EVENT ALERT: “Now you see it, now you don’t!” Gender in contemporary policy.

In its fourth successful year, Power to Persuade’s (PTP) annual symposium is not only going national but is also branching out to include a forum on gender and contemporary policy. Headed up by Lara Corr (@corr_lara), a gender inequity focused public health and social policy scholar, alongside Gemma Carey and Kathy Landvogt (co-directors of PTP), this ground-breaking forum will hit the big issues of how women and policy mix (or don’t) in the current policy climate. Beyond that, the forum, which will be known as PTP:Gender, will explore how to do policy differently by taking a feminist perspective. Save the date for the 17^th September, 9-3.30pm, Australian National University, Canberra.

Evaluation Case Study Week at Power to Persuade

This week is all about practical case studies in evaluation. In particular, this week is all about how I do on-the-ground evaluations with programs.

A while ago I wrote an article about the ‘policy whirlpool’ . This article was based on participant musings from the 2014 Power to Persuade symposium. The policy whirlpool model described four key areas that had to be seamlessly integrated in order to develop good policy that creates change. We have to make sure that our values and our knowledge are integrated, we have to communicate our values and knowledge to others, and we have to have good relationships to make this communication effective.

The three case studies I am posting this week show how evaluators have to mediate values, knowledge, communication and relationships to make evaluation work.

Continue reading to see how the case studies align with the policy whirlpool model.

What it means to defund the Indigenous Law Centre

Dr Leon Terrill is a lecturer in the UNSW Law School and a Fellow of the Indigenous Law Centre (ILC). He outlines how Federal Government cuts to  funding mean the ILC is seeking community support to continue its important work – including the only two Indigenous-specific law journals published in Australia .