OMNI

SOR I and II CSB/Agency-level GPRA Reports Now Available in Dropbox

OMNI is pleased to share customized GPRA reporting for your CSB/Agency. Similar to the statewide SOR Annual Report, your agency report contains compiled GPRA data specific to your CSB/Agency from the entirety of the SOR I and II grants (June 2019 - September 30th, 2022). 

  • CSBs/Agencies are provided with an Intake report. This report contains demographic and baseline characteristics of your clientele cohort.

  • Some CSBs/Agencies are also provided with an Outcomes report that includes demographic and baseline characteristics of your clientele cohort based on their intakes, as well as matched “outcomes” based on follow-up or discharge data so you can see how this cohort has changed over time. To ensure confidentiality in reporting and to allow us to perform statistical tests, there must be 15 or more follow-up or discharge client interviews in place to have an outcomes report.

Your report(s) can be found in your agency’s Dropbox folder. The SOR Support Team will also email your CSBs/Agency additional information about these reports. If you have questions or concerns, please reach out to us at SORSupport@omni.org. Also let us know if you might be interested in having a larger community conversation about the report and the results.

OMNI Kudos to Northwestern CSB for SOR III Intake GPRA Numbers

Happy New Year! This year we will continue to share some shout-outs about CSBs or Agencies that are doing well with intakes, follow-ups, engaging and supporting clients, and/or those that demonstrate a "spirit of inquiry" when engaging with our TA Team on GPRA administration issues.

This month, we’d like to highlight Northwestern CSB. Over the past couple of months, this CSB managed to exceed their year 1 GPRA intake target within the first couple of months of the current grant year. Kudos!

We know that everyone is working hard toward meeting their intake goal as set out by DBHDS this year. If you have questions about this or need support with any aspect of GPRA administration, please reach out to our team at OMNI: SORsupport@omni.org

Statewide Interview Follow-Up Rate and TA Support

First, we’d like to thank all of you for your continuing diligent work on completing Intake and Follow-Up GPRAs during the course of the SOR II grant. We are nearing the end of the current fiscal year, and SOR II, and we thought we’d share some points about the status of GPRAs that we are noticing.

As you know, SAMHSA’s goal is to have an 80% Follow-up GPRA rate, and only interview Follow-Up GPRAs may be counted toward that rate. The overall all-grantee rate is currently 47.7%. Virginia had been exceeding that, but is now just slightly under that at 44.1%. So, we this would be a great time to pass some tips along to you to see if we can improve that over the months to come.

  • Your monthly Progress Report in Dropbox will show you what your interview follow-up GPRA completion rate is. Your weekly tracking sheet in Dropbox keeps you apprised of GPRA Follow-Up windows that are upcoming and open, so that you can plan for ample staff time to attempt interview follow-ups with those due for one. As you know, there should be multiple attempts to reach a client.

  • We want to remind agencies and CSBs that our team is available for TA to help support you in working to improve your own rates! We have resources a-plenty: tips sheets, client engagement materials, information on incentive use, and more available on our website. Here are some examples:

  • Plus, our TA team is always available for a quick check-in or a longer conversation to talk through any challenges and offer suggestions. Reach us at SORSupport@omni.org.

Recap of OMNI and CSB/Agency 1:1 Check-ins

This past January through March 2022, the OMNI TA Team scheduled 30-minute one-on-one meetings between one of our TA Team members and folks at each CSB/Agency! These were very successful on a number of levels.

  • We made stronger connections with you all! We are all more than just an email address!

  • We learned about some successes and challenges with GPRA administration and at your agency.

  • We provided tips and tricks and documents to better support your important work for the SOR grant evaluation, including GPRA administration.

In many of our nearly 40 conversations, a number of consistent themes, topics, or questions came up. Here are a few we consolidated with our added TA to guide you:

  • Clarification over GPRA Follow-up versus Discharge processes:

    • The Follow-up & Discharge TA sheet is very helpful in this regard. Please review and let our team know if you have questions. Remember that even though a client may be discharged from services, and you may have completed a Discharge GPRA, you still need to attempt a Follow-Up GPRA interview approximately 6 months after intake. Your Weekly Tracking Sheets in Dropbox define the open windows for doing follow-ups and the running status of GPRA completion for each client.

  • Clarification over incentives and contingency management.

    • OMNI has a Contingency Management Training recording and slides that may be helpful in understanding the full scope of Contingency Management. Many tangible examples were shared during this training.

    • Page 3 of the helpful GPRA Administration Tips and Best Practices sheet provides guidance and examples of both incentives and contingency management.

      • Recall that completion of a GPRA follow-up interview can be incentivized with a $30 gift card from any store but cannot be exchanged for cash. Gift cards can be purchased with SOR funds and are managed by your agency.

      • If Contingency Management (CM) is used by your agency, it can be used to incentivize folks to continue to engage in services, which can support completion of a GPRA interview at intake, follow-up, or discharge. CM could include anything $15 or less.

  • Reminder that the GPRA is designed as an interview survey only. After the agency completes the Administrative section, clients should be interviewed and may not fill out the GPRA themselves.

  • To bolster client buy-in to the SOR evaluation and GPRA, the Engagement Information Sheet for Clients proved to be very useful to several folks we spoke with.

  • We reminded folks of the helpful information OMNI shares with you in your Dropbox: Weekly GPRA Tracking Sheets, Monthly Progress Reports (stay apprised of GPRA numbers through time!), Quarterly Reports, and Annual CSB SOR Reports (for most agencies).

  • We also reminded folks of our helpful SOR Support Website with any and everything you might need, including all the news you get in your email portal post digests, to a form to contact us for TA. Check it out!

As a reminder, GPRA intakes are incredibly important in continuing to secure funding. Please keep up the work on getting folks into the program!

Thanks to all for your input and participation. If you have any follow-up questions or concerns, let us know at SORSupport@omni.org.

SOR Treatment Community Forum on Understanding and Sharing your Data: Recap

Thanks to all who attended the 4/19 CSB/Agency Treatment Community Forum on data sharing. We enjoyed offering the time for CSBs/agencies, DBHDS, and OMNI come together to share and learn from each other.

If you were not able to attend, or want to review it, the forum was recorded and is available in the Resources >> Trainings area of our website. Here is a direct link to the recording, and to the PDF of the slides.

Here are a few links that we talked about during the meeting that you might like to explore:

As a reminder, your Dropbox also has folders that contain your Annual Agency Reports, Quarterly Reports, and Monthly GPRA Progress Reports.

In the session, we also learned about how an agency uses the raw GPRA data. If you have interest in receiving this dataset for your agency, please let us know. We are also happy to answer any questions that came up for you after our session ended. Reach us at SORSupport@omni.org.

SOR CSB/Agency Community Forum: Understanding and Sharing Data on Tue 4/19 at 11am ET

The OMNI and DBHDS Teams invite you to join in our second CSB/Agency Treatment Community Forum, and our first of 2022. Per popular request, we will provide the opportunity for a facilitated discussion on understanding and sharing your data.

The Forum is Tuesday, April 19th from 11am-noon ET. Please click here to register for the Forum.

OMNI will provide a very quick refresher on the various reports and data sets we produce for DBHDS and for your agency. Much of the data in these reports comes from the GPRA and from your quarterly survey responses. We'll also briefly review the VASIS (Virginia Social Indicator Study) Dashboard. This is an informal forum during which all can hear from each other about how to use and share data to tell a story. We'll learn from each other, ask questions, and share existing best practices.

We also plan to spotlight a couple agencies who successfully use data to inform their teams, community, funders, and stakeholders.

Questions? Reach out to us at SORSupport@omni.org. See you in the Forum!

Kudos to Planning District 1

In 2022, we have been sharing some shout-outs about CSBs or Agencies that are doing well with their intakes, follow-ups, engaging and supporting clients, and/or those that demonstrate a "spirit of inquiry" when engaging with our TA Team on GPRA administration issues.

 This month, we'd like to send some kudos out to Planning District 1 (PD1) for their steady intake GPRA numbers and for increasing their follow-up interview rate over time (now at 62%). They also successfully leverage contingency management funds and incentives to better-engage their clients and encourage them to participate, especially in the follow-up interview GPRA. Great work, PD1 team!

Urgent/Time-Sensitive Request from SAMSHA on FTS by COB 2/17!

DBHDS and SAMSHA have an urgent/time-sensitive request of all agencies/CSBs:

Please reply/email back the following information to SORSupport@omni.org by the end of the day on Thursday 2/17.

  1. Are you distributing Fentanyl Test Strips (FTS)?

  2. How many FTS/units have you distributed?

  3. Do you have any outcome data on their use? (e.g., are individuals using them and avoiding overdose)

Please only have one person reply for each agency/CSB. Thank you in advance and apologies for the quick turnaround time on this request.

TA Request: Please Double Check Your Entered Email Address in GPRA Submissions

As you know, you are able to type in your email address at the end of entering GPRA's into the online system in order to receive a submission confirmation.

If your email address is misspelled or incorrectly entered, you won't receive that confirmation and OMNI receives a bounce notification, requiring us to reach out to CSBs for clarification. We have seen increasing numbers of these bounces of late.

We kindly request that you please double check entry and spelling of your email address so that you will receive confirmation of your GPRA submission in a timely way. Thank you!

OMNI Offices Closed from December 24-January 2

Greetings! This is to alert you that OMNI will be officially closed from December 24th through January 2nd, reopening on Monday, January 3rd. We are closing our office so that our staff can enjoy the end of the year and re-energize for 2022. We hope you can find some time to do the same!

Our entire team will be unavailable for project-related support during the closure dates. Any emails or voice mail messages will be reviewed and responded to as soon as possible starting January 3rd. Please note that the GPRA online surveys and all resources on our website will still be available during this time, but you will not receive updated tracking sheets in your Dropbox folder.

Please let the OMNI team know if you have any questions about our closure or anticipate any concerns. Though our official closure is from the 24th to the 2nd, please try to wrap up TA requests by Monday, December 20th so we can get you the info you need before our closure.

Wishing you a happy and healthy end of 2021 and a bright start to 2022!

Sincerely,

SOR Support Team

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-2/subtitle-A/chapter-II/part-200#200.112 Per 2 C.F.R. § 200.112-1113 The Federal awarding agency must establish conflict of interest policies for Federal awards. The non-Federal entity must disclose in writing any potential conflict of interest to the Federal awarding agency or pass-through entity in accordance with applicable Federal awarding agency policy. Failure to adhere to these statues will result in immediate termination of funding.

Virginia’s State Opioid Response (SOR) grant is awarded at the discretion of DBHDS and SAMHSA. All recipients of SOR funding supports evidence-based prevention, treatment and recovery services to address opioid and stimulant misuse and use disorders, including for cocaine and methamphetamine. The SOR grant is not intended to be utilized as a long-term or permanent funding source. All SOR proposals must include a realistic plan for financial sustainability beyond the grant period.