Resources

The Expert Panel Project Team at AIFS have published this instructional video to guide you through measuring for outcomes. It explain why and how we want to measure outcomes to demonstrate impact in child and family services. This video also guides you how to choose which short, medium and long term outcomes to measure given limited resources.

The Expert Panel Project Team at AIFS have published this instructional video to guide you through program logic models. It guides you step-by-step through the terminology of program logic models, and how to build your own model, including writing a problem statement, understanding inputs and outputs, and identifying short, medium and long term outcomes.

This new toolkit from SNAICC gives fantastic guidance on designing and measuring for outcomes in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child and family services. It compiles an insightful list of 21 key outcomes for this sector, drawn from the 8 key principles of The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Child and Family Services Wellbeing Framework. It also features a detailed, yet accessible, step-by-step guide to help you develop a theory of change to support and measure for outcomes. This toolkit centres on evaluation work in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander child and family services, but its clear and concise explanation of how to use outcomes, an outcomes framework, and a theory of change will be relevant and useful to many workers across the wider child and family services sector.

This is a practical guide to participatory and other research tools for Aboriginal research practitioners. It was developed by a network of Aboriginal Research Practitioners in the Top End who want to use participatory tools that enable participants to better understand why and what is being done.

This guide was designed by British Overseas NGOs for Development (BOND) to support NGOs to assess and improve the quality of evidence in evaluation reports.

Clear Horizon offers a range of tools and resources specific to monitoring and evaluation to measure the impact and achievement of project outcomes. These include the Most Significant Change Technique and Collaborative Outcomes Reporting.

In this activity young people are encouraged to fill in the page with words or pictures identifying different points of connection at various levels. This will open up conversations about a young person’s place in the world and encourage them to see themselves as one part of a connected network of support. If a young person doesn’t have strong connections in “Family”, they may be led to see that they do have connections elsewhere – perhaps via a connection to nature, culture, or a particular worker or friend.

Evaluators may come across situations where they have to work in a cultural context other than of their own. Culturally competent evaluators not only respect the cultures represented in the evaluation but recognize their own ‘culturally based assumptions’; take into account the ‘differing world view of evaluation stakeholders and target communities’ and select culturally appropriate evaluation options and strategies.

This guide from the Department of Health and Human Services (2017) is designed to support staff in the planning and commissioning of an evaluation. It is suitable for anyone responsible for program development, implementation or evaluation.

This research tool, prepared by staff at the ACU Institute of Child Protection Studies (ICPS) is designed for people who may be interested in funding or conducting research with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children on the topic of family violence. Its guidance is informed by the views of Indigenous researchers, research ethics committee members, Elders and senior community members, service providers, parents and young people from remote, rural, regional and urban Australia.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) is an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. This resource features evidence summaries, tools, projects and case studies.

This OPEN Factsheet provides you with a useful overview of what we mean by Client Experience and contains some hands-on tools to improve services.

An alternative to starting with the question, “What subjects are you good at in school”, recognising that for many disconnected young people this can trigger feelings of inadequacy and frustration. Instead, the activity encourages young people to simply reflect on things they like, not necessarily things they are good at or activities with a strong careers focus or pathway. This helps the young person with the practitioner to open up stories and reflection about favourite things, activities, people, and draw out useful stories and experiences that demonstrate skill, character, connection and competency.

This guide from Emerging Minds is designed to assist practitioners in having conversations with parents regarding the sources of their parenting information and support. It aims to help you and the parent identify what type of support the parent is seeking (their motivation) and the most appropriate sources for this support. Ultimately, it will help you build a parent’s capacity to access the best quality information or support to suit their needs.

This action plan from the National Implementation and Research Institute provides a handy way to identify the next steps in implementing your program.

This toolkit contains practical insight, strategies and resources for the planning phase of implementation. It couples theory and research findings with practical strategies and real-life experiences from the field that may be relevant to your organization.

This toolkit by the Ontario Centre for Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health provides a comprehensive framework and tools to kick start the implementation process.

This collection of infographics published by the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University features accessible infographics accompanied by explanations and links to further resources. These resources will be particularly relevant to practitioners working directly with families and children, as they explain a number of related concepts- including toxic stress, executive function and ACEs (adverse childhood experiences). These infographics can help you identify how these issues might be effecting families, and some approaches you might use to improve their outcomes.

This tool by the Ontario Centre for Excellence for Child and Youth Mental Health helps to comprehensively assess both the internal and external factors that may impact implementation.

The Life Changes Trust Evaluation Toolkit provides a range of resources across the journey to better outcomes including creating a theory of change and program logic, designing an evaluation and methods for collecting data.

This Safe and Equal peak body resource details the advantages and challenges for primary prevention family violence practitioners moving to an online environment. This resource demonstrates embedding learning within the practice and is particularly useful for Victorian primary prevention practitioners.

This collection from raisingchildren.net.au brings together articles, videos and guides related to mental health support for children and families. Organised from A to Z and by topic area, this is a great starting point for professionals working with families where either a parent of a child needs support.

This book was a project developed by the Inter-Agency Standing Committee (IASC), supported by global, regional and country based experts from Member Agencies, in addition to parents, caregivers, teachers and children in 104 countries. It was developed based a global survey to assess children’s mental health and psychosocial needs during the COVID-19 outbreak - and is available in multiple different languages.

The National Implementation Research Network offers a variety of tools, publications and information on implementation science including e-learning modules and downloadable checklists to aid the implementation process.

During this year’s World Mental Health Week, the Federal Government launched a framework for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people’s mental health. This framework sets out a comprehensive and culturally appropriate guide to inform Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander mental health and wellbeing reforms. The framework is vital to the healing and wellbeing of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, who continue to experience greater levels of mental health issues than the broader population.

This report provides guidelines for researchers and stakeholders to ensure their work is safe, respectful, responsible, high quality and of benefit to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people and communities.

High quality data can help us understand if we are on track, and if clients are benefiting as they would like to. If you are responsible for collecting data for evaluation there is lots to consider, including respecting client confidentiality, being cautious of potential power imbalances and accommodating for diverse literacy levels. Ensuring that methods and tools are fit for purpose and our processes are ethical is essential. Become familiar with the National Statement on Ethical Conduct in Human Research (2007) – Updated 2018.

This OPEN Tool provides some key questions to support the Reflect and Review process. In order to make high-quality decisions it is important to systematically reflect on, and review data, practice and client feedback to adapt and enhance your approach.

An assessment tool developed by Melanie Barwick from the University of Toronto to identify organisational readiness for implementation.

Developed by Scott Miller PhD, psychologist and co-founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence and the Institute for the Study of Therapeutic Change, The Outcome Rating Scale (ORS) and Session Rating Scale (SRS) are brief measures for tracking client functioning and the quality of the therapeutic alliance. Each instrument takes less than a minute for clients to complete and for clinicians to score and interpret. Versions of the scales are available for adults, children, adolescents in 18 different languages.

A set of easy to use templates that are used to give structure to conversations. These tools provide a practical way to capture information that feeds into care and support planning, as well as to improve understanding, communication and relationships.

Access a range of facilitation tools, journey mapping tools, role playing tips and techniques, voting systems and more, to better manage co-design processes with multiple stakeholders. Created by Iriss and used in Pilotlight, these tools will be relevant to lots of different organisations and situations.

The QSL measures primary-school-aged students’ perceptions towards school against three dimensions, 1) general satisfaction with school 2) commitment to school work 3) attitudes towards teachers. Learn more about the QSL

This article describes the School Attitudes Assessment Survey - Revised (SAAS-R). This survey is a validated instrument used to measure the attitudes of adolescents toward school and teachers as well as their goal-valuation, motivation and academic self-perceptions. It is also used to explore below average academic achievement in high school students.

The SDQ is a well validated and population-normed instrument which assesses in respect of emotional problems, peer problems, conduct problems, hyperactivity, and prosocial behaviour. Learn more about the SDQ...

The Australian Centre for Social Innovation (TACSI) has a range of useful tools for co-design including a webinar exploring what is human centred design, and what does it take to do well?

The Centre for Homelessness report and evidence and gap maps collate evidence from the homelessness sector that demonstrates sector knowledge. This evidence and gap map is a tool for practitioners and policymakers to engage with evidence and facilitate evidence-informed decision-making across the homeless sector.

This poster is a handy print-out for your office or desk for reference when designing a new approach, helping to make sure you don't miss out on any key design ingredients!

UNICEF developed this toolkit in 2005 to increase young people's participation in evaluation of projects in Europe and Central Asia. There are a number of evaluation tools/methods with ethical and practical guidelines to engage children and young people. There are also a number of energizers and ice-breakers to facilitate group sessions with children and young people where they can safely voice their opinions. Each tool and activity has a detailed set of instructions to guide the facilitator through the process.

This short article from Emerging Minds offers advice for practitioners on how to support families and children while they are on the waiting list for specialist assessment or care for mental health issues. This piece was inspired by research into barriers and facilitators to early childhood mental health pathways in the Barwon region in southwest Victoria. One of the barriers identified was long wait times for appointments, and the following practices were suggested by professionals interviewed for this research.

This practice paper from AIFS focuses on improving cross-sectoral relationships between child protection and child and family welfare practitioners, who are often required to work together to keep children and families safe. This paper offers tips and techniques to build practitioners’ collaborative competence; that is, their skills in developing and sustaining effective cross-sectoral relationships in the many and varied circumstances of daily practice.

This practical toolkit is designed to engage young people to evaluate and measure the impact of youth projects. It has been developed by Evaluation Access using resources and activities from Girl Scouts of the United States of America, the National 4-H Council, and the National FFA Organization. There are a number of creative activities and handouts to support young people to plan, develop, and implement community projects.

This guide has a series of “tip sheets” that identify practical ways to conduct a youth-adult partnership evaluation project. The tip sheets talk about various “leverage points” or those key processes and moments in implementation that can influence the outcomes of projects. It also provides tips on creating a culture of evaluation in an organisation, developing the right evaluation questions and practical and youth-friendly data collection/analysis strategies.

This toolbox provides practitioners in the youth alcohol and other drugs fields with reliable and current information to help to increase their knowledge and enrich their practice.