Foreword

## Foreword

Cape York Welfare Reform (CYWR) is a package of policy reform designed to address the deterioration of social and economic conditions in Cape York Indigenous communities that has occurred over recent years. The CYWR is being trialled in the four Cape York communities of Aurukun, Coen, Hope Vale and Mossman Gorge. While implementation began in 2008, the development of CYWR began some years before. The policy design ideas were set out in Cape York Institute’s 2007 report From hand out to hand up. The evaluation of the CYWR trial was identified as an essential part of the design. The CYWR combines initiatives under the four streams of Social Responsibility, Education, Economic Opportunity and Housing, based in part on theories of change emerging from social psychology, which set out to produce change in social norms and behaviour. This report represents the final evaluation of CYWR. The framework for the evaluation was developed in 2008 by consultants Courage Partners in conjunction with the partners to the reforms: the Australian and Queensland governments and the Cape York Institute. The central questions identified in the evaluation framework are whether the trial has been implemented as agreed, whether social norms and behaviours are changing as intended, and whether governance and service delivery have supported the intended change. The initial stage of the evaluation was an implementation review of a key part of the reforms, the Family Responsibilities Commission (FRC), conducted in 2009 and released in 2010. Planning for the final evaluation covering progress and outcomes analysis occurred in 2010 and early 2011. This was led by FaHCSIA on behalf of the CYWR partners and included the partners in all decisions. Fieldwork, extensive data collation and data analysis for the final evaluation was developed and conducted during 2011 and 2012. This evaluation report was finalised in 2012. The diverse nature of over 15 projects, which make up the reform package, together with the challenges of measuring social change, meant that a broad range of research methods was required. This includes surveys with community members and service providers, stakeholder interviews and consultations, qualitative case studies and extensive quantitative data analysis of both published and unpublished data. Hearing the voice of the people living in the four welfare reform communities is necessary for both ethical and technical reasons if we are to measure changes in social norms and behaviour. This was gathered through an extensive survey of social change conducted in each of the four communities using local researchers. This survey examined the social norms and attitudes of community members around the areas of social obligations agreed by the communities which underpin the goals of the trial. Reports on their own community’s survey results were provided back to each community. Measuring the impact of initiatives is challenging for simple program design but the CYWR package is more challenging as it involves interconnected causal relationships. Even so accurate impact measurement involves the same principles used in evaluating the impact of single program interventions—examining the link between implementation and immediate outputs and subsequent outcomes. It was possible in this evaluation to assess the impact of FRC conferencing on subsequent school attendance by matching attendance data for individual students with FRC data. Findings were tested for statistical significance and information was cross-validated using data from a range of sources, including the ABS, field surveys and a wide range of government and operational service data covering education, crime and safety, child projection, housing and employment. Trends in outcomes were compared with outcomes in other Indigenous communities in Queensland to assess whether changes are unique to the CYWR communities or whether they are part of a broader trend.

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