Evaluation of a psychosocial support service for children and young people in Logan and Beaudesert: Accoras and Brisbane South PHN
Status: Completed August 2021
Client: Accoras
Background
In September 2020, Beacon Strategies worked with Brisbane South PHN and Metro South Hospital and Health Service to complete a collaborative review to understand the mental health needs of children and young people in Logan-Beaudesert. The review identified a consistent increase in presentations of children and young people with complex psychosocial needs and co-occurring onset of severe mental illness across service streams.
In order to address the service gaps for young people requiring psychosocial support, Brisbane South PHN commissioned Accoras to be the service delivery partner for the Expansion Pilot of the National Psychosocial Support Measure (Child and Adolescent). The service aims to support positive outcomes across fundamental areas of a young person’s life including:
building and improving family connections
social skills and friendships
education and employment goals
building life skills
managing drug and alcohol issues
building capability to engage across multiple clinical and non-clinical agencies.
Accoras engaged Beacon Strategies as an independent partner to lead the monitoring and evaluation of pilot activities to best inform future funding and service delivery decisions.
Approach
Our approach to delivering the evaluation of the NPSM Expansion Pilot Project was designed to achieve the objectives listed below.
Develop an agreed monitoring and evaluation framework to determine evaluation principles, scope and activities and support the collection of high quality quantitative and qualitative data
Facilitate monthly Evaluation Working Group meetings with a group of local stakeholder representatives to review program monitoring data and explore implementation progress
Evaluate and report on the program outcomes and process learnings, including implications and recommendations to guide future program delivery.
Outcomes
The evaluation approach was designed to consider the program from several domains — appropriateness, effectiveness, implementation, impact and sustainability. Aligned to a set of guiding evaluation questions, this consisted of analysis of:
key program documentation
client data collected by program staff and supplied to the evaluation team
qualitative interviews and focus groups with key stakeholders including:
participating children/young people and their parents/caregivers
program staff and management
referring/partner organisations
the program’s funder.
The findings then were considered in the context of the evidence base and strategic environment relating to child and youth mental health services.
A final report was presented back to Accoras and Brisbane South PHN on the findings, implications and recommendations that emerged from our evaluation of the initial 6 months of the NPSM Expansion Pilot implementation from January to June 2021.
