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

order to provide effective preventive services for children and families’. Thepartnership supplies workers who provide support in homes and schools in responseto children and parents’ needs. The project is described as successfully focussing onlow level preventive work by supporting families ‘… who are struggling and have aneed but who are not yet at crisis intervention point and whom may be distrustful ofsocial services or other professionals’.A key message noted in local evaluation reports is that there tend to be divergentunderstandings of ‘prevention’ among stakeholders within partnerships, althoughprogress is being made by some partnership boards in negotiating a consensus ofunderstanding. This corresponds with the findings of the work of the NECF (NECF,2004d). One local evaluation report, for example, notes that within the partnership:‘There is no clear single agreed unitary definition of the meaning of prevention’.Similarly, another local evaluation suggested:If there is no shared understanding [from interviews with key stakeholders] as towhat prevention means there is a risk of confusion in implementation. Indeed asthese extracts demonstrate prevention means so many different things, itperhaps risks meaning nothing.Some reports highlighted that some service providers tend not to explicate what theyhope to achieve and how their activities are connected with prevention. Indeed, anumber of evaluators noted very divergent views among service providers about theiraims, for example a report on a Wave One partnership states:Some project managers said that they provided a service to ‘plug the gap’ anddid not think it was necessary to change any practices whilst others had moreof a reform agenda with clear explanations of how their services provided newopportunities to make a difference to the everyday lives of disadvantagedchildren and young people.It was also noted in a number of reports, however, that despite limited clarity aroundprevention in terms of what this means and how this can be applied, a number ofpartnerships were linked to networks and partnerships that were emerging locallythat were taking thinking on prevention further. A local evaluation report from a WaveOne partnership, for example, describes how a youth crime prevention project hascreated a multi-disciplinary panel to decide on preventive interventions for youngpeople at risk of offending. As the panel consisted of key strategic players in the localauthority, it is not unlikely that such discussions around prevention have been heardat partnership board level.Chapter 4 51