By: Adam Luecking
January 4th, 2023
Social Sector Hero Spotlights tell stories of exemplary social and public sector organizations that are making measurable differences in their communities. The following Connecticut Department of Children and Families spotlight is an excerpt from “Social Sector Hero – How Government and Philanthropy Can Fund for Impact” by Adam Luecking. You can download the book for free here and read all 16 Social Sector Hero Spotlights.
In this story, learn more about how Anne McIntyre-Lahner and the Connecticut Department of Children and Families improved child well-being through the power of RBA and effective data stories.
Table of Contents
1. Introducing Anne McIntyre-Lahner: Champion for Children
2. Implementing Results-Based Accountability in the Children and Family Sector
3. The Power of a Good Story Behind the Curve
4. Anne’s Tips to Develop an Effective Story Behind the Curve
5. Spending Time on Data Stories Pays Off in Improved Outcomes
1. Introducing Anne McIntyre-Lahner: Champion for Children
Anne McIntyre-Lahner has worked in the human services field for more than 40 years, including 26 years with the State of Connecticut, where she has served in numerous management roles for the Judicial Branch and the Department of Children and Families (DCF). Throughout her career, she has focused on systems change by developing and overseeing accountability practices and leading strategic planning and performance management work.
At DCF, Anne implemented agency-wide utilization of Results-Based Accountability for internal and contracted-service planning and performance management and implemented an outcome-focused approach in disaster-preparedness planning for the agency. She was a leader in Connecticut’s inter-agency RBA projects. Now, as a certified RBA trainer, she regularly helps colleagues and service providers focus on results to improve their operations and outcomes. Most recently, Anne developed Action2Outcomes to support and empower government and nonprofit leaders who are ready to focus on outcomes.
2. Implementing Results-Based Accountability in the Children and Family Sector
In 2016, Clear Impact’s champion for children, Karen Finn, partnered with Anne to deliver the Implementing RBA in the Children and Family Sector webinar (see below). In it, they discuss the incredible impact RBA had on the department’s decision-making, as well as notable Turned Curves like increasing the “Percentage of children in kinship care.” At the time, DCF focused on five mandated areas: child protective services, children’s behavioral health, education for children in its care, prevention, and shared responsibility for the state’s juvenile justice system. They operated from one main office and 14 local offices, organized into six regions. To achieve impact, DCF contracted around 100 types of programs that served 36,000 children and 16,000 families.
After decades in the human services field, Anne knows how hard nonprofit and government employees work. She also knows how frustrating it can be to work really hard and still feel like you are just “spinning your wheels.” That’s why Anne is a huge advocate of the Results-Based Accountability Turn the Curve Process. Throughout her career, Anne realized that Stories Behind the Curve (one of the Turn the Curve steps) were instrumental in preventing impactful programs from getting cut by DCF.
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3. The Power of a Good Story Behind the Curve
Once, Anne had the opportunity to listen in as an agency told the Story behind a “poorly performing program.” Due to understaffing, the program was unable to achieve one of the primary outcomes, an outcome that would result in participants being better off and lead to reimbursement for some program costs. The grantee’s Story Behind the Curve helped various funders understand that, in order to improve performance, the program in question truly needed increased staff resources to deliver services in a way that would ensure participants were better off after participation, and lead to the program being able to generate increased revenue.
Anne describes the Story Behind the Curve as an opportunity to talk about “the good, the bad, and the ugly.” It is an opportunity to increase everybody’s understanding of performance by identifying the forces at work that impact the program or effort that is being reported. According to Anne, “The story behind the baseline… provides the context for the reader to fully understand the performance, and it empowers the practitioners to understand the necessary actions to turn the curve on performance.”
4. Anne’s Tips to Develop an Effective Story Behind the Curve
To develop an effective Story Behind the Curve, be sure to include internal and external forces, ask the right questions, and move beyond the data.
Anne invites fellow Social Sector Heroes to consider the following examples of forces that may be part of your story:
- Forces can be internal to an agency, like internal communication. For example, co-workers may not understand how to make referrals for service, resulting in low utilization. There may also be positive or negative staffing impacts.
- Forces can also be external to an agency. These can include forces as large as the economy — for example, there may be low hiring rates for trainees competing for jobs with experienced workers who have been laid off. Even the weather, which is out of the practitioner’s control, may have an effect — such as poor attendance at parenting classes due to multiple snowstorms. External forces can also be as direct as relationships with referral agencies or the need for system training.
Additionally, Anne says it’s “important not to rehash the data” in the Story Behind the Curve — the data graph has already provided that information. Instead, you should provide the most important contextual information to make sense of the data. Some questions you can ask to drive Story Behind the Curve conversations include:
- Is the program performing as anticipated?
- What has happened so far?
- Who are the partners in the effort, and how do they relate with each other?
- What is the climate in which you are operating?
- What positively impacted performance?
- What negatively impacted performance?
- How does this story inform your understanding of your performance?
- How can it inform your efforts to Turn the Curve?
5. Spending Time on Stories Behind the Curve Pays Off in Improved Outcomes
Understanding data stories, in conjunction with performance data, helped Anne and Connecticut DCF identify where to focus their attention and effort to improve community outcomes and improve their ROI through effective social investing. Specifically, staff could utilize the data narratives to identify the actions needed to improve performance, modify the approach to the service (or the effort needed to include those actions), implement them, and measure their impact. One major success included increasing the “Percentage of children in kinship care” (children in the care of a blood relative) by around 20 percentage points from 2011 to 2016. You can learn more about this effort at SocialSectorHero.com/Resources (see chapter 7 resources).
Screenshot depicting the CT Kid’s Report Card “Safe Children” Scorecard. For each Indicator, CT DCF ensures there is a detailed “Story Behind the Curve” to aid decision-making.
Connecticut DCF currently shares its data stories in CT Kids Report Card Scorecards (see screenshot above) hosted publicly on their website. The Scorecards contain Indicator Data measuring progress towards the achievement of the CT Result, “All Connecticut children grow up in a stable living environment, safe, healthy, and prepared to lead successful lives.” Connecticut has one of the best efforts around Stories Behind the Curve that I’ve ever seen. In more cases than not, each Indicator is presented with a narrative to help viewers contextualize the data. You can view these Scorecards at SocialSectorHero.com/Resources (see chapter 7 resources).
6. Helpful Links
- Learn more about “journaling your journey” and creating effective Stories Behind the Curve.
- Learn more about the Turn the Curve Thinking Process.
- Access the CT Department of Children and Families CT Kid’s Report Card Scorecards.
- Get Anne’s book: Stop Spinning Your Wheels; Using Results-Based Accountability to Steer Your Agency to Success
- Read all 16 Social Sector Hero Spotlights in a free download of Social Sector Hero
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