A volume, defined
Every piece states what it is, when it publishes, whether anyone reviewed it, and under what licence it can be used. That block is not decoration; it is the difference between a document you can cite and a document you can only agree with.
Nothing here is peer reviewed, and every piece says so in the negative rather than leaving you to infer it. Editorial review is mine. Sources are listed on the page, live when the note was written, and where a figure could not be established the note says that instead of reaching for a rounder number.
The series posts by quarter rather than by date. A quarter is an honest unit for work that is written when it is written; a specific day would suggest a schedule that does not exist.
Volume One, Q3 2026
17 pieces, listed longest first, because the ones carrying an argument should not sit behind the ones drawing a distinction.
- Method notes Nine short notes on how evaluation and change work is actually done. Each is a few hundred words with its own sources, collected here rather than spread across nine pages, because a note this length should not be asked to stand as an essay.
- Readiness before scale A pilot's success is not yet evidence it is ready to grow. Readiness is a separate question, and skipping it is how good programs break once they get the funding they asked for.
- The cliff at eighteen Most young adults get a long, soft landing into independence. Youth in government care get a date. This is what the cliff does, why we built it, and what a ramp would look like.
- Developmental, formative, summative: which evaluation do you need? Most evaluation questions get answered with whatever method is familiar, not the one that fits the moment. Here is how to tell the three apart and choose without guessing.
- Outputs are not outcomes An output is what you did. An outcome is what changed because of it. The gap between the two is where a lot of good intentions quietly stop counting.
- Durable work without a false choice Employment and independent practice are often presented as competing identities. A better question is what combination can provide a reliable floor, meaningful work, room to build, and enough capacity to keep going.
- Reporting the finding nobody wants A finding a leader does not want to hear is where research either changes a decision or quietly gets buried. Delivering it well is a craft, and it is mostly done before the meeting starts.
- Contribution, not cause An evaluation can rarely prove a program caused an outcome. The honest craft is knowing when to claim contribution instead, and saying so out loud, in a way a decision-maker can still use.
- Dignity is infrastructure A non-deficit stance is not a warmer vocabulary laid over the same machinery. It changes who defines success, what evidence counts, how people enter and leave a service, and what happens when life becomes difficult.
- The sixty-second summary A board reads the first half page or nothing. Writing the top of a report is a discipline, not an afterthought; it is where "evidence made usable" is either true or a slogan.
- Why Canada has thirteen child welfare systems Jurisdiction is not a dry legal question; it decides who gets help.
- Jordan's Principle and what substantive equality means A child-first rule, and the idea of fairness underneath it.
- What the Calls to Action ask of evaluation Reconciliation made honest measurement an obligation.
- More than half The overrepresentation of Indigenous children in care, by the numbers.
- Who holds the data holds the power Indigenous data sovereignty, and the First Nations principles known as OCAP®.
- What culturally safe evaluation actually means Why standard frameworks measure the convenient thing.
- Two-eyed seeing in evaluation Etuaptmumk: both ways of knowing, with both eyes open.