You may already be aware of your ability to create your own Exit Reasons in the Setup section of Visit Tracker – that’s if you’re the Main Admin of course. And now Exit Status has been added when exiting a guardian. So why Exit Status and how do these work together?
Each program year, you probably want to know how many families exited and the reasons why. But within the multiple reasons, you also need to simply say whether this family completed the program or dropped. Exit Status was introduced for Visit Tracker users to keep the functionality and purpose of their list of Exit Reasons and still be able to simply label that family as “Completed program” or “Stopped services before completion”.
For instance, a family may have received the minimum dosage required by the model to be labeled as completed the program. Let’s say that minimum dosage is 2 years of receiving home visits. But your program is not just a 2 year program. There are 3 years in which this family could have participated in the program with their child. However, a crisis in the family causes them to leave the program even though they fully intended to participate until their child aged out. Before Exit Status, you assign this family an exit reason of “completed services required by the model” or something along those lines. With Exit Status, you can now assign them a status of “Completed program” and a reason of “Crisis in the family”.
From a reporting perspective, you may simply need to report to a funder or your agency how many families completed the program or how many dropped. However, there is a bigger picture than just “completed” or “dropped”. So when assessing your program and planning for the future, you may want to look at the various reasons as to why families leave the program for those that stopped services and for those the completed the minimum dosage. Combine Exit Status and Exit Reason with length of time in the program (see the Exit Summary report) and now you have valuable information in which to show trends.