December 18th 2019
Working in legal aid, we all face the same challenge of how to best serve the high number of people who contact us each day seeking help. Many organizations now run hotlines or host legal clinics to provide brief services to clients who will not be represented by an attorney. Whilst such services reach a large number of people, there is often a nagging doubt in our minds: “What happens to our clients once they leave the clinic or put down the phone? Do we provide enough help? What could we better?”
If you are interested in exploring these questions, apply to join OneJustice’s upcoming Program Evaluation course!. The course is designed to offer a practical introduction to program evaluation that is specifically tailored to legal aid – measuring the effectiveness of brief services is a case in point. Over a series of five training sessions from February to June 2020, you will collaborate with participants from other legal aid organizations to explore building capacity for program evaluation, planning evaluation systems and projects, and nitty-gritty topics such as data analysis and interpretation. To find out more, check out the syllabus.
Added bonus: this year participants will have the opportunity to experiment with using text messaging technology to track the outcomes of clients receiving brief services. For example, a client who contacted a hotline about a housing matter could receive a follow-up text message asking whether their problem is now resolved. This approach has been successfully piloted by a number of legal aid organizations across the US – read Cleveland Legal Aid’s blog on their innovative text messaging pilot to get the inside scoop.To support adoption of this approach among our partners here in California, OneJustice is creating a “sandbox” environment where organizations can see whether the text messaging is a good fit for their program before committing the resources required to fully adopt a new technology.
For more information about the Accelerators, check out this Powtoon:
We hope that you can join us on this exciting journey. If you would like to explore this opportunity further or have any questions, please feel free to reach out to me at pjames@one-justice.org