This presentation discusses prolonged action research that took place in a local community in the north of lsrael. The research was aimed to support community development by examining the policies and resource investment for coping with children at risk problems. The researchers identified that there was neither uniform policy nor collaborative decision making when designing intervention programs. There was no monitoring mechanism or tracking after programs' performances or consequences. The reason was lack of information transfer among relevant local institutions (welfare, formal and informal education) in the community.
The researchers designed a friendly evaluation tool to investigate the improvement of information quality and fluency at a community level. They followed the process closely, using the action research method for 1.5 years and 4 cycles to upgrade and improve the information quality, the decision making mechanism and its utilization. The action research outcomes improved the effectiveness of community coping with care of children and youth at risk as follows:
. Designing a unified platform for local authority collaboration policy among its social and educational institutions.
. Improving the quality of information fluency.
. Decision-making based on data.
. lncreasing effectiveness of resource utilization.
. Participants understanding the importance of evaluation as a part of designing and operating programs.
Recorded: October 2009, Dubrovnik - Cavtat, Croatia.
Coping & Resilience International Conference
Organiser: The Brisbane Institute of Strengths Based Practice
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