Evaluation of the Mental Health, Wellbeing and Resilience Grants

The increase in climate-related natural disasters means that communities need to be disaster resilient and prepared. After severe flooding on Australia’s east coast in 2022, PHNs with affected areas in their region received federal funding to address wellbeing and resilience. Country to Coast Qld PHN (CCQ) undertook consultation with local stakeholders to identify needs and from this developed the Mental Health, Wellbeing and Resilience Grants program. The program provided funding for projects aimed at improving mental health, wellbeing and resilience in Gympie, Noosa, and Maryborough.

This grants program was a new funding model for CCQ, different from the usual contracting for services approach. It drew on a place-based and systems change lens, to improve connections in disaster management, build skills, and use existing resources in the three areas. The funding took a relational model, involving collaborative discussions between the grantees and the funder prior to contracting, an ongoing community of practice, and coaching in delivering community disaster resilience projects, and monitoring and evaluation.

The purpose of the evaluation was to understand what works when funding community organisations to do collaborative resilience and wellbeing work and to understand achievement of short-term collective outcomes and emerging impacts in the three locations.

We were also tasked with building the evaluation knowledge and practice of the funded organisations, which we did through participation at a co-design workshop, community of practice workshops and a webinar.

We co-developed a program logic, key evaluation questions and our evaluation plan with grantees, CCQ and a consultant from Plan C (a consultancy focused on resilience and disaster preparedness).

We used a mixed-methods approach, drawing on findings from two rounds of grantee surveys, participant observations at workshops, semi-structured interviews and a document review. The surveys collected data about connection and collaboration taking place as part of the grant, and we used social network analysis to draw out findings about how and with whom partnerships were strengthened.

Interim and final report findings were tested with the grantee group and CCQ during a community of practice workshop.

ARTD also helped grantees with their evaluation plans and gave advice on how to implement and report them.

Regular meetings between CCQ, Plan C and ARTD were held to consider how best to support grantees, reflect on implementation and outcomes as well as lessons learned, and identify project risks. This became a second informal community of practice which helped to strengthen the approach of all three organisations in supporting grantees and helped with gathering evaluation data and testing findings.

We found that the Mental Health, Wellbeing and Resilience Grants program delivered outcomes in most of the program’s identified impact areas and that elements of the novel funding model helped the programs to be responsive to community input and enable the outcomes. Overall, the grants program delivered strong value for money for the region.

Lessons from the mid-term evaluation report and from conversations between ARTD, CCQ and Plan C helped to inform the design of a larger CCQ project focussed on community resilience and primary care in regional areas.

The final evaluation will be used to help showcase lessons about relational and developmental ways of working with nonprofit providers, both within CCQ and more broadly with others in the disaster resilience and recovery sector.