Engaging with Families is an evolving and ongoing process which includes planning, delivery and evaluation.
Evaluation is not the end point in family engagement. It may mark the completion of a particular focus however evaluation should bring us information and data to support the next iteration of engagement.
When thinking of evaluation, be sure to ask for feedback from all participants.
It is great to hear how well we have done, it is even better to learn what we can do differently or better to meet the needs of the families we work with.
We know that families have changing needs and desires, and it is important to be responsive to this with ongoing evaluation. The changing needs may arise from within the family or on a larger community scale. Examples of internal family changes may be positive or negative such as the birth of a new baby, family unit, food or housing change.
The global pandemic COVID 19 is an example of a whole of community impact, which presented all of us with new and unknown challenges around lockdowns and impacted all families. In Victoria and our local region we were subject to many lockdowns and rules around leaving our homes. There was limited or no access to face to face external influence or supports, new and previously not required needs around remote education and care, fear of physical health and a growing impact on mental health. For some families this was a time of grounding and they adjusted positively to the limited face to face access. For others it was a time of greater need for support and access to services for existing and new challenges.
Opportunities for services to think in new ways to provide connection with families and a continual evaluation of how the needs were being met in an unknown world presented during this time. An excellent example experienced locally was Baptcare Bendigo’s C4C Parent-Child Mother Goose program which offered online stories and songs and were shared via the C4C website. A. community instigated project with families seeking ideas to support connection during this time resulted in many projects such as Spoonville’ where decorated wooden spoons were placed in areas for families to enjoy and contribute to, and teddy bears being placed along fences and in windows for children to look out for.
A strong emphasis then and now is to ensure your organisation is responsive to the current needs of the communities and families you work with.
Key points
- Evaluation is an ongoing process
- Be responsive to the needs of families, listen and learn from them
- Seek feedback from all and value the feedback that challenges us when we learn we have not met the needs of the families.
- If you have made changes based on feedback from a family, client or colleague, let them know.
- If a family has disengaged from your service, find out why.
- Seek feedback at the start and end of each session eg.
- ’What can we do to meet your needs today’
- ‘How did we go today?
- What can we do to make it a better session next time?