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Classroom on Wheels

What was Classroom on Wheels?

Classroom on Wheels (COW) was a mobile, pre-school early intervention program designed to address the needs of at-risk children and their families in low-income and high-needs neighbourhoods. The initiative was undertaken by Edmonton ’s Success by 6 ®, and was premised on a program originally implemented in Tennessee. Buses were converted to provide space for various programs directed at youth. The buses were painted white and given black spots to resemble a Holstein cow.

Five COW buses existed, but only one, the Infant and Toddler Classroom on Wheels, was evaluated. This mobile program offered early intervention programs to families with children from birth to age 3 living in the communities of Mill Woods and West Edmonton.

Activities included a playgroup for children, a parent group and home visits conducted by an outreach worker and/or an early childhood educator. Overall goals for children included improved physical, social and cognitive development, as well as an increased sense of acceptance and security within the family.

Goals for parents included increased knowledge and ability to provide appropriate developmental experiences for their children, increased problem-solving and coping skills, an increased sense of attachment with their children, and increased knowledge and use of community resources.

What was the Classroom on Wheels evaluation methodology?

A process and outcome evaluation of the project was conducted by the Canadian Research Institute for Law and the Family (CRILF), an independent third party evaluator. The evaluation of the Infant and Toddler COW utilized a quasi-experimental design. Evaluators collected pre- and post-test data, drew comparisons over time for the participant group, and compared the participating group with the general population in terms of child protection/health care issues.

 The Infant and Toddler COW had difficulties reaching the intended number of participants. The program could accommodate up to 40 infants and children, but only 75% (n=30) of program capacity was met by participating families; of these families, a high proportion did not consent to be involved in the evaluation.

CRILF cited a number of reasons for the low participation, including weather conditions that made the temperature on the buses unbearable at times, holidays and cultural differences. As such, the number of clients providing data was small, so caution should be exercised when interpreting the results. Data for the qualitative analysis were collected from a client satisfaction survey. Sixteen parents participated in the survey.

To help determine the program’s impact, the following standardized instruments were used (the “n=” in brackets after each instrument denotes the number of clients that responded to each measure): Family Assessment Device, or FAD (n=6); Maternal Social Support Index, or MSSI (n=12); Adult-Adolescent Parent Inventory 2, or AAPI-2 (n=6); Child Development Inventory, or CDI (n=12); Centre for Epidemiological Studies Depression scale, or CES-D (n=12); and the Home Observation for Measurement of the Environment scale, or HOME (n=10). The findings described below are taken from the evaluation reports prepared by CRILF.

What were the project’s key findings?

Process evaluation findings

Overall, in terms of the types of programs offered, the Infant and Toddler COW was successfully implemented as it had been planned. Although it did not reach maximum capacity, a number of useful services were provided to families and children who chose to participate.

Two main challenges, however, were associated with offering a program on a bus. First, the buses were old and often suffered mechanical problems that needed repair. This added a lot of additional cost to the program. Second, weather was often an issue. In the winter, the buses were sometimes too cold for children to play without coats for two hours. In the summer, they could be too warm. The project also suffered from high closure rates due to clients not connecting with the program, clients changing to another service, or the inability to contact clients.

Outcome evaluation findings

Evaluation results found that the Infant and Toddler COW successfully achieved some of its objectives. Family functioning improved over time for more than 50% of the clients, but 33% experienced some negative change. There was a significant improvement in levels of parental expectations, and for parents whose level of child development knowledge changed during the project, the change was positive. This was also the case regarding scores for depression.

Clients in the Infant and Toddler COW experienced no apprehension orders, emergency apprehension orders or interim custody orders. These results compare very favourably with 8%, 7% and 30%, respectively, that are found in the general population.

Overall, feedback from clients about services from the COW program was very positive. Parents felt that the program had helped them to improve their parenting skills and helped their children to develop social skills.

What are the implications of the findings?

Due to the relatively low number of clients participating in the evaluation, the outcome data should be interpreted with extreme caution. The end total sample size was not adequate enough to generalize findings to a larger group.

That being said, the evaluation methodology was strong enough to claim that the findings are valid for this particular group of participants. Future, more rigorous evaluations of this type of project would be beneficial. One other suggested area of future study would be to examine whether the benefits of the project outweigh its costs, given the high repair expenses for the buses.

What were the key lessons learned from this evaluation?

Many lessons were learned from this project including:

• The importance of considering cultural issues. Signs and symbols may be more meaningful to certain cultural groups, and it is important to explore cultural issues to ensure one does not offend anyone by using a culturally significant symbol (e.g. the cow);
• mechanical repairs on older buses can interfere with program delivery and be very costly. It may be beneficial to invest in newer buses at the start of the project;
• throughout the life of the project, program delivery staff and evaluators should make a concerted effort to educate participants on the importance of taking part in evaluations;
• evaluators should seek access to data prior to the start of the evaluation. Obtaining access to child protection/health care data, for example, can be both complex and lengthy, and evaluators are required to respect provincial/territorial legislation (e.g. Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy and the Health Information Act legislation).

For more information or to receive a copy of the final evaluation report please contact the National Crime Prevention Centre at 1-877-302-6272