During NCTTP’s 16th Annual Symposium on March 18, 2024, Brooke Blackburn, B.A., Martin Hill, PhD, and Mary Kay Hazel, MSW, presented “A Precipitous Increase in the Demand for Kovler Center Services Has Necessitated a Restructuring of the Intake Process and Created Additional Challenges for Monitoring and Evaluation.”
Abstract:
Current trends in immigration have brought exceptional numbers of asylum seekers to the United States. Resettlement and social service agencies are facing unprecedented wait times and strains on resources to support these newly arrived migrants. For the past two years in Chicago, the SOT program at the Marjorie Kovler Center has been inundated with new arrivals who require support for basic resettlement needs that SOT program models are not structured to handle. This presentation’s goal is to describe the changes made to the SOT intake model to accommodate new, and old, systemic issues within the immigration process. For many years, the intake process for participants in SOT at the Kovler Center began when meeting with clinical staff to determine the client’s individual treatment plan (ITP). Due to the influx of individuals seeking services from the SOT, the wait times for an intake went from 1-2 months to well over a year. Considering the massive wait between eligibility screening and intake, the decision was made to allow for a limited scope of basic case management services to be offered to participants who were waiting for a clinical intake. Therefore, the Kovler Center has implemented a multi-tier model for intake. The first tier focuses on basic social services and clients mainly meet with case managers to focus on immediate, resettlement services. The second tier continues the traditional model of intake and finalizes the clinical intake process. One new trend that has occurred due to changes in the program model and unprecedented wait times is that increasingly participants were no longer engaging in the intake process. With the creation of Welcome Groups for new participants, clinical staff are now involved from the beginning and explain the multi-tier program structure and familiarize participants with the clinical intake process at the outset. These changes have forced staff to think about altering our approach to monitoring and evaluation. Compared to clients arriving before 2022, longer waitlist times for newer clients has resulted in many receiving a greater number of services prior to official program admittance. Because of this, many newer clients entering the treatment program have significantly lower clinical measures at baseline compared to older clients. Thus, program efficacy looks very different for newer clients compared to those who entered the program prior to 2022.
Authors:
- Brooke Blackburn
Brooke Blackburn is the senior case manager in the Survivors of Torture Program at the Marjorie Kovler Center. She began working at the Kovler Center as part of a fellowship program in 2021 and stayed on as a full time case manager. At the Kovler Center, Brooke is the lead case manager for assisting with benefits, donations, and coordinating the clinical intake process. She has also aided in advocacy efforts on the state and federal level to change immigration processes, as well as immigrant benefit access equality. She graduated Cum Laude from Saint Anselm College with a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Communication. She researched the effect of multicultural policies on national immigrant perspective in International Relations as well as the effect of transcultural media in the 21st century in Communication. She received high honors for both of her senior theses and hopes to continue her academic research in Graduate school in the future. - Dr. Martin Hill
Dr. Martin Hill is the Associate Director, Research and Evaluation at the Marjorie Kovler Center. Dr. Hill has over thirty years of applied research experience in various capacities within government, academia, non-profit, and for-profit settings. He has extensive experience in program evaluation, needs assessment, and survey research. Prior to coming to Kovler Center, Dr. Hill was Director of the Carl Frost Center for Social Science Research at Hope College. He received his initial post-graduate research training with the U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Prisons where he worked on a national longitudinal study evaluating drug treatment programs in the federal prison system. In addition to working part-time at Kovler Center he is President of his own research and consulting firm VIP Research and Evaluation. Dr. Hill holds a Ph.D. from Western Michigan University in sociology, specializing in medical sociology and applied research and evaluation. - Mark Kay Hazel
As director of the Marjorie Kovler Center, Mary Kay Hazel (she/her) unites research, policy, and practice to support her team in serving more than 700 survivors of torture and severe trauma annually. Previously, Mary Kay partnered with asylum seekers and displaced people through her work at the State
Department, where she launched the Storytelling for Human Rights project, and in her four years as the director of Ashraya Initiative for Children in Pune, India. Her experience across government, nonprofit, and private sectors enables her to speak multiple languages (both literally and figuratively) and to create
lasting partnerships between affected communities and a broad range of stakeholders. Mary Kay holds a Master of Social Work degree from the University of Michigan with a specialization in international practice and social policy. Outside of work, Mary Kay is an accomplished musician and avid gardener and will happily entertain any conversation about landscape design, pets, and pop culture.