Pre-Conference Workshop
Using evidence to paint a picture: Finding opportunities for learning, growth and sharing the success of child and family services
This full day workshop will focus on building skills that will help services to identify, assess, interrogate and draw meaning from ‘evidence’ as it relates to the delivery of services and programs. While there are many forms of evidence, in this workshop we will focus on the skills needed to effectively harness external research evidence that is relevant to family and relationship services as well as the data and information that organisations collect about their own programs and services.
In this workshop, participants will learn how to:
- Harness the power of the established body of research evidence, including how to find, appraise and use research evidence for program and service design or re-design.
- Best use of the information collected in their services and programs and how to interrogate and draw meaning from that data to highlight program strengths and identify opportunities for learning, improvement and growth.
- Integrate relevant research evidence and program/client data to paint a detailed picture of a program or service’s value and opportunities for improvement.
The workshop will be interactive and will involve practical elements and discussion.
Why should you attend?
The service delivery environment calls on services to invest time and resources to innovate, explore new ideas and demonstrate they are delivering real benefits to the children and families they serve. Drawing on both existing research evidence and current service information can create powerful opportunities to:
- better understand and showcase a program’s strengths
- support the design or re-design of services and programs
- promote learning and lead to opportunities for service or program growth.
Who is this workshop for?
This workshop will be particularly useful for people who have some oversight of family and relationship services or programs. Their role may require them to create, deliver, adapt or refine programs or services. They may also need to describe the value of their program and service to seek funding and support, or they may need to assess the value of activities that they fund. For example, this workshop may be of interest to team leaders, senior practitioners, clinical supervisors and program managers in child and family services.
Who is this not for?
This workshop is not designed for those who have a lot of research and evaluation experience.
Biography:
Kat Goldsworthy
Research Fellow, Child and Family Evidence
Kat joined the Institute in 2014 after completing her Bachelor of Social Science at Swinburne University. Kat primarily works with community sector organisations to help strengthen their program planning and evaluative activities as part of the Evidence and Evaluation Support project.
Since 2014, Kat has worked intensively with a wide range of service providers to build evidence of program effectiveness. Kat also runs program logic and evaluation training workshops and develops evaluation-related resources.
Anagha Joshi
Senior Research Officer, Child and Family Evidence
Anagha develops knowledge translation products for the Child Family Community Australia (CFCA) information exchange and Emerging Minds.
Anagha has skills and experience in innovative evidence synthesis methods and has produced practice papers, resource sheets, short articles and webinars to increase uptake of evidence in the child, family and welfare sector. She facilitates greater impact through stakeholder engagement and building collaborations across research, government and non-for-profit organisations. Anagha has a clinical and program implementation background, with experience working with diverse communities in Australia and internationally.
Sharnee Moore
Senior Research Fellow, Child and Family Evidence
Sharnee Moore is a researcher and evaluator. Sharnee currently leads AIFS’ Evidence and Evaluation Support project, which works with family and child focused service providers to build their capacity to plan, monitor and evaluate their family and child focused programs. Sharnee’s earlier research and evaluation work at AIFS includes contributing to the Evaluation of the 2012 Family Violence Amendments to the Family Law Act, research examining the Role of Independent Children’s Lawyers in the family law system, and a scoping study for a National Survey of Children and Young People in Out-of-home Care.
Melissa Willoughby
Senior Research Officer, Child and Family Evidence
Melissa Willoughby is a member of the Child and Family Evidence team, where she engages in knowledge translation activities across a range of research projects related to child and family wellbeing.
Melissa’s research focuses on health inequity, violence, criminal justice and gender. She has expertise in both quantitative and qualitative methods, including analysing linked administrative data. Melissa is a PhD Candidate at the University of Melbourne examining violence-related deaths and morbidity among adults and young people involved in the criminal justice system. She also holds a Research Assistant position at the Centre for Adolescent Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and is an Honorary Fellow in the School of Population and Global Health, the University of Melbourne.