Authors: Lydia Phillips (Lydia Phillips Consulting ), Jo Farmer (Jo Farmer Consulting )As evaluators, we often work with people who have experienced trauma and/or marginalisation (whether we realise or not!). We're also seeing increased recognition in government and community organisations of the importance of lived experience and cultural safety in program design, implementation and evaluation.
Beginning an evaluation with a clear plan for how you'll engage and empower people from diverse cultural backgrounds and people who have experienced trauma can help to ensure success - of your project and of participants' experience.
So how can you design an evaluation framework to recognise diverse cultural backgrounds and empower survivors of violence?
And how can evaluators who don't have lived experience or identify from those cultural backgrounds best navigate the design process?
This session will share strategies, learnings and reflections from a project working with a multicultural family violence service to develop a culturally-safe, trauma-informed evaluation framework for a two-year program.
It will:
- explore what worked well and what was challenging in the project
- discuss similarities and differences in the concepts of culturally-safe and trauma-informed practice, drawing on current literature; and
- pose questions and provide suggestions for evaluators who want to develop their skills in culturally safe and trauma-informed evaluation practice.
The session will offer key tips and strategies that are translatable to other contexts and conclude with reflective questions for attendees.
