Program pivots and COVID-19: Using the FRAME Tool to monitor changes to The Incredible Years® program delivery and supports at Invest in Kids
At Invest in Kids, we partner with communities across Colorado to deliver proven programs – ensuring maximum benefits for the families that receive them.
Since COVID-19 shut down schools in Colorado last spring, several challenges and opportunities have presented themselves for the delivery of our programs across the state, including The Incredible Years® (IY).
Our IY staff had to shift to a virtual world and needed to adjust many aspects of their existing supports for those teachers and Parent Program Facilitators engaged in IY program delivery. Among these abrupt changes were reduced trainings, a new format for coaching sessions, and updates checklists to support continuous growth and adaption.
The FRAME
We wanted to remain thoughtful and intentional about planning for, measuring, and monitoring the number of changes we had to make and at the scale at which we had to make them. With an eye towards connecting the changes to IY fidelity and outcomes, we identified The FRAME (Framework for Reporting Adaptations and Modifications*). This framework was published in the journal Implementation Science, as a useful tool for capturing key details about COVID-19 related changes to the IY program and our support for its delivery.
Over the last few months, The Frame has been very useful for our IY team because of how comprehensively it captures the what, how, and why of the change process.
Specifically, we have tracked changes to our IY coaching supports and program delivery using the FRAME’s nine key questions about the process behind adapting evidence-based programs, including “what contextual factors influenced the decision to make a change?” (see Wiltsey Stirman et al., 2019, for additional information).
While we continue to support IY amid the ongoing pandemic, the information we are gathering based on the FRAME will provide valuable lessons about what successful IY delivery looks like in our current context. This information will be useful not only for the Invest in Kids (IIK) staff but for local and global partners as well.
Erin Albrecht, IY Data and Evaluation Manager, and Lindsay Sherman, IY Program Consultant, recently presented a virtual storyboard at the May 2021 Global Implementation Conference.
This video was available for attendees to watch in the online portal where the storyboard was presented during the conference. In the video, Erin explains our motivation for using this framework and Lindsay provides some examples of how we were able to effectively modify and support the IY Parent Program this past year.
*Reference: Wiltsey Stirman, S., Baumann, A. A., & Miller, C. J. (2019). The FRAME: An expanded framework for reporting adaptations and modifications to evidence-based interventions. Implementation Science, 14(1), 1-10.https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-019-0898-y