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:
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
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
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?