Peer support organisations share a common strong rights-based foundation and a philosophy of delivering good practice peer support. In this module we continued our focus on the Balanced Scorecard (BSC) as a way of understanding where we are heading and then structuring our journey toward the destination. You have been asked to consider how you are currently performing (Funders, Members), how you may improve your processes, motivate and educate your team and enhance systems (Build) as well as your ability to learn and improve now and into the future (Learning). In this Module we considered where we want to be, what evidence we need to gather to understand where we are currently, and how far we have to our destination. This has involved a series of steps and decisions that will be unique to your own peer organisation. However, the process of asking questions and gathering evidence to be able to answer them; will be a journey that all programs can benefit from.
Peer support programs operate in a complex, changing environment. We have used the BSC and its four perspectives to structure program objectives. For each objective we then need to select an indicator, or something that will inform us about that objective. Each indicator needs to be able to be measured in some way, so that we can see how close or far away, we are from our vision. For each objective’s indicator, we considered a target. What level are you hoping to achieve? How close are you? For example, do we need a marketing strategy to reach a particular number of new members?
Having established the ‘what’ we will be measuring, we then considered the ‘who’ and ‘when’ questions. While it is likely to be most efficient to use existing information sources, it is clear that in many cases new tools or instruments will be needed to enable us to assess our situation. To gather relevant evidence, we will require relevant and tailored tools. In our next Module we will continue our journey as we consider in more detail tools and the specifics of gathering evidence.