Data for this indicator were collected through the distribution of parent surveys, compiled and aggregated by an MSDE contractor, and analyzed by MSDE staff to develop State and local program improvement activities.

 

During the month of September 2023, 12,100 surveys were directly mailed to local jurisdictions for hand delivery to all families with active eligible children on 6/30/22. For families who indicated that Spanish was their primary language, the survey was sent out in Spanish.  

 

For FFY 2022, families had the opportunity to complete the survey in English or Spanish online to provide families with additional methods of completing the survey. Families could either use the identifier located on their printed survey to log in to the survey, or they could complete an alternative version of the survey that did not require them to log in. Respondents completing the alternative version of the survey were required to answer several demographic questions that are not included on the primary version of the survey so that the state could examine the representativeness of survey respondents. 

 

The State has also implemented a bilingual telephone and email help desk for parents for the duration of the survey. The completed surveys were returned to ICF, the MSDE contractor, via business reply mail. Compared to FFY 2021 (32.96%), the response rate for FFY 2022 was lower at 30.05% (3,636/12,100).

 

In FFY 2022, the State continued to demonstrate high levels of performance in family survey results. From FFY 2021 to FFY 2022, indicator 4A increased from 96.48% to 97.22%, indicator 4B stayed the same at 96.48%, and indicator 4C decreased from 97.19% to 96.92%. Overall, data from each family outcome subindicator remained very high. 

 

If a local jurisdiction was below the state target on Indicator 4A, 4B, or 4C, the jurisdiction was required to complete an improvement plan that included a discussion of the data and specific steps to increase the benefit of early intervention services for the family.