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Abstract
In-home family intervention is a common approach to assist families with at-risk children. Because this assistance occurs in the family’s home, monitoring quality and controlling costs are challenging. This study examined the potential for family visit case notes to be used as a supervisory tool to monitor quality and costs. A sample of 50 audio-recorded family visits, later transcribed and coded, was compared to 50 self-report case notes from the same family visits. Data were analyzed using Inter-rater reliability and Cohen’s Kappa. Results indicated that case notes can be reliably coded using a system developed to code observations of family visits. Secondly, information coded from case notes moderately corresponded to transcripts of audio recordings. These findings are encouraging and may be beneficial to overall monitoring and supervision of program fidelity and program costs. Future studies may focus on understanding a broader scope of the possible uses for case notes as a proactive supervisory tool.
