Collaboration in a Competitive Environment: Evaluation of and Reflections on an Integrated “Youth at Risk” Project

Abstract

This paper reports on the activities, processes and outputs in the first 18 months of a 3 year collaborative project, the Gold Coast Integrated Response for Youth at Risk. Survey, focus group and interview data were collected from project participants as part of a formative evaluation. Results identify both success and ongoing challenges within the project. Five key findings from the project are presented and discussed. These relate to issues such as the need for well designed project evaluation, and negotiating and clearly defining governance processes during the initial project planning stages. In addition, stakeholder communication and engagement processes are identified as an area of concern. The inherent tension of working collaboratively in a competitive (funding) culture and finding an operational balance between developmental processes and more tangible project outputs are discussed.