Local Evaluation of Children's Services Learning from the Children's ...

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successes of partnerships’ work (that is a politically/tactically driven model ofthe relationship between evaluation and decision making).29. Some evaluators indicated that they experienced difficulties controlling thedissemination of evaluation outputs, how outputs would be used, and indeedhad experienced difficulties reporting on negative aspects of partnerships’work. In some cases Children’s Fund board members’ multiple priorities andtheir commitments to their own agencies and other partnerships meant theyhad insufficient time to act on evaluation findings.30. A number of evaluators experienced disagreement with stakeholders aboutthe legitimacy of different evaluation methods. Some stakeholders favoured‘hard’ quantitative evidence and rejected the value of qualitative methods,whilst other appeared to have limited understandings of notions such asindicators and impacts or had unrealistic expectations of what evaluationscould produce. Maintaining ongoing dialogue in order to manage partnerships’expectations is therefore important.Prevention, participation and partnership working: key messages fromChildren’s Fund local evaluation reports31. The focus of local evaluators’ work on prevention has been to analyse theactivities of Children’s Fund projects. Most evaluations conceptualisedprevention in relation to the Children’s Fund sub-objectives, and/or to theEvery Child Matters outcomes framework in assessing projects’ progress. Anumber of evaluators related the work of projects to the four ‘tiers’ ofprevention adopted in the Children’s Fund Guidance.32. Local evaluators widely report on the beneficial impacts of Children’s Fundpreventive projects on children and young people’s lives and that manyprojects are effective at targeting ‘hard to reach’ groups of children and youngpeople. Some evaluators suggest that voluntary and community organisationshave been particularly successful in engaging and addressing the needs oftraditionally excluded groups through offering alternative approaches to thoseof the mainstream agencies in terms of being flexible, accessible and nonstigmatising.Executive Summaryvii
33. Understandings of ‘prevention’ among strategic stakeholders and serviceproviders within partnerships tend to be described in local evaluation reportsas divergent, although some acknowledge that progress is being made bypartnership boards in negotiating a consensus of understanding.34. Evaluators identified diverse definitions of participation among stakeholders inmost partnerships. Many evaluators reported that professionals and adults’definitions of participation tend to predominate, rather than those of childrenand young people themselves. Often these equate to consulting children andyoung people in order to inform the development of responsive services.Despite considerable commitment to participation, in practice progress tendsto be relatively limited, with few examples of children and young people’sdirect participation in decision making at strategic and project levels.35. A number of evaluators suggested that ‘hard to reach’ children and youngpeople and younger children were particularly under-represented in Children’sFund participative activities, although some evaluators identified examples ofparticipative activities that had been effective in engaging an inclusive rangeof children and young people.36. Local evaluators pointed to the importance of partnerships resourcingdedicated participation officers, the need to train practitioners and servicemanagers and the importance of providing organisational support for serviceproviders to develop effective participative practices. Considerable investmentof time is also needed if participation strategies are to be effective. Someevaluations suggest that voluntary and community organisations may beparticularly effective in promoting participation due to their abilities to work inflexible and innovative ways.37. Evaluators reported different experiences and understandings of partnershipworking, although within many partnerships agreements had been reached onwhat partnership working means. Some stakeholders saw partnership boards’responsibilities as ensuring probity and demonstrating that they met CentralGovernment requirements. Others emphasised collaborative working betweenorganisations to bring about cultural change in children’s services.viiiExecutive Summary
Page 1 and 2: RESEARCHLocal Evaluation ofChildren
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Page 6 and 7: ContentsExecutive SummaryIIntroduct
Page 8 and 9: Local Evaluation of the Children’
Page 10 and 11: 10. Local evaluators highlighted th
Page 12 and 13: 20. Some evaluators involved childr
Page 16: 38. Conditions reinforcing effectiv
Page 19 and 20: Children’s Fund initiative, namel
Page 21 and 22: engaging with policy makers, practi
Page 23 and 24: starting points and timetables of d
Page 25 and 26: 1. Process evaluation: critical ass
Page 27 and 28: time commitments and pressures amon
Page 29 and 30: tantamount to auditing when origina
Page 31 and 32: to a certain extent, because I was
Page 33 and 34: acknowledge that findings presented
Page 35 and 36: methods that were seen as being app
Page 38 and 39: Chapter 2: Methods Adopted by Child
Page 40 and 41: place. In one Wave One evaluation t
Page 42 and 43: provided by projects weakened the a
Page 44 and 45: confidently attribute any trends in
Page 46 and 47: A Wave Two evaluation report descri
Page 48 and 49: • Recruitment of the researcher:
Page 50 and 51: drawn on by evaluators include semi
Page 52 and 53: Chapter 3: How Local Evaluation Sup
Page 54 and 55: participation and work towards the
Page 56 and 57: highlighted in Table 1). These incl
Page 58 and 59: of had an impact. So we used a case
Page 60 and 61: Similarly an evaluator of a Wave Tw
Page 62 and 63: Evaluators sometimes struggled to a
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6. A number of factors inhibit eval
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A number of evaluations described h
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4.2 Key Messages from Local Evaluat
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for staff, typically dedicated part
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Where partnership working was descr
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strategic changes in children’s s
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9. Evaluators reported that some co
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The importance of providing finding
Page 81 and 82:
National Evaluation of the Children
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