Increasing an Organisation’s value of evaluation from within: a case study from Australia’s oldest charity Andrew Anderson Senior Manager Research and Evaluation, The Benevolent Society

Brisbane and Gold Coast Early Years Centres, mental health, child protection Sydney Child protection, aged care, community development, mental health, foster care Regional New South Wales Child protection, mental health Alice Springs Social Leadership program Cairns Early Years Centre

Evaluation Capacity Building ResourcesExpertise Strategy & processes Increasing awareness

Feedback from staff …it’s an essential part of effective service provision and ensuring clients are benefiting …how else do we know if a program is working for our participants without asking them? I was really impressed when I found out there was an evaluation team. It gives confidence in the society, its efforts to be effective, not just “do good”.

Client satisfaction

Our future challenge

Supporting evaluation use Increasing ownership of results Regular feedback Systems to support and monitor implementation of recommendations Increased accountability

Community care evaluation Involving staff in evaluation Ongoing feedback of results \ “From the results…we are not assuming that those clients who have informal supports/carers are happy within their relationships. This has [led] case managers to explore deeper the nature and dynamics within these relationships. Another impact has been…a stronger focus around social inclusion and what this means to a client, as from the results it was clear that many clients are in isolation”. (Manager – Community Care program)

Focusing on evaluation use Phase 2 Evaluation planning and piloting Phase 3 Implementation Phase 4 Reporting and dissemination Phase 5 Implementing evaluation recommendations Phase 1 Program clarification

Evaluation of child protection program 3 year evaluation Some striking results e.g. –clients exiting the program early –Lack of engagement from some client groups e.g. Indigenous clients and clients with drug and alcohol issues Development of Performance Improvement Plans Monitoring and reporting process

Conclusions Evaluation capacity building requires time, resources and patience Once you have your evaluation results the hard work starts Model of internal evaluation team working in partnership with program staff is working well for us

Contact Andrew Anderson Tel. +61 (0)