Delivery of needs assessment, service design, and evaluation training: Ipswich City Council

Status: Completed August 2018

Client: Ipswich City Council

Background

The delivery of a training package for Ipswich City Council Community Development staff was geared toward improving the departmental approach to identifying and articulating community need across a range of issues, designing and documenting effective approaches to meet identified needs and establishing and implementing evaluation frameworks to gauge the effectiveness of a range of initiatives over time.

Approach

The training package comprised a number of components aimed toward:

1. Increasing the understanding of and capability in implementing processes to identify and articulate the rationale for implementing a project e.g. community needs across a number of domains, including:

   • Community identified need (felt need)

   • Stakeholder / expert opinion (normative need)

   • Assessment of severity (comparative need)

   • Service utilisation need (expressed need)

   • Service mapping and gaps analysis

2. Increased understanding of and the capability in implementing service design activities aligned to the ICC Impact Map process, including articulating:

   • Goals

   • Objectives

   • Outcomes

   • Outputs

   • Activities

3. Increased understanding of applying evaluation framework principles to a project plan, including ways to measure:

   • Appropriateness—are the needs of clients being met?

   • Accessibility—is the program reaching its intended target population?

   • Efficiency—does the program provide value for money?

   • Effectiveness—is the program achieving measurable outcomes?

   • Sustainability—what are the prospects for the growth of the program?

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