Continuous Quality Improvement
Continuous Quality Improvement Seeking to improve quality is part of striving to create the best-possible Outcome-Driven Club Experience, as called for in our Formula for Impact theory of change. Every Club or Youth Center, no matter its size or resources, can and should make continuous quality improvement (CQI) activities a part of its practice. CQI is a cyclical, ongoing process with three phases:
- Assess: Review available data and stakeholder feedback to understand how your Club is performing. Understanding where you are now helps you know where you need to go.
- Plan: Collaborate with your staff to develop an action plan to build on strengths and address growth areas.
- Improve: Implement the action plan with your staff, monitor your progress, and celebrate your successes in improving program quality.
Club-Wide Annual Planning
Overall Program Planning and Assessment With the Formula for Impact as your framework, use the steps outlined below. These align with the Assess and Plan phases of a typical CQI process. Use the steps to help you plan a balanced annual overall program that meets the unique needs of your youth, staff, community, site and organization.
+ Gather Information
Tap as many sources as you can. Consider all the suggestions you could reasonably incorporate into your Club or Youth Center’s program schedule. Consider national youth trends, issues and needs. Think about the strengths, needs, resources and opportunities in your community, your organization and your site. Review attendance, program participation and youth outcome measurement data related to the previous year’s overall program plan.
+ Establish Club-Wide Goals
With your staff team, identify three to five Club- or Youth Center-wide goals to address during the year. Develop those goals based on your analysis of pertinent organizational, site and community data, and input from staff and youth. If there are organizational goals, your site’s goals should help meet them. The strategies you choose to achieve your goals should be written in the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound) manner. Make sure all staff members and volunteers are clear on their roles in achieving the goals.
+ Determine Available Resources
Think about how to best tap your staff and volunteers’ knowledge, talents, skills, relationships and resources. Consider the families of the youth you serve, and any existing and potential partner organizations in the community.
+ Create Your Site's Overall Program
As you teach your staff how to plan and implement their programs, guide them in developing Targeted Program plans. Ask staff to submit them to you ahead of time so you can review and discuss them together. This step helps staff (and you) clearly see what resources will be required to successfully implement an individual Targeted Program. It also helps staff see how each program helps youth achieve positive Academic Success, Good Character and Citizenship, or Healthy Lifestyles outcomes.
+ Develop Targeted Program Plans
Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) has developed and recommends many resources to help Clubs provide youth-centered programming. Whether these resources offer high-yield activities for youth, support for youth development professionals, or tools for creating a supportive Club environment, each is designed to help youth progress toward the following three outcomes. • Academic success: graduate on time, motivated to learn, with a plan to succeed in today’s modern workforce • Healthy lifestyles: make healthy lifestyle decisions resulting in social, emotional and physical well-being • Good character and citizenship: develop strong character and take actions that make a difference in the community This Youth Development Resource Catalog is designed to help Clubs identify and access the resources that align with their goals. YD Resource Catalog
+ Promote Club Programming
To have a positive impact on the most kids possible in your community, put energy and creativity into your outreach and promotion efforts to youth, their families and other community members. You and your team can promote programs and events in many ways. Use flyers; posters; bulletin boards; newsletters; websites; social media; and kid, family and staff word of mouth. Use all available communications options.
+ Evaluate the Overall Program
Regularly evaluating your Club or Youth Center’s overall program is key to increasing its quality. It also helps inform your planning for the next program cycle. Assess how well you and your staff have implemented a balanced mix of activities and practices that facilitate a developmentally rich environment for the young people in your care. Observe staff while they work with youth, and provide feedback and coaching. Collect input from youth, families and staff using varied methods.
Your overall program should:
- Be developmentally appropriate for different age groups.
- Utilize all available staff and program areas based on your staffing pattern.
- Provide a balanced mix of interest- and needs-based Targeted Programs and High-Yield Activities to help youth achieve Academic Success, Good Character and Citizenship, and Healthy Lifestyles outcomes.
- Provide opportunities for structured and less-structured time.
- Reflect and celebrate your community’s cultures, traditions and customs.
Club-Wide Goal Setting
What goals and priorities are already established? What grants, programs and scheduling or staffing structures are mandatory across all sites? Seek help from your supervisor to learn about the non-negotiables. Use National Youth Outcomes Initiative (NYOI) data to learn about your organization and Club site’s strengths and opportunities for improvement. If you work in a Youth Center, use data from inspection reports and program quality assessments. Review your data to assess how your last overall program plan worked, what your successes were, and what opportunities you have for improvement. Next, think about the youth in your site. Consider each age group. Use the information you gathered so far to draft questions to ask them in a future listening session. This is an essential part of the process! Engaging youth in the early planning helps to bring the Five Key Elements for Positive Youth Development to life in the way youth want to experience them. For example:
- What do they love to do?
- What is fun to them?
Together with your staff team, identify two to three Club- or Youth Center-wide goals as the most important priorities to address during the year. Review and analyze pertinent organizational, site and community data. Develop your goals based on the findings. And don’t forget to consider input from your staff and youth. If there are organizational goals – such as increasing average daily attendance, bolstering teen membership or offering workforce development programs – be sure to incorporate them at your site. Your goals also may focus on operating in a way to enhance program quality. Such goals could include:
- Strengthening staff’s youth development practices
- Improving teamwork and communication
- Making your Club or Youth Center’s climate more positive and supportive of youth and staff
To achieve your Club-wide goals, adhere to timelines and write strategies in the SMART (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, Time-bound) manner. Make sure all staff members and volunteers understand their individual roles in contributing to Club-wide goals. This might seem complicated. So let’s consider a real-world example to visualize how it all works. The Menu of Goals and Sample Strategies that follows lists goals, along with potential strategies for achieving them. It’s adapted from one that Boys & Girls Clubs of Metro Atlanta created for its sites. To develop their Club-wide goals and strategies, site directors worked with their site teams – consisting of full- and part-time staff and youth – and followed a few basic steps:
- Select one staff-focused goal and one youth-focused goal from the menu.
- Develop strategies on how to achieve the selected goals.
- Record decisions on a Club-Wide Goals and Strategies Plan.
- Work together to implement the plan.
Club-Wide Annual Calendar
Create an annual calendar for your site to help ensure a well-balanced schedule during the entire school year. When you have varied program and activity themes going on at all times, every young person has something to look forward to every day at the Club or Youth Center. The annual calendar should note days when there is special scheduling in your site so Club families and staff can plan in advance. These special circumstances might include schools’ early release days, days the Club is closed for staff training or holidays, and special events like family nights. The annual calendar should be easily accessible for families and staff. The goal of having an annual calendar is to capture Club goals and constraints. You might have a seasonal focus – such as Academic Success during the summer to combat summer learning loss, or Good Character and Citizenship during the back-to-school season to support youth in getting back to school with a focus on values. This is also where you can document when you will conduct staff training. This will help you plan for the wide variety of learning your staff and young people need. This may include emergency safety training with youth and staff during the first month of the school year, or how to administer the NYOI survey to youth in February. During annual calendar planning, take into account significant events in young people’s schedules, such as a school winter break. Such a landmark is a natural place to end a session or semester.