An Online Survey on Identification of Evaluation Capacity, Needs and Current Practice of Programme Evaluation in Community-based Rehabilitation

Joerg Weber , Sarah Polack , Sally Hartley
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.5463/dcid.v27i2.565
Submitted: 2020-09-14 11:05:13
Published: 2016-09-07

Purpose: Evaluation of Community-based Rehabilitation (CBR) is important for developing good practice and providing a foundation for evidence of efficacy of practice. Since not much is known about the extent to which monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are carried out within CBR programmes, this study aimed to enhance knowledge by focussing on current M&E activities, the need and capacity of programmes to conduct evaluations and the challenges experienced.

Method: An online survey of 15 questions was developed, field-tested and sent out to 236 CBR managers in Africa, Asia and Latin America. 

Results: The majority (86%) of the respondents indicated that their programmes had been evaluated in the past.While this was mainly done by international donors (87%), only around half of the respondents reported programme participants as the main audience. Just over half of the programmes (54%) included people with disabilities, their families and community members in evaluation processes. Insufficient financial resources were considered the most important challenge to conduct evaluation, particularly in the African region and among smaller programmes. The complexity of CBR was also indicated as an important barrier to evaluation.

Conclusions and Recommendations:  Although evaluations have been widely implemented in CBR programmes, many of them are not locally owned, and people with disabilities and their families are often not included in evaluation processes. The issues of limited financial resources and CBR complexity reflect current discussions in other areas of mainstream development. It is therefore recommended that models for evaluation in CBR should learn from, and be embedded in, ongoing developments in mainstream evaluation in international development.

Keywords

Evaluation stakeholders evaluation audience outcome evaluation process evaluation monitoring barriers to evaluation

Authors

Joerg Weber

Joerg Weber is global advisor on Community Based Rehabilitation (CBR) at CBM, advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO) and executive editor of the WHO INCLUDE online disability course. Joerg is a cultural anthropologist and physiotherapist with more than a decade of disability programmatic experience in CBR. He has also worked as a physiotherapist in rehabilitation for stroke patients and children with cerebral palsy. Previously, Joerg was technical coordinator at the Clarendon Group for the Disabled in May Pen/Jamaica and served as CBM’s Regional Advisor for the Caribbean and Latin America on CBR and Physical Disability. 

Sarah Polack

Sarah Polack is a Senior Lecturer with the International Centre for Evidence in Disability at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) where she undertakes research and teaching activities in the field of global disability. She has an MSc and PhD from LSHTM. Sarah has worked on many disability research projects in low and middle income countries including most recently on disability measurement in surveys, access to rehabilitation services, the impact of participatory training for carers of children with cerebral palsy and on the economic costs of exclusion of people with disabilities.

Sally Hartley

Professor Hartley is currently an Emeritus Professor at University of East Anglia, UK, an Honorary Professor at the University of Sydney, Australia and also the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, UK, where she sits on the steering committee for the ‘International Centre for Evidence on Disability’. Her research has directly informed the development of participatory approaches to promote equal access for disabled people and their families in low and middle income nations. Prof Hartley was a Founder member and the first Executive Director, of the Pan African Community-Based Rehabilitation Network (Afri-CAN). Her impact is corroborated by her role as co-editor and major contributor to the WHO’s first World Report on Disability 2011.


How to Cite

Joerg Weber, Sarah Polack, Sally Hartley (2016-09-07). An Online Survey on Identification of Evaluation Capacity, Needs and Current Practice of Programme Evaluation in Community-based Rehabilitation. Disability, CBR & Inclusive Development, Vol. 27 No. 2 (2016): Summer 2016, 5-18. https://doi.org/10.5463/dcid.v27i2.565

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