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

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Chapter 1: Roles and Principles of Local Children’s FundEvaluationsThis chapter describes the roles adopted by local evaluations of Children’s Fundpartnerships and reflects on a number of key factors that have influenced the abilitiesof local evaluators to undertake their roles at different stages in partnerships’development. The chapter then explores the range of principles adopted by localevaluators that were seen as reinforcing the credibility and effectiveness of theirwork.1.1 Roles of Children’s Fund Local EvaluationsThe Children’s Fund Guidance clarifies that local programmes are expected to beinnovative and develop new practices and approaches to tackle social exclusion forchildren and young people (CYPU, 2001). The lessons from the Children’s Fundprogrammes are to be elicited and the ways in which projects and other Children’sFund activities contribute to achieving outcomes for children are to be understood.The document indicates that local evaluators have the role of gauging theperformance of Children’s Fund activities and projects; this was expected to supportpartnerships to make appropriate changes to their programmes:The key purpose of local evaluation is to allow partnerships and services tobetter understand how well they are performing and to act on emergingevidence by making relevant changes to their programme. This will also ensurethat the development of the partnership and services is evidence-based.(CYPU, 2001, p25)Furthermore, it is aimed that local evaluation will identify key lessons from practice toinform local policy on children’s services:Local evaluation is to be commissioned by the partnership to enable you tounderstand what works, how and why; to monitor progress against local andnational objectives and targets; and to feed in lessons to reconfigure servicesas a result of evaluation findings… the overall purpose (of local evaluation)should be to inform future policy in relation to the local context and theparticular needs and circumstances of the community. The local evaluationshould consider whether services provided by the partnership are reachingyoung people, children and families showing early signs of difficulty and whateffect if any the services are having on their lives.(CYPU, 2001, p7)In practice, local evaluators have interpreted the aims defined in the Guidance andapplied aspects of them as outlined in their reports. The Children’s Fund initiative hasallowed for partnerships to develop strategies and practices according to theirrelevance at the local level. Reflecting this, local programmes have sought to definethe specific roles evaluators take on to correspond with programmes’ priorities,Chapter 1 5
starting points and timetables of development, and to social and geographicalcontexts and histories of developing services. Some local evaluators have thereforebeen commissioned to undertake whole programme evaluations looking at allaspects of the progress of a programme, whilst others have focused on particularaspects of programmes’ work or selected activities and projects. It is clear thatindividual evaluators have adopted a wide range of tasks; the range of tasks adoptedby a cross section of evaluations is illustrated in Table 2.Table 2: Summary of the multiple roles adopted by Children’s Fund localevaluators over the course of partnerships’ developmentPrinciple rolesKey tasksStrategic planning • Supporting a partnership by providing information andadvice that is drawn on in strategic planning• Providing baseline data such as identifying existingservices and activities, gaps in service provision; localsocioeconomic data; how the partnership fitsalongside existing statutory/VSC services in the localauthority area. Such activities are depicted asinforming early decisions such as commissioningprojects and other activities• Assessing the position of partnerships in relation tolocal and national policy changes in order to keeppartnerships up-to-date in a context of changing policydrawing on policy and research documentsOngoing management/development• Evaluating processes such as partnership working andchildren’s participation• Highlighting examples of successful/unsuccessfulpractices• Highlighting examples of good practice from outsidethe local authority area to inform programmes• Highlighting challenges and barriers to a partnership’swork• Evaluating specified themes or aspects ofprogrammes’ work• Looking at change over the course of a partnership’slife• Mapping partnership activities over time (for example,descriptions of the range of ways Children’s Fundservice providers embrace children and youngpeople’s participation)6Chapter 1
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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
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National Evaluation of the Children
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