aes18 International Evaluation Conference

Jenne Roberts (Menzies School of Health Research), Eslyn Fletcher (Katherine regional Aboriginal Health and related Service (KRAHRS)), Graham Castine (Kalano Aboriginal Corportation), Darrell Brock (Wurli Wurlinjang Aboriginal Health Serivce), Simon Quilty (Katherine District Hospital)

A Consortium of Aboriginal service providers have united with a small 60 bed- hospital to ensure that homeless, frequent attenders of the emergency department are not turned out onto the streets after receiving treatment. They had a compelling idea - that their combined efforts could transform the service system and improve wellbeing- and they didn't want to wait until they had exhausted their pilot funding to find out if it worked. So, these social innovators chose to work with a developmental evaluator. Together, they use evaluation to improve design and implementation, strengthen their collective impact and transform into a cohesive, person-centred network of services. 

This presentation will outline the magic that results from combining Indigenous concepts of wellbeing, developmental evaluation and the lived experience of participants to co-create knowledge, solve complex service system gaps as they are identified, and increase access to social and health services. They co-create culturally appropriate methods to ensure participants receive culturally appropriate collaborative case management, primary health care and timely access to services.

This presentation will illustrate the complexities of bringing stakeholders together to: 1) generate a shared workplan and common set of indictors of positive impact; 2) identify the principles and values that underpin the co-creation and collective impact approach adopted by the Consortium; 3) reflect on the value of their combined efforts to support the 500-plus people who present frequently to the Emergency Department.  The presentation will explore some of the problems encountered in evaluating collective impact and how they are being tackled and overcome. The Consortium members and frontline service providers (from several agencies) will speak candidly (in person and in a video presentation) about how they have been able to open an innovation process to ongoing, collective scrutiny.