History of ProDES

In 1991 the city of Philadelphia redirected a significant portion of its resources for dependent and delinquent youths away from institutional placements to community-based services. Between FY 1991 and FY 1992, the city's Division of Juvenile Justice Services (DJJS), a division of the Department of Human Services (DHS), reduced its budget for institutional placements from $19.3 million to $10.9 million as part of this change effort. Savings from this policy were redistributed to a number of community-based services, including long term group care, long term specialized foster care, long term specialized group care, long term aftercare and prevention/day care, and this funding strategy has continued through the current budget year. As a result of the increased significance of community-based options, the Deputy Commissioner of Human Services in Philadelphia became aware that knowledge was needed regarding the effectiveness of the programs expanded or developed under the initiative described above, as well as those programs that had been part of the system for some time. Accordingly, the Department of Human Services and the Family Court supported the development of an information system that now enables programs and the system to better meet the needs of Philadelphia's juvenile justice system and the youths, families and communities affected by its interventions. The Deputy Commissioner initiated the process of developing ProDES by requesting that Harris and Jones, the two Principal Investigators, evaluate all of the programs that served Philadelphia's delinquent youths. Jones and Harris responded with an initial design, and further refinements were made in collaboration with DHS, Family Court and program administrators and staff. Since that point in time, our vision of ProDES has changed continually, and we have discovered that program outcome information can greatly enrich many critical decisions made about delinquent youths and the programs that work with them.

Key milestones in the development of ProDES are:

• Evaluability assessments of fifteen programs completed in June 1992
• Testing of potential outcome measures completed in June 1993
• Instrumentation completed in October 1993
• Program Staff Training began January 1994
• Data collection began January 2, 1994
• ProDES Advisory Board initiated by DHS September 1995
• State (DPW) programs added October 1995
• Delinquency Prevention system added July 1996
• Annual system trends report began October 1996
• Relational database and data entry screens completed October 1997
• Implementation of semi-annual outcomes reporting implemented October 1997
• Training of entire probation department staff and creation of probation focus group in January2000                   
• Creation of searchable Program Design Inventory for use by probation department in October 2003