VicHealth partners with communities, government agencies and organisations across health, sport, arts, food, education, social sector, and the media to share expertise and insights and bring global best practice approaches to Victoria – to drive lasting, positive health and wellbeing outcomes for all Victorians.
VicHealth partners with communities, government agencies and organisations across health, sport, arts, food, education, social sector, and the media to share expertise and insights and bring global best practice approaches to Victoria – to drive lasting, positive health and wellbeing outcomes for all Victorians.
We’ve all heard is takes a village to raise a child. But what does that look like in practice? Hands Up Mallee offers us a glimpse – bringing together the community, organisations and services to support children and families to thrive. Here’s how we’re helping them achieve greater community health and wellbeing outcomes.
What happens when Designers and Evaluators start cooking up social innovations together? Is it a case of the Cook and the Chef, where there’s collaboration throughout, or is it more My Kitchen Rules, with paring knives out? Here are four kitchen scenarios we’ve observed – but we want to know: which kitchen are you cooking in?
In this article, we ask Dr Jess Dart, Anna Powell and Dr Ellise Barkley about their top tips for overcoming some of the key challenges of evaluating systems change and place-based approaches, and how to get everyone on the same songsheet.
A conversation with Dr Jess Dart, Anna Powell and Dr Ellise Barkley about the challenges and opportunities presented by systems change and place-based approaches, and why evaluators in the space are truly the jazz players of the evaluation world.
Clear Horizon was commissioned by the Commonwealth and Queensland Governments to lead the co-design of the Place-Based Evaluation Framework. The framework was tested with Logan Together, a place-based initiative aiming to shift the dial on developmental outcomes for local children aged 0-8.
While evaluation practice of place-based approaches (including collective impact initiatives) has been developing over the last 5-10 years in Australia, until now there has not been a consolidated guide for practice in Australia. Evaluating place-based approaches is challenging due to the emergent and complex nature of the work, and they often include embedded ‘systems change’ efforts which are difficult to measure.
Enter Clear Horizon. We worked with over 150 stakeholders to lead the co-design the Place-based Evaluation Framework, in collaboration with delivery partners The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI), Collaboration for Impact (CFI), and Community Services Industry Alliance (CSIA). The Place-based Evaluation Framework is available through the Department of Social Services website, and has a toolkit of over 80 tools useful for evaluating systems change and place-based approaches.
To test the framework, we worked in close partnership with Logan Together as proof of concept, using the Place-based Evaluation Framework to create a measurement, evaluation and learning strategy for the collective impact initiative.
While Logan Together had many enablers for success set up – with an experienced backbone team, committed funders and partners and an engaged community – there was no agreed plan for how to measure success in the short to medium term, or framework for determining whether or not they were on track.
Recognising there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ evaluation methodology, we developed clear and phase-appropriate evaluation systems and measures of success, incorporating learning and community voice into the evaluative process.
Our approach ensured we captured the complexity of the work, while still providing a practical roadmap to keep partners and community on track. And it’s setting the standard for place-based and collective impact evaluation across the country.
“The framework is a game changer for how government (is) approaching and evaluating place-based initiatives.
It has created some much-needed standards and guidance for community change movements looking to better understand their progress and set shared expectations with their partners and funders.”
Matthew Cox, Director, Logan Together
Clear Horizon’s Sustainable Futures team are working with the Resilient Sydney Office to develop an M&E Framework for the five-year Resilient Sydney Strategy.
The Strategy aims to strengthen Sydney’s capacity to prepare for, respond to and recover from disaster, whilst ensuring all of Sydney’s communities can access opportunities to thrive. The Strategy aims to effect change across the systems of the city to achieve these objectives, and is being delivered through collaborative initiatives, underpinned by a collective impact model for systemic change.
With the Strategy’s focus on systemic change, collaboration and collective impact, the Sustainable Futures team have been developing an M&E Framework informed in part by the Place-based Evaluation Framework (Dart, 2018) This will ensure the Strategy’s M&E will work with the phased nature of systems change, and across the different scales of change. In addition, to align with the collective impact model used, the Framework distinguishes between the work and outcomes of the backbone organisation (i.e. the Resilient Sydney Office) and those of the broader partnership.
Working with the Resilient Sydney Office on this M&E Framework has been a really exciting opportunity for our team for a number of reasons. The first is the clear alignment in the passion and vision of our team for driving real and positive change. The second is that the complexity that the Strategy is dealing with demands that we continue to innovate, test and refine our M&E approaches, to ensure they remain useful and fit-for-purpose, and can meaningfully engage with the complexity of evaluating influence on systems change. We are thoroughly enjoying the challenges this project has thrown at us and are excited to see where it goes next!
Clear Horizon in partnership with Adam Smith International has been awarded by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade the Papua New Guinea – Human Development Monitoring and Evaluation Services contract for 2019-2023. We are really excited to be working with the HDMES team to be based in Port Moresby, along with ASI, DFAT, the Government of Papua New Guinea, and the partners across the health and education sectors.
Health and education are central to PNG’s sustainable development. The health system struggles to meet the needs of it growing population, while the country’s education system lacks sufficient funding, well trained teachers and administrators, and the planning and management necessary to effectively utilise its limited resources. Australia, as the largest donor to PNG, aims to make a positive contribution to the health and education systems. Between 2015 and 2018, $264.4m was specifically allocated to education and $276.9m to health investments. In health, this focuses on workforce planning, communicable diseases, family planning, sexual and reproductive health, and maternal and child health. While, in education, Australia’s objective is to support teachers to improve the quality of teaching and learning, improve primary school infrastructure, and reduce the barriers that prevent children attending and staying at school for a quality education.
Through HDMES, Adam Smith International in collaboration with Clear Horizon will provide external, independent M&E Services to DFAT and GoPNG regarding health and education investments at the program and portfolio levels. Support will include developing portfolio level strategies, performance assessment frameworks and annual reports; advising on baselines and M&E frameworks for programs; quality assuring design, monitoring and evaluation deliverables; and conducting independent evaluations of DFAT investments.
Last week the Queensland Government released the Progress Report and ‘Statement of Achievement’ that Clear Horizon producedfor Logan Together. Logan Together is one of Australia’s largest and most well-known collective impact initiatives,involving over 100 partners working together to improve the well being of children (0-8 years) in Logan, Queensland.
The Progress Report provides a comprehensive assessment of Logan Together’s progress since inception, identifies recommendations for areas to strengthen, and celebrates the stories of success so far. For more about the background and commissioning of the Report click here.
What did the results show?
The findings evidenced that the Logan Together collective is making sound and positive progress towards the longer-term goals of their ‘Roadmap’ via a collective impact approach. The collective had clearly contributed to community level and systemic changes, and the backbone team had played a catalyst and enabling role. Of importance, there was evidence of small-scale impact for families and children and early instances of change.
Outcomes for families and children include improved engagement of certain at-risk cohorts, such as women not accessing maternity services or families with young children experiencing tenancy difficulties and instability; improved parental awareness of childhood development needs and milestones in targeted communities; early instances of improvement in kindy enrolment for small cohorts; and changes resulting from increased reach of services.
Systems level changes include an increased cross-sector collaboration and breaking down of silos, integrated approaches to strategic delivery, innovating new services and models, changes in practice,shifts in mindset and attitudes, and early changes in resource flows. Logan Together also contributed to outcomes ‘beyond place’ through their advocacy and policy reform efforts.
In some cases, changes have been achieved that would not otherwise have happened and in other examples Logan Together has advanced the progress of outcomes being achieved. Logan Together has also made good progress in developing frameworks for shared measurement and learning, and is starting to generate a body of evidence around their collective work.
The progress study is one example of the measurement, evaluation and learning work that Clear Horizon is doing with backbone organisations and a diverse range of collectives.
It was linked to the work Clear Horizon led for developing the Place-based Evaluation Framework, a national framework for evaluating PBAs (pending release).Like the progress study, the framework was commissioned by the Commonwealth and Queensland Governments, and partnered by Logan Together.
If you want to read more about the methods we used, including outcomes harvesting,see our case study.
Well done Logan Together, and thank you for the opportunity to work with you and your partners on your monitoring, evaluation and learning journey.
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Clear Horizon acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Custodians of the land and acknowledges and pays respect to their Elders, past and present.
