By attending this workshop, participants will develop an approach to evaluation that is appropriate for human services and identify what needs to be done to have good evaluation mechanisms in place in their service. This will be a practical workshop and you should only come if you are ready to work on the practicalities of what you want done in your organisation, e.g. developing evaluation plans, focus groups, databases, questionnaire design, case studies, graphical presentation of information, consultation processes, measuring social capital, etc. This workshop will get you a long way down the path of putting evaluation strategies in place in your organisation. The specific learning outcomes will vary depending on the specific evaluation work that participants are doing in their organisations. The specific tools worked on will relate to the evaluation work that participants are doing in their organisations.
Many community organisations have a community development strand to their work.
Community development is open-ended and flexible. It is not as defined and precise as direct services. For example measuring the social capital in the community. Participants will work on ways of evaluating their own community development work. You are about to start an evaluation process - the steering committee has as many different views as there are committee members.