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

example. Further efforts, such as a proposed good practice poster, should bemade to ensure that this model is effectively disseminated.Despite the positive experiences of involving children and young people in theevaluation processes, there were some limitations to this work. These relate to lackof resources available to evaluators, difficulties establishing representative samplesof those accessing services and the low priority given by the partnership to this typeof evaluation activity. Lack of adequate resources for substantial pieces of work withchildren and young people had potential consequences for important relationships oftrust. A Wave One evaluation, for example, described how limitations in evaluationfunding had undermined some aspects of their work:Due to the evaluation parameters and resources, it was only possible to makeone contact with the (young) advisers. While the input received wasdisseminated widely in the planning process, it was not possible to conductfurther consultation and feedback to the advisers.Furthermore, a Wave One evaluation faced difficulties when attempting to involvechildren with special needs in their work; this required evaluators to balance themethodological requirement for representation with the perceived complexity ofworking with children and young people characterised as having special needs: Wetried to make it as random as possible but I think inevitably given the nature of thework and in some cases the quite extreme difficulties that those children had, therewere definite sensitivities involved which we had to be constantly mindful of.2.5 Chapter Summary1. Local evaluators drew on multiple quantitative and qualitative data sourcesand analysis methods that reflected the different elements of partnerships’programmes they aimed to examine. Quantitative methods, sometimescomplemented by qualitative methods, were frequently adopted for assessingthe impacts of interventions. Qualitative methods, sometimes supplementedby quantitative methods, were primarily employed for generating learningabout processes such as the effectiveness of partnership working,commissioning and approaches to mainstreaming.2. Quantitative methods adopted by evaluators include structured questionnairesand interviews with stakeholders and analysis of secondary statistical datasources, including the analysis of project monitoring data. Qualitative methods32Chapter 2