Blue EDGE Program Evaluation

Project Details

Blue EDGE is a program run by Blue Light Victoria that aims to build positive relationships between young people, their peers, and police, providing young people with tools to make healthy, safe decisions now and into the future. It is a twice weekly program run at selected Victorian high schools over eight weeks (one school term) for participating students. The AERC has been engaged by Blue Light Victoria to evaluate the outcomes for youth participants and police participants of Blue EDGE programs from 2021 to 2023. The evaluation delivered an interim monitoring report in December 2021 and an interim impact report in December 2022 for program learning. Working with stakeholders, the AERC team devised five criteria to evaluate Blue EDGE: engaging, collaborative, empowering, safe, and growth mindset. To date, the data indicate Blue EDGE is performing well in the collaborative and growth mindset outcome areas. There was mixed evidence for performance in other outcome areas but, importantly, no evidence of any areas of particularly poor performance. Importantly, the AERC reports outline opportunities for program improvement based on the findings and as evidenced by the data. A final summative evaluation report is due at the end of 2023.