Andrew Connolly, Director, South Kaipara Men and Family Centre

Over the past twelve months, a Lotteries Commission funded evaluation of the South Kaipara Men and Family Centre has been completed.  The Centre was formed to deliver programmes which promote the welfare of men, young men and their families and has a staff of three part-time people.  The Director also runs a private counselling practice from The Centre.  The evaluation study appraised the work of The Centre over its first five years of operation and applied an action development model as proposed by Jenkin (2010).  A mixed methods approach to gathering data was used and ensuing data were analysed with the aid of SPSS and NVivo 8.  Findings revealed a much appreciated organisation and highly valued staff.  The community would like to see The Centre obtain secure funding so that, amongst other things, it can become a broker and a deliverer of even more services.  Wider promotion, however, could be both a boon and a blinker to The Centre and its staff.  Against that backdrop, this presentation focuses on the sometimes varying views of the evaluator and the evaluatee.  We especially want to highlight latent consequences that can emerge from evaluation research into community development and allied counselling services. 

To navigate to the condensed version fo the report upon which this presentation was based, click here.