The Road Home: Building the evidence base for a service delivery model that integrates housing, mental health, medical and legal services.

The evaluation of the Road Home (RH) program has revealed many learnings of interest to practitioners, researchers and evaluators. The focus of this analysis is twofold - on an innovative approach to building an evidence base using a developmental evaluation and action learning design and how research knowledge and skills can be applied in practitioner contexts and be robust, rigorous and above all useful. It particularly features the role of reflective practice, an affordable, underutilised and easy to access evaluation and program improvement method for practitioners working with evaluators and researchers. Appreciating what is involved in approaching evaluation and other forms of organisational research in this way is important if industry collaborations and innovations that bring theory to practice and practice to theory are to be successful.