Evaluation of the Integrated Services Pilot Program from Western Australia

Independent evaluation of refugee-focused programs in developed nations is increasingly a mandatory requirement of funding bodies and government agencies. This paper presents an evaluation of the Integrated Services Centre (ISC) Pilot Project that was conducted in Australia in 2007 and early 2008. The purpose of the ISC program was to provide integrated support to humanitarian refugees in settlement, physical health, mental health and employment. The Pilot Project was based in two primary schools in Perth, Western Australia. The evaluation utilized a flexible qualitative ‘engaged’ methodology and included interviews, focus groups and telephone interviews with the key stakeholders, project staff and a small number of refugee families. The strength of the qualitative methodology (including data that is narrative rich) is that it highlights issues as perceived by each stakeholder and provides insights into the daily work by ISC staff that helped to uncover unintended outcomes. Despite the fact that the ISC evaluation was supposed to be a ‘before and after’ design, the researchers acknowledge a common weakness in many evaluations (including the ISC) that when baseline data is required, evaluators are recruited after the project has begun. This issue is discussed in the paper. It is critical that independent evaluators are able to begin collecting baseline data as soon as programs are launched, if not before.     

Bespoke program design for school-aged therapy disability service delivery

This article uses the evaluation of a school-aged therapy service for children with disabilities in Western Australia to investigate models of service delivery. The current literature on family-centered practice, multidisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches, and 4 models of service are reviewed. The models include the life needs model, the relational goal-orientated model of optimal service delivery to children and families, the quality of life model, and the collaborative model of service delivery. Analysis of the data is presented together with a bespoke model of service delivery for children with disabilities, arguing that local contexts benefit from custom-made service design.     

MEASURING COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: PERSPECTIVES FROM LOCAL GOVERNMENT IN WESTERN AUSTRALIA

Local government in Australia has become an important site for discussions about community development and community well being, as increasing numbers of community services are being devolved to this level. Pressures towards greater accountability and demonstration of competitiveness, stemming from the implementation of National Competition Policy have led to attempts to better measure community development activities. In this paper we report on research conducted among management, elected members and community workers at five Western Australian Local Government Authorities which explored the nature and appropriateness of community development measurement. We found workers at all levels of employment struggling, not simply with notions of measurement, but also with fundamental understandings of community development.     

A youth curfew: A retrospective view of the rise,fall and legacy of the Northbridge Policy

This article presents policy, practice and theory implications of a case study of a youth curfew. The original case study of the Northbridge Policy Project set out to document the purposes of the Northbridge Policy, how policy was implemented, and to evaluate the effectiveness of this approach as a generalised response to child welfare and youth crime. The study synthesised data from multiple sources. The original study concluded that although the project was well resourced, well managed and had improved greatly inter‐agency collaboration for child protection, these benefits could have been achieved without the curfew, which undermined some preventative aspects of the project. The evaluation also concluded that previously documented successes of the curfew for crime protection and child protection had been achieved through displacement of young people to other locations that neither reduced crime nor increase safety. After the project was suddenly curtailed, analysis used moral panic theory to examine the legacy of the Northbridge curfew in terms of discourse about young people and legitimation of subsequent practices in youth policing. The analysis found that the legacy had been unhelpful because it reinforced the erroneous beliefs that the curfew had been an effective and necessary component of strategy.