Symposia, panel, round table style (max 55 mins) National Suicide Prevention Conference 2025

Introducing a National Evaluation Framework for evaluation of mental health and suicide prevention initiatives (#50)

Alexandra AL Lorigan 1 , Sharon AMB Marra-Brown 1 , Jade JM Maloney 1 , Myfanwy MM Maple 2 , Sarah SW Wayland 2 , Krista KV Vanderheide 3 , Phil Lancaster 4
  1. ARTD Consultants, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  2. University of New England, Sydney, new south wales, Australia
  3. Australian Government Department of Health and Aged Care, melbourne, victoria, Australia
  4. Department of Health and Aged Care, ACT

Evaluation is an important tool in working together towards a better mental health and suicide prevention system for people and communities who need it.  Good quality evaluations provide program managers, staff and funders with credible evidence to inform decisions about quality improvement and funding, and inform service users about the quality of programs and services.

 

Evaluations in suicide prevention can be challenging – with evaluators and those who commission evaluations navigating funder requirements, data quality issues, managing ethics and concerns about risks to participants, and difficulties attributing outcomes to a program in the context of in a highly complex system.

 

Under the National Mental Health and Suicide Prevention Agreement, governments agreed to develop a National Evaluation Framework (the Framework) and National Evaluation Sharing Guidelines (the Guidelines). The Framework was developed in consultation with people with lived experience, the sector and governments.

 

While the Framework was developed under the National Agreement, it is designed to be useful in guiding the evaluation of any mental health and suicide prevention program.

 

In this panel, the Department of Health and Aged Care and evaluators with extensive experience in evaluating suicide prevention initiatives will discuss how you can use the framework to:

 

  • ensure evaluations are lived and living experience and person centred
  • assess readiness for evaluation
  • define the focus of an evaluation, including evaluation questions
  • choose a fit-for-purpose evaluation design, including data collection methods
  • ensure evaluations are conducted ethically
  • work with stakeholder on sensemaking to ground evaluation findings in context

 We will then field your questions and conundrums, and work together to find practical solutions to your evaluation challenges.