Evaluating the Flourishing Families Program: Northern Rivers Gateway Community
Status: Completed in August 2018
Client: Northern Rivers Community Gateway
Background
NRCG’s Flourishing Families Program aims to improve the wellbeing of vulnerable children (5 to 12 years of age) and their parents. The Flourishing Families Program delivers through specialist case management, coordination and integration, service support, counselling and group programs to facilitate family support structures that produce positive short- and long-term developmental outcomes for families. The program staff apply specialised knowledge around barriers to learning, child protection legislation, trauma-informed practice and cultural competence.
The program is also designed to leverage complementary programs and services delivered by Northern Rivers Community Gateway such as supported playgroups.
Approach
The purpose of this project was to support Northern Rivers Community Gateway to undertake structured monitoring and evaluation of the Flourishing Families Program to assess program outcomes against specific criteria to determine overall program performance. The specific objectives of the project were to:
Develop a robust evaluation framework and data collection plan to guide evaluation activities in parallel to service delivery (evaluation framework)
Provide data compliance and performance reporting throughout the duration of the evaluation (evaluation support)
Increase understanding of the factors that underpin the successful delivery of and outcomes generated through the Flourishing Families Program and develop options for refining, replicating and scaling (evaluation activities)