Dow-Fleisner, S. J., Gregoire, N., Stager, M., Woodmass, K., More, J. W., & Wells, S. J. (2024). Assessing a measure of organizational environment among Indigenous child welfare agencies. Children and Youth Services Review, 156. Scopus. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.childyouth.2023.107329
The organizational environment plays a crucial role for child welfare agencies, aiming to support agency workers and provide optimal care for their clients. However, assessing the organizational environment poses challenges for child welfare agencies. Proprietary assessments can be costly and may not fully capture essential dimensions of organizational functioning. While the Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA) is a freely available tool used in child welfare settings, it has not yet been tested with Indigenous child welfare agencies in Canada. This article discusses the development and testing of a modified version of the COHA, the Comprehensive Organizational Environment Assessment (COEA). Designed to understand how well child welfare agencies function, the survey covers approximately 330 items across 25 scales, providing a comprehensive assessment of organizational health to help identify strengths, gaps, and areas for improvement in workforce-related matters, service delivery, and change implementation. Modifications to the COEA focused on enhancing its cultural relevance by highlighting Indigenous contexts, cultural nuance, and unique challenges faced by Indigenous child welfare agencies, as well as considering cultural competence, anti-colonial perspectives, and community input, ensuring that the assessment aligns with Indigenous values and practices. Development of the modified COHA involved collaboration with Indigenous practitioners, community liaisons, and child welfare researchers, ensuring the assessment resonates with lived experiences and aspirations of Indigenous communities. Researchers also looked at how consistent the answers were (internal consistency) and whether the assessment measured what it was supposed to (convergent validity). The COEA underwent further refinement, and its internal consistency was assessed using polychoric correlations and ordinal alpha. It demonstrated strong internal consistency and convergent validity across specific scales. It also aligned well with other related measurements, showing that it captured the intended aspects of organizational health.
Potential limitations:
• Geographic Scope: The research focused solely on Indigenous child welfare agencies in British Columbia, Canada. Expanding the study to include agencies from other provinces would provide a broader perspective.
• Cross-Cultural Validity: While efforts were made to adapt the Comprehensive Organizational Health Assessment (COHA) for Indigenous contexts, cultural nuances and variations cannot be applied to all Indigenous communities in Canada.
• Self-Report Bias: Data collected relied on self-reported responses from agency workers.
• Timeframe: The shorter duration may not allow for a comprehensive assessment of long-term organizational changes.