Microenterprises (small businesses with 5 or fewer employees) are the backbone of the American workforce. We were excited to partner with Increase CDC to explore the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Central Ohio, with special attention to true start-ups. Below, you can download the 16-page report of our findings.  SPOILER ALERT! We piloted a brand new business development protocol called RAGI-1™ (Relative Annual Growth Index – 1 Year in Business) with remarkable results. Through our collaboration with our new partner, Increase CDC, we were able to uncover fascinating insights about entrepreneur time investment, personal credit, and new research questions about small business scaling. Please join the conversation and support the Increase CDC effort to #HireOne!

Click here to download the PDF

Toxic stress has been studied over the past generation and significant relationships have been found to trauma and physiological risks later in life.  Recently, we’ve partnered with the Global Life Chances Improvement Initiative to break ground on new research into how racial trauma fits into the picture. The upstart brain institute will focus on the design and application of  both neurologically-based and psychologically-based interventions to make up the ground lost to trauma experiences. Keep checking in as we chronicle progress.

Infant mortality is a critical indicator for the health of a society. Through different research protocols from state Departments of Health and Human Services, we’ve found that social determinants of health are more critical to thriving infants than strictly medical approaches. We believe in the whole person, whatever their age. Environmental issues, addressing survived trauma, self-cultural awareness, access to healthy food and uncontaminated water, perinatal coaching, and safe sleep are essential elements of the lives of babies that survive their first year. We’ve partnered with Columbus Early Learning Center and prominent researchers in cultural psychology to create a special intervention to improve birth outcomes and ultimately reduce cases of infant mortality. We’ve just completed the Year 1 Executive Summary, click the image to download the PDF.

A group of funders were interested in both the economic and social returns on investment for a project, and they decided to hire us to get to the bottom of it. We’re in the early stages of the research, but have used 15 different sources of information to create dynamic baselines, oiled up our gloves, and established the data cycles with other stakeholders. Check back for updates. This is an innovative concept, using strong methodology to determine how investment paves the way for disenfranchised groups of people, and how we can be even wiser with our spend.

Opiate abuse has been a quiet crisis in urban communities for decades, and now it is proliferating across all lines – income, geography, and cultural identity. Our team has decades of collective clinical experience working with individuals and families in recovery. We have a model which we think can give the upper hand to those who are ready for things to change. Proudly introducing “O-LEAF” (Ohio Linkage and Electronic Assistance for Families), our response to combat opiate addiction. We’ve designed O-LEAF as a blend of peer-to-peer support and professional help. We’ve made it easy to access using its website, its app, and a geo-routed hotline (that’s fancy talk for a phone number that finds you someone local to talk to). Have you ever heard of the “stages of change” model? In a nutshell, some folks are thinking about changing a problem behavior in the future and others are ready today – no matter where someone is in the cycle, O-LEAF can be helpful. Sometimes families need to know how to help, but don’t know where to start. Opiates are complicated and people struggling with them can find themselves in trouble with the justice system, child protective services, and other agencies. O-LEAF uses a smart system that learns who you are, what you need, and how it can save important time to connect you to a real person now. O-LEAF is built on our Recovery Pathways which allow it to do one of four things: – help you get a non-clinical person who’s been trained as a Recovery Coach, – get you connected with an appointment at a local outpatient treatment center, – connect you to a doctor who can answer questions you may have, – or get emergency services on the line if you or someone you see is having a crisis We will work to establish an opiate ministry in every county in Ohio, train them on Recovery Coaching, provide them with local recovery resources, and get them scheduled into our system to field your calls. To learn more about how you can help bring O-LEAF to your area, please drop us a line.

At Crane R&D,  we know that opportunity and restored youth face several common challenges. We are currently in the pilot phase of the Substantive Training of Opportunity and Restored Youth (STORY) Project. The crisis of disconnected youth is persistent. Human services organizations are being inundated with these two populations and most are finding traditional strategies ineffective at moving the needle on justice involvement, lasting employment, engagement in education, and homelessness.   The STORY Project disrupts the disconnection by integrating best practices from the past decade into an automated tool that can diagnose 15 developmental needs critical to both populations. This tool produces a case plan with interventions that are tied to each level of need, and are consolidated into 12, 24, or 36 high-benefit interventions.   We recognize that the majority of providers have distinct styles of case management that embody their organizational vision. The STORY Project is streamlined to 20-minute sessions that build upon each other – dramatically reducing cost per client and weaving assets around each participant for the best validated outcomes.   Talk to us today about joining the STORY movement!

The Sankofa Company is partnering with Crane R&D to conduct a national study on child trauma. Our purpose is to improve the lives of kids, by developing and administering a groundbreaking training series that teaches professionals how to discern the difference between a problem root and a problem symptom.  

PHASE 1

We are administering our anonymous, created survey to child-serving professionals (CSPs) to better understand where they are coming from. It was important to us to ask honest questions about their own experiences, as well as their perceptions of different groups of kids and their families. We will publish a white paper to be shared with each subset of CSPs, to begin dialogue based on facts.

PHASE 2 The data that we collect in Phase 1 will be used to inform the next leg of the study that sniffs out relationships between the experience of bias and quality of care. We don’t believe in wasting information or wasting time, so we will consolidate the valuable indicators into a screening model that we will deploy at both the youth, family, and agency levels. After a few data cycles we will search for predictive relationships, in other words, we will find what moves the needle away from unmanaged trauma symptomatology.   PHASE 3 We will create the training series on each identified factor, and begin facilitating this training to agencies across the country. We will coordinate and cohort groups and create reciprocity agreements so that we can continue to feed these best practices so that they can grow in reliability and in use   What can you do to help kids living with trauma? You can take this anonymous survey today, and share the link with your networks!

We’re developing the ANDY Model™ (Alternate Needs of Developing Youth™). ANDY™ applies both social and academic interventions to reduce the use of formal discipline in K-12 programs. Our ANDY Ally Survey™ consolidates perceptions of behavioral expectations, performance, and social development from the multiple perspectives of youth, family, and educators. This survey data is then matched to normed assessment data (from NWEA MAP) along with other variables collected by schools, which are then interpreted by our developmental matrix. Our matrix writes an intervention profile for each student based on algorithms that consider prior content gaps, culturally-informed developmental needs, and scaffolding towards grade-level performance in ELA and math. ANDY™ effects growth in six months by prioritizing the academic need areas and recommending approaches that advance the social and emotional development of youth aged 6 – 18.

We just wrapped up a proof-of-concept study for an instrument we created called SET (the Sustainable Employability Tool). SET dug into the psychology of adults receiving public assistance and recommended specific case management around the ranked needs we identified. In its first time out of the gate, it accurately predicted 4 changeable deficiencies and increased the agency’s rate of employed participants at 90 days by 10% over their previous high number.

One of our partners had been successfully advocating for kids who’ve had the experience of being in foster care for well over a decade. As the number of kids in care exploded they recognized that they needed a new approach. Our team applied our human services and technical expertise and built a platform built on the principle of “risk, need, responsivity.” In a nutshell, we have empowered our partner to diagnose the needs of a number of different groups, respond with specific interventions for each specific need group, use their own data to adjust the sails on a case-by-case OR big picture scale, and tell the story of change using both participant stories and program data.

We had a partner with a lot of knowledge and experience in administering parenting interventions. Their business problem was that they had not yet thought about how to duplicate themselves. We collaborated with them to create a scalable, portable, and modular solution . . . a curriculum. After several interviews, meetings, team meetings, and a deep dive into the research we identified what has been proven to improve things for their population – first time fathers. We developed a model that kept the organization’s personality and values, but had the research backing to effect change, target tweaks for individual clients, and prove their results.

Recently, we were retained to apply our Comprehensive Cultural-Appropriateness Instrument and evaluation services. The target of our assessment will be the cultural competency and overall fidelity for a tobacco cessation program designed specifically for people living with disabilities.