Presentation at Reclaiming Community Development Conference, Clondalkin Drugs and Alcohol Task Force, Dublin, 18 March 2018

1. Measuring Outcomes and Demonstrating the
Value of Community Development Approaches

2. Context:
centralisation of power
and decision making,
reduction of the
activities of the state
individualisation of
social problems,
adherence to new public
sector management
principles.

3. the contracting out of public
and social services
cooption (or coercion) of
voluntary and community
sector

4. the closing down of the
spaces for communities
and community based
services to input into the
decision making
process
the extreme levels of
monitoring, reporting
requirements, and
effectiveness and value
for money evaluations.

5. Outsourcing and
Performance
management targets
evidence of gaming and, in some cases, misreporting of data to avoid
penalties and sanctions under the performance management regime.
Concerns have also been raised that areas of care not covered by
targets may not receive sufficient attention, and that performance
management creates a culture of compliance and risk aversion … that
inhibits innovation. At its worst, performance management has the
effect of disempowering those working … and creating an over-
reliance on central guidance.

6. What do we
value and who
do we value?

7. Community Development
Empowerment – increasing the ability
of individuals and groups to influence
issues that affect them and their
communities
Participation – supporting people to
take part in decision making
Inclusion, equality of opportunity and
anti-discrimination – recognising that
some people may need additional
support to overcome barriers they face
Self determination – supporting the
right of people to make their own
choices
Partnership – recognising that many
agencies can contribute to community
development.

8. The system of dominant social relations creates a 'culture of
silence' that instills a negative, silenced and suppressed self-
image into the oppressed. The learner must develop a critical
consciousness in order to recognize that this culture of silence
is created to oppress. A culture of silence can also cause the
"dominated individuals [to] lose the means by which to critically
respond to the culture that is forced on them by a dominant
culture.”
Overcoming a
culture of silence
Paulo Freire

9. Culture and Science
assigning people into groups
(national, racial, social) to study
our choice of variables, such as
'intelligence' or 'skills'
our description of 'all other things
being equal' (aka ceteris paribus)
the conditions (of, say, 'success')
we use to test our hypothesis
the correspondence between
sample and population

10. Spaces and places

11. open data and open
evaluation

12. using technologies

13. Input Translation
1. What are we looking
at?
DIMENSIONS OF
PERFORMANCE
2. How do we look for it?
PERFORMANCE
INDICATORS
and
DATA COLLECTION TOOLS
3. How do we make a
judgment based on
the input?
PERFORMANCE
CRITERIA
and
PERFORMANCE
STANDARDS
4. How do we
represent the
judgment?
EVALUATION
PRODUCTS
Output

17. Nexus model

18. Logical framework

20. A greater range of data gathering tools

21. A greater range of people involved

22. Stakeholders
can create
and publish
evaluation
content

23. Rich multi media
data set
Deals with multiple realities
Localisation of
evaluation outputs
Repurposable digital evaluation products
– open content NASA Images

24. A greater range of evaluation products

26. Thank you
for
watching
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