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

A Wave Two evaluation report describes how initial questionnaire survey work withstrategic partners was followed by in-depth qualitative focus group research withthese stakeholders; this had allowed them to examine a broad range of themes indepth and explore further issues that emerged over the course of the evaluation andthereby gain a relatively complete understanding of key processes and theireffectiveness:… we looked at the composition of the Board; at the organisations represented.We looked at how Executive Board members were recruited on to the Boardand then looked at the relationships between the organisations on the Boardand how those had relationships with the Children’s Fund team. We looked athow the involvement of each organisation affected the ways of working andallocation of resources within the programme; we looked at the frequency andnature of meetings and at the input of children, young people and parents andcarers into that process; the effectiveness of communication and the extent towhich they had increased the capacity of the local community and voluntarygroups.2.4 Engaging Children and Young People in Aspects of Local EvaluationsMany evaluations have involved children and young people in their work in a range ofways. This has been particularly pertinent in the context of the Children’s Fundprogramme, which has emphasised the participation of potential beneficiaries ofChildren’s Fund services, namely children, young people and their families, but alsothose of communities more broadly. Indeed, such groups have been traditionallyexcluded from evaluation and as subjects of social policy research (for example,Coote, et al., 2004). The analysis of local evaluation reports suggests that less thanhalf of evaluations involved children and young people as questionnaire respondentsor participants in interviews and/or focus groups; of these many indicated that theyhad used ‘participatory’ methods of engaging children and young people. One localevaluator of a Wave Three partnership, for example, emphasised the importance ofcapturing the ‘felt’ impact of the programme on the lives of individual children, youngpeople and their families. This evaluation team attempted to do this by employing avariety of data collection techniques, designed to gather information in appropriateenvironments:… where appropriate, interviews with service users made use of a portablediary room, to gauge user’s opinions of the service they attend…the aim of thediary room was to provide a private, fun space in which users could give theirthoughts and opinions on the service they attend…the diary room was childfriendlyand safe.A Wave One partnership evaluation report indicates that as a result of work in whichchildren and young people’s voices were elicited, they were also able to collate ‘aChapter 2 29