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In response to the perceived failure of both the state and market models of service delivery, governments have embarked on a reform program that draws on the community sector to expand the suite of available policy and service delivery arrangements. This paper explores and identifies the nature of changed relationships between government and the community sector. It uses a case study that examines the operation of a new type of community organisation, and analyses the affectivity and outcomes from the experience of a community based networked arrangement. Although there is evidence of a shift to more relationship‐ oriented models of operation because of either mandate or preference both community and government sectors have found it difficult to make the necessary adjustments to these new ways of working. Community has begun the shift to this new relational approach but finds it difficult to sustain the momentum and tends to revert to more independent and competitive modes. Governments find it difficult to make the necessary adjustments to power‐sharing and resource allocation and continue to operate as 'business as usual' through the traditional bureaucratic authority of command and control. In this way, the rhetoric of collaboration and partnership between government and the community sector is not necessarily matched by policy and action supporting the practice of 'new ways of working' although these 'experiments in service delivery' have opened the way for adopting more innovative and effective approaches to service delivery.

Abstract

This article draws on a case study of organizational change with the Queensland public sector to showcase the contribution participatory approaches to evaluation make to sustained change.
Key points outlined in the paper include: changes in human service organizations generally, and child welfare services in particular, have been proven to be difficult to achieve and sustain. Participatory processes including participatory evaluation are presented as key strategies to enhance the uptake of social and organizational change initiatives.
Parallels to continuous change models are found within policy formulation and evaluation theories. In particular, participative evaluation models share similarities to continuous change models through their reliance on self‐evaluation and self‐determination as means of promoting change.
A theoretical contribution to organizational change theories is made through the development of a change model that includes a participatory evaluation component as part of the equation for sustainable change. It is proposed that this model has a wider practical application.

Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

English
The development of social services policy and the delivery of those attendant services have come to occupy a core role for modern governments. The modes of policy development and service delivery and their coordination have shifted between centralised models operated by decision-making elites and a peripheral model in which government divests some level of authority and responsibility for the development and implementation of social services policy to community-based actors and organisations. Changing policy stances bring these models and their associated coordination principles into dominance at different points in history and, importantly, problematise social services policy making and delivery through the continued existence of residual aspects of these multiple approaches.