Endnote 4: Developing this guide

Introduction

This guide has been developed by Paul Bullen for and in collaboration with the NSW Family Services.

The Association originally discussed the possibility of such a tool in 1999 and received a small amount of funding from DoCS to undertake the task. Preliminary plans were developed in 2000. The project began implementation mid 2001.

Purpose

It was expected the outcomes tool will be useful to:

• Family support workers working with families
• Services (to gain an overview of outcomes from their services)
• The Association and its members in describing what they achieve (including reporting to funding bodies)
• The Association and its members in researching practice issues.

Working Party

The Association established a working party to oversight the project. The Working Party included:

Patricia Kiely (Burnside)
Denise Olsen (Nambucca/Bellingen Family Support Service)
Margaret Spencer (FSSA Staff)
Paul Bullen (Independent consultant).

The Association also collaborated with Parents as Teachers and Elizabeth Starr (Parents as Teachers, Department of Education and Training) came to some working party meetings.

The Development Process

The principal steps in the process from July 2001 to June 2003 have included:

1. First meeting of the working party to determine the type of tool required and a proposed process to develop it ( 27th July 2001).

At this meeting the working party decided:

a) The Outcomes Tool should be a holistic tool (ie a tool which focuses on changes in the ‘whole of life' rather than specific outcomes related to each intervention).

b) It would be useful to explore collaboration with other organisations working on similar tools (eg Parents as Teachers).

c) The broad process for the development of the tool should include:

Phase 1 - Establish purpose and develop a detailed plan
Phase 2 - Identify possible indicators and develop preliminary tool
Phase 3 - Use preliminary tool to develop refined tool
Phase 4 - Pilot the tool
Phase 5 - Implement the final tool.

2. The second meeting (12 September 2001) of the working party developed a more detailed framework for the type of tool required and a process for piloting a preliminary tool. It was agreed:

The tool will be holistic

The tool will be designed to monitor changes in individual clients and their circumstances - the point of comparison will be the client not a population standard

The data from using the tool will also be able to show changes in groups of clients (eg clients participating in a new service model)

The client should be involved in using the tool and reflecting on the data gathered

Several forms of the tool should be available (eg. a short form and a long form, a questionnaire form and an interview form).

The meeting also agreed it would be of benefit to the Association to collaborate with the Parents as Teachers (PAT) program in developing their tool.

3. The third meeting of the Working Party met with family support practitioners on 25 October 2001 to hear from them about how they know they are achieving.

The key questions discussed were: If family support is doing a good job what changes would you expect to notice in clients and their circumstances? And therefore, What are the dimensions that need to be included in a holistic tool?

The meeting was taped and the discussion was analysed in detail.

4. Concurrently with the working Party meetings, Family Support Services, Parents as Teachers and Schools as Community Centres piloted the Snapshot of Life questionnaire from May 2001 to January 2002. The Snapshot of life questionnaire was a preliminary tool to test out a series of questions that could be used in an outcomes tool.

63 Family Support clients, 19 Schools as Community Centre participants and 164 Parents as Teacher participants completed the questionnaire (246 in total).

The people participating in the pilot were not a true random sample, however they are broadly representative of the different programs.

The responses from the completed questionnaires were analysed in detail to determine questions that were likely to be useful and those that were not likely to be useful in an outcomes tool.

5. Paul Bullen undertook an analysis of the available data and drafted preliminary Tools for discussion. Analysis of the available data included:

Reviewing existing Tools from a wide variety of sources including the Handbook of Family Measurement Techniques and those recommended by the Department of Family and community Services in Indicators of Social and Family Functioning.

Analysing the transcript of the practitioners discussions.

Analysis of data from the piloting of the Snapshot of Life tool - this analysis identified questions that could form the basis of a tool and eliminated many questions that would not work in a tool because they could not discriminate between people.

On the basis of this analysis draft Tools were prepared for discussion by the Working Party.

6. The Working Party meeting (18 March 2002) reviewed a preliminary draft of outcome Tools and made numerous suggestions for revisions.

The tool were revised for the next Working Party meeting.

7. The Working Party meeting (29 April 2002) reviewed the revised draft of the outcomes Tools and made further suggestions and revisions

The next step was discussion with practitioners.

8. There was a meeting of Family Support Services on 9 September 2002 to review the tools

Service coordinators and family workers met for a day and discussed the draft tools and their uses.

9. Services provided copies of their existing tools and forms (during November and December 2002)

This showed the enormous diversity of services existing approaches to assessment, data collection and so on.

It was recognized that it is unlikely there there will be one standardised set of tools, because there is enormous diversity in services, however it would be useful for services to have a starting point that they could modify as required.

10. The tools were developed into the first draft of this Practitioners Guide (February, May and June 2003).