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Extraído del Informe Consolidado

Esta investigación fue publicada originalmente como parte de un informe consolidado más amplio que contiene múltiples investigaciones. Consulte el PDF consolidado para ver el documento completo.

Los Angeles County Grand Jury • 2013-2014

First 5 LA Serving the Community?

42 pages
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Findings 8 findings

F1 Page 187
In 2009, First 5 LA adopted a five-year Strategic Plan that called for making significant investments in a Place-Based Strategy. The new plan called for discontinuing funding of initiative-based direct services on a countywide basis and to concentrate funding to targeted communities with the goal of making a greater impact with the Agency’s investments.
F2 Page 187
The Implementation Plan called for spending $405 to $540 million over five years, or an average of $81 to $108 million per year on Place-Based activities in 14 high needs communities. $270 to $405 million per year were also allocated to Countywide Strategies, aimed at improving policies and services for children ages 0–5 in the 14 communities and beyond.
F3 Page 187
The budgeted amount for both Place-Based activities and Countywide Strategies for the three years ending in FY 2012-13 was $158 million, but actual expenditures were significantly below that amount, at $61.4 million, or only 39 percent of the amount budgeted.
F4 Page 187
Most of the $61.4 million in actual expenditures went towards funding Countywide Strategies policy and advocacy work; the amount expended on Place-Based activities in the 14 communities was only $14.6 million over the three years ending in FY 2012-13, significantly lower than the $65.1 million budgeted for activities in the 14 communities during those three years.
F5 Page 187
The new Strategic Plan included a roadmap for ending support to Prior Strategic Initiatives grants. The Agency has not implemented this component of the Plan and continues to fund several of these grantees. In addition, the Agency adopted other 156 2013-2014 LOS ANGELES COUNTY CIVIL GRAND JURY FINAL REPORT FIRST 5 LA SERVING THE COMMUNITY? Countywide Initiatives in 2010. Spending on these two categories of grants has greatly exceeded spending on Strategic Plan components as a percentage of annual expenditures.
F6 Page 188
During the Agency’s “pause” on Place-Based Strategy funding in FY 2012-13, it appears that the right questions were raised, as to the core results to be achieved for families and communities. It took First 5 LA several years after implementation of the Place-Based Strategy to ask these questions and to develop quantitative metrics to monitor impact suggests insufficient planning for the new strategy. It contributed to a loss of momentum in activities for the newly formed Community Partnerships in the 14 designated communities.
F7 Page 188
The Agency’s own inquiry into implementation of the Place- Based Strategy, known as the Listening, Learning, Leading (L3) effort, concluded that the Strategic Plan was not being used as a guide to Agency funding and that new performance measures needed to be adopted. The Agency has adopted new performance measures after three years of minimal assessment of outcomes for its Place-Based Initiatives but the new measures have yet to be reported on. These measures do not cover the Countywide Initiatives that still comprise the bulk of what First 5 LA is funding.
F8 Page 163
While this audit was underway, the First 5 LA Commission adopted new Governance Guidelines that call for new programs and initiatives to be aligned with the Agency’s strategic plans, to have implementation timelines and to have specific outcomes and performance measures. If followed, all of these guidelines should help the Agency avoid some of the problems encountered in rolling out its Place-Based Strategy.

Recommendations 7