Projects

The Narrative Evaluation Action Research (NEAR) project was initiated by the Victorian Department of Human Services, Western Metropolitan Region as a workforce development project with a strong emphasis on reflective practice and story writing. Alongside lead agencies and staff in health services, since 2003 the project has involved three university collaborators: the Action Research Program, Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University of Technology; the Centre for Development and Innovation in Health, Australian Institute for Primary Care at LaTrobe University; and the Australian Youth Research Centre at The University of Melbourne. In 2006 the project and collaborators moved under the auspices of the YRC at The University of Melbourne.

The aim of this project is to build the capacity of Community Health agencies to evaluate and report on their Health Promotion programming. It is designed as a process that might enable health promotion staff, practitioners and management to have an increased opportunity to reflect upon their work as part of annual reporting and evaluation cycles. So far, through the pilot and NEAR phase 2, University collaborators have worked alongside lead staff and management from selected Community Health agencies to develop two sets of evaluation case-study narratives. The narratives range in scope and focus from whole-of-organisation issues (eg community consultation) to the learnings from health promotion work within particular projects.

In phase 1, the collaborators developed Guidelines and a Resource Kit for Producing Narrative Documentation that were trialed in further agencies during 2005 (NEAR 2) and revised in 2006 with extra resources. Beyond 2006, the project's consultation and mentoring will be extended to further agencies and Victorian regions.

The Guidelines and Resource Kit are available online at: www.health.vic.gov.au/healthpromotion/downloads/near.pdf

Contact: Ani Wierenga

Contact: wierenga@unimelb.edu.au