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Introduction
This practitioners
guide is for family support practitioners, family support services,
peak organisations and government agencies and others working with
family support services.
This guide provides:
- ideas to
set the scene for evaluating family support services
- ideas to
set the scene for measuring outcomes in family support services
- tools than
can be used to help with various aspects of measuring outcomes
in family support
- links and
connections with other projects relevant to measuring outcomes
in family support in New South Wales, Australia.
Measuring outcomes
in family support services in New South Wales involves:
- Clients
and their families
- Family workers
- Family support
services
- Peak organisations
such as Family Support Services Association of NSW
- Government
departments and agencies such as the Department of Community Services
- Other organisations
and agencies such as universities.
Key questions
to be considered when measuring outcomes in family support are:
1.
What are family support services?
2. What is evaluation?
3. How can we evaluate
family support services?
4. Where does measuring
outcomes fit?
5. Why do we want
to measure outcomes in family support?
6. How “in theory”
can we measure outcomes in family support?
7. What are some of the paradoxes and dilemmas
in practice? How do we respond?
8. What is realistic?
Who can do what?
Clients and their families and the family worker
Family support services
Peak organisations such as Family Support Services Association
of NSW
Government departments and agencies
Other organisations and agencies
9. What tools are
available on this site for family support services? How can they
be used?
Other
related projects
Measuring outcomes
in family support in New South Wales is connected with other projects
including:
- Family Support
Services Standards
- Family Support
Services data collection
- Famdat
- Community
Services Grants Program Service Framework
- Families
First Evaluation Framework
- Indicators
of Social and Family Functioning
- Measuring
progress
- Measuring
social capital in NSW
- Australian
Institute of Health and Welfare data collection standards.
See
Endnote 3 Connections and Links.
Data
collation and analysis
An important
practical issue for services is how to collate and analyse the data.
See Endnote 1.
Using the tools
The tools and resources on this site may be freely used by non-profit
human service organisations for use in improving the quality of
their services.
Commercial use is not permitted without written permission from
both Paul Bullen and the NSW Family Support Services Association.
If you wish to have a contract for the commercial use of these materials
please contact Paul Bullen.
Developing
the guide
This guide was developed by Paul Bullen in collaboration with and
for the NSW Family Services and its members.
The project received a small financial contribution from the NSW
Department of Community Services which met some of the development
costs. See Endnote
4 Developing this guide.
Feedback
and further development
We wish to update this site in June 2004 based on the experiences
of clients, family workers and services using the tools. If you
use the tools please send feedback on your experiences.
Key
questions are:
Was
the background information on this web site useful?
What tools did you use?
Were they useful?
What tools did you modify?
What were the modifications?
Send feedback
to Paul
Bullen
or post to Paul Bullen PO BOX 181 Coogee NSW 2034 Australia.
See Endnote
2
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