Center for States Customer Experience Focus Group Guide

Center for States Customer Experience

Focus Group Guide

PAPERWORK REDUCTION ACT OF 1995 (Pub. L. 104-13) The purpose of this information collection is to gather feedback on capacity building products and services to better meet the needs of child welfare professionals. Public reporting burden for this collection of information is estimated to average 90 minutes per respondent, including the time for reviewing instructions, gathering and maintaining the data needed, and reviewing the collection of information. This is a voluntary collection of information. An agency may not conduct or sponsor, and a person is not required to respond to, a collection of information subject to the requirements of the Paperwork Reduction Act of 1995, unless it displays a currently valid OMB control number. The control number for this project is 0970-0401. The control number expires on 5/31/2021. If you have any comments on this collection of information, please contact Beth Claxon, ACF, Administration on Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) by e-mail at [email protected].

Introduction

Facilitator Instructions: Read verbatim bold text and paraphrase other text.

Thank you for joining us today. My name is [insert facilitator name] and I am part of the Center’s Evaluation Team. We have asked you to join us to give us some feedback on the services provided by the Capacity Building Center for the States in Peer Learning Groups. Your feedback will help us understand our customers’ experience accessing and engaging with Center services, to identify improvements for the future. A summary of our findings will also be shared with the Children’s Bureau. Your participation today is completely voluntary. You can decline to answer any questions you don’t want to answer, and you can stop and leave the group at any time without consequences. Your participation will not be reported to your employer agency or others outside the Center evaluation team. No compensation is being provided to you for your participation today. There are no risks to you expected as a result of this session. Your answers are private, that is, we will not associate your name with individual answers. We will take detailed notes today; the session will be recorded for later reference but we will not capture names with individual answers. Only Center evaluation staff have access to notes with identifying information such as general location or agency, and this information is kept secured. Your name and individual comments will not be shared with other Center staff, or with others in your organization. We also ask that you keep this private by not disclosing what is discussed today once we leave the session. However, we cannot guarantee that participants will not discuss today’s conversation. Our results will be aggregated and summary findings will be reported to the Children’s Bureau and Center for States leadership. As always, we ask that we take turns and allow everyone a chance to speak, and that we respect one another’s input in the discussion. We may call on you to invite you to speak but you can always “pass” if there is a question you don’t want to answer. 

Do we have your agreement to participate today?  (Facilitator: Allow for those who wish to drop out if they do not want to continue. (Begin recording)

We’d like to start by asking everyone to introduce yourselves, and briefly tell us your role, what state/location you’re in, agency if you want to share, and maybe how long you’ve been working in the field. (Names not to be captured in notes)

Discussion Questions

Facilitator: Next we’d like to ask for feedback on your current/recent experiences participating in a peer learning group, that is, a group organized around a particular topic or goal.

1. Tell us about how you participated…what was involved?

   • How did you come to know about this opportunity, and how did you first get engaged?

   • Nature of your role, participation, level of engagement

2. What would you want to share about what was valuable about that experience?

3. What are some ways in which that could have been improved?

   • Probes: accessibility of platform/tools, easy to navigate, ease of interaction with peers, quality of interactions, accessibility of (staff) peer group lead if needed, knowledge/experience of that lead staff

4. How well do you feel the experience met the needs you were looking to address when you joined? Are there any ways in which it fell short of your expectations or what you hoped to get out of it?

5. Were you also involved in accessing universal services (website, products, resources, learning experiences) to help meet your needs? Which ones, how well did that work for your needs….

6. What barriers or challenges might prevent you or your colleagues from fully engaging with these activities?

7. What changes or enhancements would you recommend to the peer learning group experience that might improve the experience for others in future?

8. Is there anything else you’d like to add about your experience of participating in a peer learning group?