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

to a certain extent, because I was able to employ the techniques that I thoughtwere best at that particular time.Many evaluators were engaged in detailed meetings with programme managers andmembers of management teams in the early stages of evaluations and at regularintervals in order to develop sets of questions to be addressed, to agreemethodologies, timescales, themes and elements of the partnership to be evaluatedand a programme of feedback. Some evaluators appear to recognise the potentialsignificance and benefits of adopting a participative approach to evaluation (that is,responding to the views of service users in shaping their evaluation work), whilst alsoresponding to the articulated needs of those stakeholders managing the partnership(in particular programme managers and management teams). One Wave Onepartnership, for example, held an event that involved local young people who wereasked to raise questions they would like to be addressed by the local evaluation.Chapter 2 of this report provides examples of participative approaches of some localevaluations.Responsiveness to changeThe majority of evaluation reports indicate that the aims and scope of evaluationswere defined in agreement with partnership members; most often the programmemanager and/or members of the management team. Many evaluations also stressedthe importance of adopting a flexible approach enabling them to respond to changingneeds of the partnership over time. This is seen as important in a rapidly changingnational and local policy environment (as noted in Section 1.2 above). Someevaluations emphasised the importance of regular catch-up meetings with keyprogramme staff to ensure the ongoing relevance of the evaluation. Otherevaluations adopted an integrated approach within partnership structures (such asbeing formal members of partnership sub-groups that focus on evaluation andlearning) that enabled them to interactively engage with partnership stakeholders.One Wave One evaluator indicated that ideas about evaluation were shared througha number of networking events. Such gatherings brought together evaluation officersfrom initiatives such as Sure Start, Children’s Fund and Special Education projects toform a Monitoring and Evaluation Group that aims to combine approaches toevaluation consistently within the local authority area.14Chapter 1