Evaluation of Community Advisory Committees

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Introduction

On 5 November 2008 the Minister for Health, The Hon. Daniel Andrews met with Community Advisory Committee (CAC) members, health service executives and board members to discuss the findings of the Evaluation of the effectiveness of the Community Advisory Committees to Boards of Victorian Public Health Services. The Minister acknowledged the CAC role in ensuring health services are connected to the needs of their communities and the need to continue to support all health services who seek to work in closer partnership with consumers, carers and community members. Victoria has an effective devolved health service governance model and CACs are a key board advisory committee within this model.

CACs were established under the Health Services Act 1988 (s.239, s. 65ZA and 65ZB) to increase consumer, carer and community participation in metropolitan public health services in 2001 and in regional public health services in 2004. An evaluation of the effectiveness of CACs was stipulated in their guidelines and Health Outcomes International Pty Ltd was engaged by the Department to undertake an independent evaluation during 2007-08. The scope of the evaluation included the 18 health services required to have a CAC to their board, St Vincent’s Health who choose to govern with a CAC and the Health Issues Centre who are funded by the Department to provide support to CACs and their health services.

The evaluation was conceptualised within the following framework which was developed with CAC members prior to the engagement of the evaluators:

Table 1

The final report provided by Health Outcomes International Pty Ltd found:

Participating Boards, health services and CACs widely endorsed DHS’s decision to legislate the introduction of CACs. Even in those health services where CACs were in their relative infancy, or where there had been setbacks to CAC performance, there was a conviction reported that the process and strategy was worthy of continued support.

and concluded:

The challenge for the future is to ensure the trajectory of expansion and improvement in CAC role, performance and contribution, which has emerged in recent years, is maintained and supported. The lessons learned through the evaluation should be used to support this process. This must be done recognising the context within which CACs are expected to operate (under the four levels of the ‘Doing it with us not for us’ policy platform). Without this context there is a risk that CACs will attempt an unmanageable agenda with resultant frustration for CAC members and other community participation stakeholders.

Based on their findings the evaluators made a series of recommendations which are addressed in the Department’s corresponding response and proposed action(s) document. The Statewide Quality Branch of the Department will work with CACs, health services and Health Issues Centre to implement the proposed actions to the evaluators’ recommendations.

Download documents

Department of Human Services Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Community Advisory Committees to Boards of Victorian Public Health Services Health OUtcomes International - Final Report (1,863kb, pdf)

Department of Human Services Response to Community Advisory Committee Evaluation Findings (84kb, pdf)

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