A Report by the Family Centre Social Policy Research Unit
for Oranga Tamariki—Ministry for Children
16 March 2020

Update: The Formative evaluation - Wave 2 (#7097) was published in October 2020.

Oranga Tamariki has partnered with the New Zealand Police, Department of Corrections, Youth Horizons Trust (the provider) and the developers of FFT to design and deliver the pilot programme.

Youth Horizons began implementing PW: FFT-CG in Auckland in July 2019.

The Wave 1 formative evaluation report provides baseline findings about how well PW: FFT-CG operated in its first six months. It reports on the first of three ‘waves’ of formative evaluation, which focus on operational improvements and will be followed by an impact evaluation (focused on achievement of expected outcomes).

The findings are based on an analysis of administrative data and data collected from professionals involved with the pilot. Data was not collected from participants, but they will be asked to take part in Wave 2 of the formative evaluation.

The evaluation found that:

the partner agencies are working well together and are making a real effort to interweave Māori and Pacific cultural frameworks with the Western FFT therapeutic model improvements have been made to the programme’s referral process but more work is needed to increase take-up of the programme: a high proportion of families exit after they have been allocated to a therapist, or after their first therapy session.(From the website). Record #6634