Authors: Lucy Macmillan (ANROWS), Micaela Cronin (Domestic and Family Violence Commission, AU), Tessa Boyd-Caine (ANROWS, AU),Tiffiny Lewin (Lived Experience Advisory Council Member) (National Lived Experience Advisory Council, AU)As evaluators, we are often asked to examine complex, systems-change initiatives. Domestic, family and sexual violence is a national crisis. In late 2022, the Commonwealth Government, alongside all state and territory governments released the second National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032. The plan provides an overarching national policy framework to guide actions across all parts of society, including governments, businesses, media, educational institutions and communities to achieve a shared vision of ending gender-based violence in one generation.
After 12 years of implementation under the first National Plan, assessing whether our efforts had made a meaningful difference towards ending violence against women was a difficult task. We ask: As we embark on setting up measurement and evaluation systems against the second National Plan, how do we avoid making the same mistakes again?
The Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission was established in 2022 to focus on practical and meaningful ways to measure progress towards the objectives outlined in the National Plan. This session will discuss:
- the current plans, opportunities and challenges in monitoring progress, and evaluating the impact of this national framework, and
- the role of lived-experience in evaluation and how large publicly-funded institutions can balance their monitoring and sensemaking roles at the national-level with accountability to victim-survivors.
The panel will explore common challenges faced when seeking to monitor and evaluate complex national policy initiatives, including data capture, consistency and capacity, and explore some of the opportunities ahead.
The audience will have the opportunity to contribute their insights and expertise on how we, as evaluators, approach the evaluation of complex systems-change at a national scale, and over extended durations, while also prioritising the voices of those most affected. How do we collectively contribute to understanding if these national policy agendas will make a difference?
