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

• Recruitment of the researcher: children and young people were involved inwriting the job description, advertising post and interviewing candidates.• Design of the evaluation: steering groups of children, young people andparents helped design and test the evaluation approaches and fieldworkinstruments.• Fieldwork: children and young people undertook fieldwork with support andguidance.• Analyses of the findings: children helped to analyse and interpret datacollected and consider how to present the findings.• Presentation of the findings: children and young people were involved indisseminating findings.A similar approach was adopted by a Wave One evaluation. This evaluation workedwith the partnership to establish the ‘… questions they (children and young people)would want answered from an evaluation’. Following this, the intention was to workwith a small team of older young people to ‘select several questions and visitidentified projects to talk to staff and young people involved…about the work they aredoing’. What were called ‘Young Reporters’ collected evaluation material fromprojects in an attempt to draw children and young people into the evaluation process.According to the evaluators, a key advantage was that children and young peoplebrought informality to the research process and an ability to elicit appropriate data,the generation of which may not have otherwise been recorded, as is described inthe evaluation report:The Young Reporters are able, in a very direct way, to feedback to project staffwhat the children… are saying and also to ask challenging questions…Feedback from projects suggests that this is quite a disarming process thatinduces replies that might not have been so readily given to an adult evaluatorFor this and a number of other evaluations, recognising the skills of children andyoung people and applying these to research processes was seen as enrichingevaluation data. By being interviewed by their peers, younger service users wereable to ‘give candid views about their experiences’. Furthermore the success of theYoung Reporters could be used as an exemplar of good practice within theChildren’s Fund partnership and be drawn upon as a useful evaluation tool:It has been acknowledged within the programme that the Young Reportersinitiative represents a model of good practice…projects are learning from theChapter 2 31