Measuring CAC Outcomes
Healing, Justice, & Trust: How CACs prove (and improve) their work
Children’s Advocacy Centers (CACs) provide children and families with healing and justice in a setting they can trust. We know they do because of more than 95,000 survey responses we collect each year from our caregivers and partners.
NCA’s Outcome Measurement System (OMS) helps CACs define their successes in serving children and families while helping them benchmark their progress against the work of a nationwide movement. As of December 2021, over 850 CACs have used the OMS program to demonstrate the value of the work that CACs provide to children and families and the success of the CAC model in the eyes of the partners that make it possible.
Are you a CAC staff member looking for training for the OMS program, or an NCA member looking for member-exclusive reports? Visit our landing page on NCA Engage.
Healing, Justice, & Trust
This public version of our Healing, Justice, and Trust report highlights how CACs across the country are doing—as judged by the children and caregivers they serve and the law enforcement, child protective services, and medical personnel they work with in a comprehensive, multidisciplinary approach to child abuse. It was produced in 2022 from full-year 2021 data.
How do CACs use OMS?
OMS is one of the most requested and widely used membership benefits provided by the National Children’s Alliance. Developed in Texas in 2009 and then offered by NCA to CACs in other states starting in 2012, its success demonstrates the growing need for a unified system for evaluating CACs on an individual, state, and national level. It provides the opportunity for each CAC to not only measure their own performance, but also benchmark themselves against the field. Hundreds of centers across all 50 states (and a growing number of international locations) have used OMS to give families and team members a voice in the CAC process, which in turn allows centers to demonstrate their success and find areas for improvement.
OMS allows CACs to report on survey items designed to capture two measurable outcomes:
- The CAC facilitates healing for children and caregivers.
- The MDT approach results in more collaborative and efficient case investigations
2020 OMS Brochure
This two-page brochure highlights how CACs use the OMS program to collect feedback from families and team members, and use results to demonstrate impact and continuously improve services.
How is OMS making a difference in the work of CACs?
NCA joined the Center for Victim Research on their podcast series, Tell Us About It, to discuss the impact of the OMS program on Children’s Advocacy Centers and the families and team members sharing their voices through this program. To listen to the podcast, visit: https://victimresearch.org/podcast/tell-us-about-it-episode-21-measuring-outcomes-in-childrens-advocacy/
For more information about the Outcome Measurement System, please contact our Membership team at membership@nca-online.org.