NGO Sector Contributions to He Kakano
The NGO pre-conference workshop chaired Allen Morris-Yates (link to some of Allen's work) drew on the expertise of the 70 people who attended. The purpose was to to identify the types of information that NGOs see as useful, how it might be used and what information is needed to plan for the future.
The conversations where seeded by presentations from a range of agencies that reflected the diversity of activity and opinion.
Presentation by Rob Warriner WALSH Trust Board
Presentation by Lyndsay Fortune Pathways
The following were the key messages:
Diverse NGOs offer diverse types of services to meet a diverse range of needs. It's not fragmentation, it's part of the sector's strength.
There are very different funding arrangements between DHBs and other Government agencies that require different forms of reporting
Solutions
Acknowledge the diversity, describe it, code it, then..
rationalise the funding models and reporting requirements at a national level.
NGOs recieve limited feedback on currently reported information and it appears the there is little evidence that is being used
Solutions
Create feedback loop. Make it work at the national and regional level
Keep it simple
Maintain clear reporting time frames under an agreed development cycle: report, feedback, modify and report again. using this cycle, reports will improve with time and practice, as data quality.
What is the direction and where is the leadership?
Need to describe a shared view of where we are going that fosters ownership of the journey.
Need to use plain language and dialogue that acknowledges diversity.
Leadership must be across sectors: health, family, housing, employment - all those areas that most impact on mental health
Leadership needs to acknowledge that NGO work is real, of value and at a community level and not always measurable at the individual person level.
Diversity of service needs and service provision means diversity in outcome expectations so NO single NGO outcomes measure
How do we measure social inclusion? Paper presented at the He Kakano Conference October 2007 by Marion Blake
