positive effect on individuals/communities that could also help to reduce the likelihood that recipients would perpetrate or be a victim of firearm violence?
      • Is there an effective way to measure or assess the quality of a street outreach interaction?
      • Are there outputs for a street outreach interaction that we can or should be trying to record beyond conflict mediations?
      • Should we be encouraging grantees to try and identify complex or particularly significant conflicts to mediate?
      • How can we encourage grantees to gravitate towards the most significant conflicts?
      • We currently count conflicts mediated and resolved, how can we be doing more to understand if these resolutions are contributing positively to community safety?
      • How can we assess whether victim services engagements are meaningful?
      • FVRG Member Smith: In terms of encouraging guarantees to try and identify complex or particularly significant conflicts to mediate. I'm wondering if one way to push your grantees might be to get qualitative information from them on how they currently identify which conflicts to mediate. We survey our stakeholders in our community, and we get referrals from our staff who live in that neighborhood.
      • Facilitator Hoereth: Question for OFVP staff could share a sense of how the grantees are tracking the various interactions that they have.
      • James Pagano: I'm sure we're going to see a pretty wide range between the longer standing, more professionalized groups that are probably using a proper case management system and other ones that have created an internal system to basically meet our requirements. The new people that serve this quarter across each of the work streams will require some level of fracking whether they're collecting names and birthdays and other pieces of information for everyone they contact.
      • FVRG Member Mason: Is there a meta evaluation going on across groups? Or is all this self reported data from the groups?
        • James Pagano: I don't think there's a meta evaluation going on. We do have an evaluation partner on board, SIU, but I don't think that's what they're working on. Exactly. So this is going to be self reported almost exclusively. And I think we do look at firearm victimization trends at the community area level, using the city of Chicago's data. And then we're using Idph's data to look at hospital firearm injury hospitalizations outside of the Chicago area.
        • Kari Branham: What we'll learn from this evaluator currently, they are working on a primary findings report. This part of the evaluation is going to center on the process and fidelity of the model further into the evaluation then we'll be getting into key performance indicators, impact on participants in the community. The grantee through a mixed method of qualitative and quantitative data analysis.
        • FVRG Member McGrath: You can't expect an outreach worker to address a conflict, where they may not have a lot or they may not have a presence, an organization may not have a presence. Some of the things that we're seeing is not just where they are, what they're doing, but also what the gaps are, which is equally important when you're working with limited resources. It's really important to ask questions but thinking about what standardization, if any, is going to be really critical. In some ways you're talking about what is the right dosage to make the change. What is the dosage that is seeming to have an effect or an impact on reducing gun violence.
        • FVRG Member Lavery: How do you reach clients and what measures do you incorporate? How do you adopt those methodologies? Crime isn't going to go down in the communities if you're not having the impact on the individuals who you're seeing themselves. Has there been a common perception of the definition of a quality interaction? If there is no common definition it's going to be difficult to measure without operationalizing it first. There can be some discussion about challenges related to resources but also warriors about workers getting burned out.
        • FVRG Member McGrath: There is a survey out in the field both in North Lawndale and south side called the Street Outreach Participant Survey. It is a very comprehensive survey that addresses some of the questions that FVRG Member Smith raised around firearm use in addition to other things.
      • James Pagano: We focused a little bit on the question about gauging quality specific to street outreach and kind of questions around conflict. The other piece that I'm interested in is assessing the victim services, engagements and case management. Engagements are meaningful to the people who are receiving those services.
      • I will say I have less insight into how to assess whether a victim services engagement is meaningful. We can't make that causal link between reductions in firearm violence or trying to get a little bit more insight into the individual level outcomes.
      • Does FVRG have thoughts on the case management front what we should be looking for or on the victim services front.
        • FVRG Member Smith: Your grantees could ask which of these services you liked, you or find the most impactful. And instead rating all of them just picking one out of the three like Victim Services Street outreach case management and then asking what additional resources and support would have been more helpful.
      • Facilitator Hoereth mentioned he would like to hear from violence prevention workers and how they view the evolution of a relationship with someone.
      • Facilitator Hoereth re-shared the Powerpoint slide OFVP Performance Metrics Questions for FVRG Input.
        • FVRG Member Smith: On the question We currently count conflicts mediated and resolved, how can we be doing more to understand if these resolutions are contributing positively to community safety? For OFVP when you say you're counting conflicts mediated and resolved. Are you asking how many conflicts did you mediate or attempt to mediate? And how many of those were resolved?
          • James Pagano: I would have to double check but I think it's just conflicts mediated in time rather than the number that are resolved. This will get a little easier with our plan to migrate to an easier reporting system.
          • Assistant Secretary Bell: We do distinguish between conflict mediated and non aggression agreements.
          • FVRG Member McGrath: Some of this language is conflated because the work has exploded in the last 5 years and there's so much overlap now. I think we all understand the difference between a non aggression, agreement and a conflict mediation. I don't know that that is necessarily how it's playing out in the field.
      • Facilitator Hoereth asked FVRG the following question.
      • What is the timeframe that outreach workers conceptualize their work?
        • Kevin Brown: I think it's a combination of the two. I think the way it operates in the street is, it's both approaches. It's both ways that can occur.
      • Assistant Secretary Bell: Has there been any research or any thoughts around life, stabilization, scoring models and how we may be able to better assess a pre and post service and prevent a high risk individual from violence.
        • FVRG Member Smith: Not personally familiar with anything.
        • Facilitator Hoereth: There is some research on the factors that contribute to the higher risk or low risk period.
      • Facilitator Hoereth: There have been a number of instances recently where street outreach workers have been shot or killed. There's certainly danger there and acknowledging the risk that they are putting themselves in along with measuring the impact of their work.
      • Kevin Brown suggested table his discussion on "Theory of Change" for a future meeting.
      • Facilitator Hoereth: OFVP has been exploring additional kinds of services and strategies that could complement the street outreach work.
      • Assistant Secretary Bell: Collecting individual level data from grantees, what are some considerations that you've seen, or that we should. What are some things we should consider? Are there any thoughts around the collection around individual level data?
        • FVRG Member Mason: I can speak from a little bit of experience that it is very touchy to collect participant information, and it complicates things. I think there has to be a good solid protection system to protect identities.
        • Facilitator Hoereth: I think you would want to involve the workers in that conversation or grantees so that you don't inadvertently add something that affects their trust.
        • FVRG Member Lavery: For R3 we obtained a federal certificate of confidentiality. You can't submit a FOIA request; it becomes exempt from FOIA. We haven't fully leveraged that or looked at the wide parameters of its utility yet.
        • FVRG Member Smith: We are looking at 40 month outcomes for ready Chicago. Our primary outcomes are gun violence involvement, shooting victimization, homicide, victimization and then arrests were the same. We are going to incorporate data from the Illinois Department of public health so we can look at hospital readmissions. In addition to looking at firearm victimization, we'll be looking at other types of trauma that participants may be experiencing just to get a more holistic understanding of how their experiences have or haven't changed because of the program.
4. Action items
5. Proposed Next Meeting Date/Time: Wednesday November 20, 2024 @ 9:30am
6. Meeting Adjourned @ 1:36 pm