Approaches to evaluation in Australian child and family welfare organizations

Child and family welfare organizations around the world aspire to achieve missions that will improve outcomes for vulnerable children and families and ultimately reduce the prevalence and impact of child maltreatment. In Australia, this work is currently being influenced by an increasingly turbulent political and economic climate; one that is requiring organizations to engage with evaluation in new and advanced ways so that they are not left behind in the increasingly complex and competitive environment that they now operate in. Despite the apparent awareness and understanding of the essential place of evaluation in quality and effective service delivery, it is also understood that evaluation of the human services work that child and family welfare organizations undertake is extremely challenging due to its intricate, ever-changing and often innovative nature. Embedding evaluation within such organizations therefore requires a tailored and planned decision-making and implementation process. This paper will briefly describe the recent socio-political history and environment that Australian child and family welfare organizations operate in and how this has impacted on engagement with evaluation. With consideration to this, it will describe the evaluation approaches available to organizations and the factors that may influence selection of a specific approach. It will then explore the benefits and challenges of these evaluation approaches, and consider the implications for child and family welfare agencies more broadly.