Posted By: Administrator | January 19th, 2010
This subject was presented at a workshop facilitated by Success Works at the 2007 Australian Evaluation Society Conference in Melbourne.
As evaluators in social policy areas, Success Works often finds it has to seek out people who are traditionally considered to be ‘hard to reach’ in order to gain their opinions or experiences of a service, program or policy.
Traditionally the ‘hard to reach’ groups have been defined as: people who are homeless; people who use drugs or alcohol; offenders; Indigenous people; culturally or linguistically diverse people; people with mental health issues; people with cognitive impairments; people with disabilities; young people; older people; children etc.
However, in Success Works’ experience, ‘hard to reach’ can also include professional such as general practitioners or lawyers; people with full-time jobs and people who are not members of community organisations.
In thinking about ‘hard to reach’ groups we have also realised that there are two distinct sub-categories who require different strategies: people who are harder to find and people who are harder to engage. Some groups fit into both categories.
Harder to find groups include: older people; young people; children; people who are homeless; people with mental health issues; people with full-time jobs; people who are not members of organisations. While it is possible to find people in these categories, it is necessary to take deliberate steps to do so.
Harder to engage groups include: people who are homeless; Indigenous people; culturally and linguistically diverse people; offenders; people with mental health issues; people with cognitive impairments ; professionals; young people. Again, while it is possible to engage people in these categories, it is often necessary to take deliberate steps to ensure their engagement.
Ways to find harder to reach groups include: going to places where people in that group meet together (e.g. clubs, schools, specific locations); going to services who already work with the group; using intermediaries; being flexible about times and locations (i.e. approaching people on weekends, using non-traditional locations like trains, train stations and shopping centres).
Ways to engage harder to reach groups include: being clear and upfront about ‘what’s in it for them’; offering incentives (e.g. payment); offering food; organising an event (e.g. a community bbq); using intermediaries; being culturally competent.
In our experience, thinking about who needs to be involved in the evaluation or project and how they will be ‘found’ and ‘engaged’ is an important starting point – so that the ‘hard to reach’ are not put into the too hard basket.
Posted By: Administrator | January 19th, 2010
Success Works has been privileged to undertake a number of projects with Indigenous and culturally and linguistically diverse communities. In these projects and generally in our day to day work we subscribe to the concept of Cultural Safety.
Cultural Safety is ensuring that we, as consultants, understand and respect the different cultural understanding of the people we are working with and ensure that there is ‘no assault, challenge or denial of cultural identity’(1) in our work. More generally, cultural safety is a worldview that recognises the need to overcome cultural biases in our services and institutions in order to ensure that all individuals and communities have equal rights and equitable access to processes and services which are relevant to them.
Cultural safety starts from the standpoint of Cultural Competence. Cultural competence is about recognising the cultural biases that all of us possess and taking steps to ensure that these biases are clearly acknowledged and that, to the extent possible, they do not get in the way of our practice. Cultural competence allows one to understand that the way in which we experience and understand the world is only one way in which the world can be experienced and understood.
Culturally competent organisations are ones which:
- Demonstrate an understanding of their own dominant culture, including its implicit biases and assumptions
- Show a positive commitment towards the inclusion of individuals and communities from different cultural backgrounds
- Have knowledge of different cultural practices and cultural experiences and the influence of these on individual and group worldviews
- Are skilled and effective in cross cultural communication.
Success Works uses the following continuum to show the relationship between cultural awareness at the lowest level (the first step to cultural safety) and cultural safety at the other end. Cultural awareness and cultural competence are both within the control of an organisation. Cultural safety represents the experience of those who work in, access or use our services:
(1) Robyn Williams (nd) Cultural Safety: What does it mean for our work practice?
http//www.ruralhealth.utas.edu.au/inidigenous-health/Revised CulturalSafetyPaper-pha.pdf
Posted By: Administrator | December 5th, 2009
Project Logic as a key process in all of our evaluations. Sometimes Project Logic is also useful for strategic planning or in order to build understanding and consensus around a program or initiative. Project Logic unpacks the logic underpinning the program or project that is being evaluated – not the evaluation itself. The Project Logic identifies ‘what they were thinking when they designed this program or initiative’. In evaluation, the reason for developing a Project Logic is to be clear about the activities, outputs and expected outcomes of the program, particularly the short term outcomes. It is not possible to evaluate a program based on its long term outcomes (as they are too far away and there are too many other factors that will impede their achievement). Nevertheless, the Project Logic depicts the logical flow from short to medium to long term outcomes. Short term outcomes should be possible to investigate as part of the evaluation. Once identified, the outputs and short term outcomes become the foundation for the evaluation questions. This guide describes each of the components of a Project Logic as we use them at Success
Success Works Guide to Project Logic