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

These shifts in thinking are widely embraced at local level by area-based initiativesincluding the Children’ Fund.This recognition has also led to changes in thinking about evaluation. In the UKclinical medicine has historically embraced the need for evidence based decisionmaking more than many other sectors, although it has tended to adopt a traditionalapproach to demonstrating ‘what works’. Standards of evidence in clinical medicineemphasise experimental methods; ‘randomised control trials’ and systematic reviewsof randomised control trials in particular are seen as the ‘gold standard’ of evidence(Becker & Bryman, 2004). Conversely, qualitative methods such as interviewingprofessionals or service users would be considered the least robust forms ofevidence. Whilst ‘lay’ perspectives such as the views of service users have nothistorically been valued, such experiences are now more readily acknowledged aslegitimate and important forms of evidence (Coote, et al., 2004; Becker & Bryman,2004). Traditional experimental approaches are now widely seen as inappropriate foridentifying what works in complex community and area-based initiatives in whichthere are no simple cause-and-effect relationships between interventions andoutcomes. A Cabinet Office report, establishing a framework for assessing qualitativeevidence, clearly signals that government departments are now valuing thecontribution of qualitative methods in social policy research and evaluation (Spencer,et al. 2004). Furthermore, it is widely recognised that a combination of evaluationmethods should be used appropriately to address different questions in differentsettings (Coote, et al., 2004; Becker & Bryman, 2004).There are also changes in the ways evaluators are seen as engaging with policymakers and practitioners. Rather than being equated with traditional auditing andperformance management roles, evaluation is frequently expected to provideformative or even dialogic feedback to help policy-makers and practitioners developprogrammes of activities. This is as well as generating more sophisticated,theoretically driven understandings of concepts such as social exclusion. Someevaluation is now committed to redressing social power imbalances and embracingdiverse and sometimes contradictory experiences, perspectives and accounts ofsocial problems and policy solutions (Donaldson & Scriven, 2003). Some of thesepotential roles and orientations identified in the literature are summarised in TableOne. Whilst some of these roles are well established in evaluation practice, othersare starting to emerge as important departures in the ways evaluation is seen asIntroduction 3