Authors: Ian Falk (Mission Australia), Paul Royce (Mission Australia)
Evaluation can often be treated as a technical process, shaped by existing evaluative ‘types’, such as formative, summative, realist evaluation among others, and often focused on program performance and measurable outcomes. In complex, place-based contexts such as youth homelessness in Australia’s Northern Territory (NT), however, evaluation needs to be much more than this – it becomes a contested and adaptive practice shaped by existing evidence, culture, geography and structural constraint. This paper presents emerging results from a layered multisite, multimethod evaluative scoping study examining the accommodation needs of young people aged 8–24 who are at risk of, or experiencing, homelessness, where First Nations young people comprise around 90% of those impacted. The place-based, First Nations-led consultation process functioned as a responsive, continually adjusted evaluative design. Rather than applying a single evaluation lens, the project adopted a layered evaluation model integrating the evidence base, relational consultation, iterative and adaptive methodological design, program case study analysis, and system-level mapping. Methods included multi-media narrative engagement in remote communities, semi-structured interviews with urban stakeholders, and for both urban and regional/remote sites, iterative reflection on emerging methodologies and insights. This approach revealed that accommodation pathways are shaped less by individual behaviour than by structural misalignment between Western housing systems and young people’s lived realities, including kinship, mobility and connection to Country. In addition, the project established evidence-based criteria for ‘successful’ programs and services, which informed the program and service mapping process. In terms of the evaluation methodology, the paper found that layered and iterative place-based evaluation provides a more practical, useful and credible framework for understanding youth homelessness in complex, diverse and remote settings, enabling evaluation to move beyond judgement toward explanation, learning and culturally grounded, co-designed place-based system design.
