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.