Community based rehabilitation programmes: monitoring and evaluation in order to measure results

Although Community Based Rehabilitation has now formally existed for almost 30 years, few papers have been written about the results of this approach. The authors hope to contribute with this paper towards methodologies that will help to measure results of Community Based Rehabilitation programmes. The importance of establishing--prior to the development of Community Based Rehabilitation--an extensive baseline has not been extensively covered as the importance of it is almost self-evident; yet the lack of baseline data often severely hampers the possibility of being able to measure the effects of Community Based Rehabilitation. The article places considerable importance on management information systems and monitoring, since it is believed that evaluation will greatly benefit from both the existence of baseline data as well as a well-developed and well-implemented information system. The present article emphasises the need for participatory processes in the development of baseline data and information systems. Four key areas for measuring CBR are highlighted: people, power, public society and partnerships. Finally, a tool is presented in order to evaluate (or monitoring and evaluation) systematically. What gets measured gets done; If you don't measure results, you can't tell success from failure; If you can't see success, you can't reward it; If you can't reward success, you're probably rewarding failure; If you can't see success, you can't learn from it; If you can't recognize failure, you can't correct it; If you can demonstrate results, you can win public support.