This evaluation confirms that the Tulsa County court, in Oklahoma, has achieved important progress with measurable positive impacts on child permanency and court practices; the authors report that continuing to strengthen and sustain the Enhanced Resource Guidelines-related reforms is likely to make the Tulsa County court a leader in improving court practices in child abuse and neglect cases.
This report presents findings from an evaluation of the Tulsa, Oklahoma’s implementation of the Enhanced Resource Guidelines (ERGs). Tulsa’s juvenile court stakeholders completed ERGs training in January 2016 and subsequently implemented ERGs-based improvement efforts. The evaluation of the effectiveness of project sites’ implementation of the ERGs involves the following: an evaluability assessment; an assessment of the fidelity to which sites implement and adhere to the ERGs implementation theory of change model; and a pre- and post-ERGs implementation comparison of case process and outcomes. The report presents findings specific to Tulsa’s ERGs implementation, with the authors’ hope that through the multi-site nature of the NCJFCJ’s ongoing evaluation effort, future evaluation reports will be able to compare Tulsa’s ERGs implementation to similar implementation sites.