Healthy and Safe Communities

Summary of Objective Implementation Status

Results-Based Accountability (RBA) will be used for planning, reporting, and monitoring/tracking of performance measures of County programs and contracts with plans for complete adoption in the next 3-5 years. By incorporating RBA into programs and contracted services, the County will more effectively evaluate program performance and participant outcomes.

In September 2022, Upstream Investments published a two-year RBA implementation update documenting the progress in meeting this objective and in Safety Net Departments’ ability to successfully scale and support the broader adoption of RBA in County issued contracts. The timeline identified and reporting metrics have not changed, however, the report highlights the challenge of needing to build capacity at the contract management level in order to fully complete the RBA cycle with fidelity.  Without the additional staff support and dedicated time for the quarterly turn the curve conversations, contract managers and grantees will not be able to engage in the data review and turn the curve discussions; a cornerstone of the RBA process.

As Upstream Investments shifts to expand RBA to be more equity focused, additional data collection will be required to collect race/ethnicity data. Furthermore, the ability to disaggregate data by race/ethnicity will require additional training and support for both County staff and Community Based Organizations (CBOs).

Key Milestone Update

Safety Net Departments will adopt RBA at an annual increase of at least 10% for contracts above $50,000 with full adoption by 2026 for all departments.

The number of County contracts using RBA grew  from 6 contracts in FY 20-21 to 53 contracts in FY 22-23.  Five County departments and Eight CBO partners are using RBA for program planning, data reporting and outcomes monitoring.

14 training sessions were offered to County departments and CBOs to support RBA implementation.  A total of 247 participants attended the training.

Coordination and Partnership Update

In addition to providing 14 trainings on RBA implementation, Upstream Investments staff convene a cross-department Contracting Principles workgroup representing the Human Services Department, Department of Health Services, Probation Department, Community Development Commission, and Child Support Services  on a quarterly basis to support implementation, and to provide an avenue for feedback during the implementation process. 

Community, Equity, and Climate Update

To support the County’s commitment to equity, Upstream Investments partnered with the Office of Equity in a year-long training with Equity and Results to deepen our understanding of equity in relation to the implementation of RBA and to shift the practice to center equity in the RBA process. This new practice was adopted as the foundation for distribution and monitoring the ARPA funded community resilience grants. As a result, all 27 ARPA contracts are using Anti-Racist Results Based Accountability in the development of performance measures and contract monitoring. All new county contracts will shift to using Anti-Racist RBA and the expanded data collection system to capture race/ethnicity data.

Additionally, at the November 2022 Upstream Investments policy committee, the committee voted to adopt Anti-Racist-RBA and an updated work plan expanding the training, technical assistance and data collection efforts to be equity centered.

Funding Narrative

As noted in the two year implementation update,  to fully support grantees and County staff managing contracts, two additional staff are needed to assist to coordinate RBA across Departments and CBOs and meet the goal of full adoption by 2026.  In requesting Strategic Plan funding support for year two, HSD Upstream Investments staff worked with the Office of Equity as well as the County Administrator’s Office to consolidate all RBA activities and work into one funding request (1 FTE PPEA and 1 FTE Admin Aide) for ongoing support of Anti-Racist-RBA implementation.