When naming this resource there were many debates, regarding language. Being within the disability sector, we all certainly understand the power of the words we use and being aware of their potential impact. Discussion centred on whether or not to use the term ‘evaluation’ to label this resource. Evaluation is defined in the Cambridge Dictionary as ‘the process of judging something’s quality, importance, or value, or a report that includes this information’ (see https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/evaluation). Evaluation involves observation and measurement, and comparing these findings to a set of criteria which are considered by the peer organisation as being indicators of good performance.
Within peer organisations, particularly those involved in the DSO project, evaluation has been undertaken in various ways and with differing levels of success (which will be discussed in more detail below). This led to many holding the view that evaluation was a term that was too academic, and possibly a little narrow, for the information collection process we are talking about in these materials.
Some people may think that evaluation needs to be undertaken for the benefit of people outside of the peer organisation, such as the NDIA and its ILC team. Others may believe that we only do evaluation within an annual review process, or in preparation of a grant report. In this resource, we are focussing on the entire process of collecting/assembling information for a specific purpose. This can include evaluation, undertaken for a range of stakeholders and reasons, both internal and external to the organisation. It includes gathering information, allowing us to examine our peer programs, its resulting feedback and informative links. Monitoring helps team members and peer leaders to understand whether their peer program is progressing on schedule and to ensure that program activities, inputs, outputs and external factors are proceeding as planned. In contrast, evaluation assists organisations to assess the extent to which projects have achieved pre-determined objectives. This means, we first need to be clear about what it is we are aiming to achieve – What is the purpose of our peer programs?
Monitoring and evaluation are fundamental aspects of good peer program management at all levels. They can be effective tools to enhance project planning and development over time. Within this resource, we focus upon developing expertise across the entire information collection process. This applies from our very first thoughts about why we should do this, thinking about what it is we may want to collect, right through to the final stages of putting our information together for a distinctive use or report. Monitoring and evaluation bring a range of benefits to any peer organisation, including:
- Providing data on program progress and effectiveness;
- Improving program management and decision-making;
- Facilitating accountability to stakeholders, including funders;
- Supplying data to plan future resource needs;
- Affording evidence on effectiveness that could help to secure continued funding or additional funding for new initiatives that build on previous work; and
- Offering data useful for policy-making and advocacy.
In these materials, we want to present a broad approach that encompasses gathering evidence for monitoring, evaluation and any other task to bring about positive outcomes in the sector. We certainly don’t want peer organisations to be scared off by a term that is overloaded with past experiences of short term, high workload experiences which provided little feedback to enable improvements. Collecting information, which is relevant and can be utilized, has potential to bring a sizeable number of benefits to disability peer support programs. This is our motivation within this learning resource.
