Evaluation of the Community Advisory Communities to Boards of Victorian Public Health Services
Evaluation of the Community Advisory Communities to Boards of Victorian Public Health Services
Client: Department of Human Services - Victoria
The evaluation took place over six months commencing late 2007 and involved the evaluation of legislatively mandated Community Advisory Committees (CACs) to Boards of Victorian Public Hospitals. Six regional and thirteen metropolitan CACs were evaluated as was the contribution of the Health Issues Centre (HIC) which provides support and facilitation services to CACs and Health Services through a DHS annual contract.
Evaluations were conducted against established guidelines for conduct of a CAC and involved a self-evaluation tool and site-based interviews with stakeholders plus validation of the self-assessments. Each Health Service/CAC was subsequently provided with an individual report. The final report identified that there was general compliance with the guidelines together with substantial variance in performance of individual CACs. Influencing factors included support from the Board and Senior Executive, turnover and leadership of CACs and the length of time they had been in operation. Te evaluation found that CACs form an important and influential conduit for communication and liaison between health services and the communities they serve.