Date/Time: Wednesday 27 June 2018, 10:30-17:00

Venue: Partners' Room 8.10, Newcastle University Business School

In this workshop we will explore how the System Effects methodology can be used to understand and engage with complex policy problems, such as place-based disadvantage, unemployment, or poor health. 

System Effects is a methodology developed by Dr Luke Craven at UNSW Canberra to explore the ‘user’ or citizen experience of complex phenomena. The methodology emphasises the varied nature of social problems, their causes and consequences, while at the same time giving practitioners tools to understand the complex nature of how these different factors manifest at the community- or population- level. System Effects can be used to support the design, implementation and evaluation of interventions aimed at changing the structure of complex systems to drive particular outcomes, helping policymakers and practitioners to ask questions like:

• Design: How can policies most effectively address systemic and complex determinants of disadvantage, given its varied nature?
• Implementation: How can the implementation of policies be effectively tailored to the systemic dynamics of particular contexts?
• Evaluation: How can we assess the systemic impact of particular interventions and their interactions with the contexts in which they are deployed?

We will explore how the System Effects approach can be adapted to help answer each of these questions providing a range of tools to assist policymakers and practitioners in promoting systems change.