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

highlighted in Table 1). These include: knowledge-driven model (an organisation’swork is driven by evaluation); problem-solving model (evaluation is used to solveproblems/address specific questions/provide a knowledge base for decision making);enlightenment model (evaluation provides a greater understanding of concepts andissues) interactive-model (practice and evaluation interactively influence oneanother); political/tactical model (evaluation is drawn on selectively by anorganisation to legitimise decisions). It is also useful here to draw on the distinctionmade by Clarke (2001): evaluation findings tend to be used by organisations in twoways instrumentally and conceptually. The former denotes the ways organisationsmay act directly on evaluation findings in terms of, for example, changing practicesand deciding to fund particular activities; the latter denotes the ways evaluationmaterial may influence organisations’ understanding of concepts more broadly, andthereby informing strategies and strategic thinking.In practice there were mixed perceptions among Children’s Fund local evaluatorsrelating to the extent to which they believed that they had had an influence onpartnerships’ decision making, although for many the relationships betweenpartnerships and evaluators appear to correspond with the problem solving model(Young, et al. 2002) and evaluation findings used instrumentally (Clarke, 2001).Evidence derived from local evaluation reports and interviews with local evaluatorssuggest that the majority of evaluations appear to pragmatically gather and analysedata concerned with the impact of Children’s Fund programmes, or processes suchas children’s participation and partnership working with a view to offering materialthat is intended to be used by partnerships instrumentally, such as through changingpractices and deciding to re-commission particular projects. Indeed, manyprogramme managers participating in the NECF programme managers’questionnaire survey 4 suggested that local evaluation had helped to identifysuccessful/less successful projects (51%) and how they worked well/less well (56%),as well as to make decisions about continuing funding projects (43%) or whichprojects to promote for mainstreaming (39%). Many programme managers alsoindicated that local evaluation had helped the partnership reflect on strategicpractices and how to improve them (43%).There was also some indication that evaluation had offered partnerships newconcepts or broader frames of understanding (corresponding with the enlightenment4 Based on 120 Children’s Fund programme managers’ responses.Chapter 3 39