Our blog
We believe in sharing the knowledge and learnings we capture through our work with people and organisations across the health and social services sectors.
Our blog consists of thoughtful and practical content and insight across a range of topic areas that aims to better enable people and organisations to plan, design, implement and evaluate their work.
How Primary Health Networks can commission primary care services to better meet the health needs of people experiencing homelessness
We highlight the complex and often unmet health needs of the homeless, the challenges in mainstream healthcare services, and the recommendations for a coordinated approach to address these issues.
World Suicide Prevention Day: Action and system change
Suicide prevention affects us all. The projects we have worked on alongside our clients are part of the driving force behind transformative change toward suicide prevention efforts in Australia. Here is a summary of a few different projects we have worked on.
Impact Measurement in the Not-for-Profit Sector: Learning from Six Varied Approaches
Impact measurement is an intriguing concept that many not-for-profit organisations are contemplating. While there's no universally accepted approach, it's worth examining how different organisations have experimented with this concept, both in the present and the past.
Building In-house Evaluation Competence: A Strategic Collaboration with a Not-for-profit Organisation
In a fast-evolving not-for-profit landscape, being adaptable and evidence-driven is essential. We recently partnered with a not-for-profit organisation, with the goal to empower their in-house capabilities for program design and evaluation.
Developing service models that address the drivers of situational distress
We share some insights drawn from a project we recently undertook in reviewing a PHN-funded situational distress service model — these insights aim to help both commissioning agencies and service provider organisations consider how to design more compassionate service models that address situational distress and contribute to suicide prevention outcomes.
Marcus Mission: suicide prevention through peer mentoring
Marcus Mission is a Peer Mentor program that was founded after a young man took his own life. The Peer Mentor program, located in South-East Queensland and run by Wesley Mission Queensland, aims to reduce the risk of suicide for men.
What does program evaluation in the local government context look like?
With visibility comes accountability and scrutiny, and we believe that through regular evaluation, local governments can continuously improve the programs and services they deliver and generate greater impact for their communities We understand that evaluation can be an unfamiliar concept for many. So let’s get started. What type of programs and service can be evaluated in your local government?
When to consider Social Return on Investment (SROI) over a traditional evaluation approach
Social Return on Investment or SROI is an evaluative approach that combines participatory evaluation with aspects of economic analysis. We take a look at what SROI is (and isn’t), how it differs from other evaluation approaches, and some tips on when to consider using it to evaluate your work.
Getting ‘Evaluation Ready’ - making it stick in your organisation
In this final post of our Evaluation Ready series, we explore a few helpful tips to make evaluation a priority within your organisation. Once you know how to put together a basic framework to guide how to do a program evaluation, the next challenge can often be making evaluation a consistent part of the work you and your colleagues do.