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

eports tend to provide affirmation of progress rather than highlight less successfulaspects of project work. This approach may have meant the loss of important lessonslearnt from mistakes made, perhaps occurring more frequently where projects areseen as innovative or ground breaking.Evaluation in a context of changeEvaluators have undertaken their work in a complex, changing policy environment inwhich there have been different understandings locally of how the Children’s Fundshould be used. Policy changes in the lead up to the Children’s Bill/Act anduncertainties about financial management arrangements for the Children’s Fund (thechange in responsibilities from the Children and Young Persons Unit to theDepartment for Education and Skills), were described by a number of evaluators asproblematic. Uncertainties relating to the ongoing evolution of local level structuressuch as children’s trusts were also described as potentially problematic, as was theannouncement of budget cuts for the Children’s Fund initiative, undermining asystematic approach to planning and conducting evaluations. Indeed, NECFevidence suggests that this experience appears to have parallels with the difficultiesChildren’s Fund service providers have in planning their activities in the longer term.Illustrating this point an evaluation report of a Wave Three partnership states:‘[funding cuts] led to the evaluation having to be conducted on a year-by-year basiswith no guarantee of continued funding. The continued uncertainty over funding foryear 3 will adversely affect the strategic planning of the evaluation’. The changeswere also seen as potentially further undermining building relationships with keystakeholder groups including service providers. As one local evaluator reporthighlighted: ‘Funding uncertainties experienced by many projects also meant thatthere was some ambivalence to be engaged in external evaluation when thereappeared to be little or no benefit’.A number of local evaluators reported that their roles and positions have beensubject to unanticipated change or, have found that such roles resulted in tensions.For example, a local evaluator was originally engaged with Children’s Fund projectsby providing facilitation and support to enable projects to learn, develop and improvefrom evaluation activities. At a later stage the same evaluator was called on to assistin commissioning decisions about future funding for projects based on their analysisof projects’ performance. This role change was described as exaggerating potentialdisengagement and mistrust from some project staff who saw evaluation asChapter 1 11