Community Managed Organisations Outcome Measures Project

AMHOCN collaborated with Community Mental Health Australia (CMHA) on a three stage project that focused on the use of outcome measures in mental health community managed organisations (CMOs) across Australia.

The first stage of work involved scoping the measures that were currently being used in the mental health CMO sector. This involved a survey of mental health CMO service providers and also a set of funder interviews which helped to identify both the measures that were currently being used, the infrastructure in place to support the collection and examples of good practice in the use of outcome measures in the sector.

The second stage of work, undertaken concurrently with the scoping exercise, was a literature review to identify potential measures that had suitability for use within the mental health CMO sector. The measures were organised across seven outcome domains: recovery, cognition and emotion, functioning (activities of daily living and interpersonal relationships), social inclusion, quality of life, experience of service provision and multidimensional measures. A set of criteria for measures selection was identified and this produced a short list of potential measures. The final report on the results of the scoping work and the literature review work is available to download: National Community Managed Organisation Outcome Measurement Project: Final Report.

The results of the scoping and literature review were presented to a workshop of key sector and funder stakeholders. The workshop discussions informed the development of a guidebook that:

• offers recommendations on tools that could be used by mental health CMOs; and
• useful information on issues to consider when implementing, using and reporting outcome measurement in organisations.

Download: Implementing Routine Outcome Measurement in Community Managed Organisations.