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

More documents

Recommendations

Info

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
4.2 Key Messages from Local Evaluation: Children and Young People’sParticipationLocal evaluators aimed to establish Children’s Fund stakeholders’ understandings ofthe aims of children and young people’s participation. Within some programmespartnership boards appear to have agreed understandings of participation; thesetend to equate to a ‘consult and inform’ model of participation whereby children’sviews and experiences are elicited in order to inform the design and development ofchild focused and responsive services. In most programmes, however, localevaluators reported diverse views of how participation should be defined and appliedranging from promoting children’s involvement in all aspects of service design anddevelopment, through to some circumspection among stakeholders about thedifficulties of overcoming current ways of working whilst avoiding tokenistic gesturesof participation. Nevertheless, evaluators reported that professionals and adults’definitions of participation have tended to predominate, rather than those of childrenand young people themselves. Similarly, among projects evaluated, participation wasprimarily equated with consultation activity. Recommendations made in localevaluation reports emphasise the need for partnerships to develop shared definitionsof participation and to develop a coherent strategy in implementing participation.Such findings correspond with those of the NECF (see NECF, 2004c).Within a number of evaluation reports participation is conceptualised in relation tohierarchical typologies. Different activities are depicted in terms of the extent to whichchildren initiate or control the decision making process as a framework for locatingChildren’s Fund activities. Many local evaluators described high degrees ofcommitment to participation among stakeholders. However, in practice, progress inintroducing participative activities tended to be reported as relatively limited andactivities often correspond with lower degrees of initiation or control according to thehierarchical scales.Many local evaluators pointed out, particularly in interim reports in which they tendedto comment on the early stages of Children’s Fund partnerships’ development, thatpartnerships were under pressure to prioritise setting up their programmes over andabove establishing the principles of how to generate meaningful engagement withchildren, parents and indeed the wider community. Some evaluators accepted,however, that they had offered preliminary findings that were based on evidence ofemerging practices rather than being able to comment on the longer term effects ofpartnerships’ work on participation.52Chapter 4
Page 1 and 2:
RESEARCHLocal Evaluation ofChildren
Page 4 and 5:
When citing this report please show
Page 6 and 7:
ContentsExecutive SummaryIIntroduct
Page 8 and 9:
Local Evaluation of the Children’
Page 10 and 11:
10. Local evaluators highlighted th
Page 12 and 13:
20. Some evaluators involved childr
Page 14 and 15:
successes of partnerships’ work (
Page 16:
38. Conditions reinforcing effectiv
Page 19 and 20: Children’s Fund initiative, namel
Page 21 and 22: engaging with policy makers, practi
Page 23 and 24: starting points and timetables of d
Page 25 and 26: 1. Process evaluation: critical ass
Page 27 and 28: time commitments and pressures amon
Page 29 and 30: tantamount to auditing when origina
Page 31 and 32: to a certain extent, because I was
Page 33 and 34: acknowledge that findings presented
Page 35 and 36: methods that were seen as being app
Page 38 and 39: Chapter 2: Methods Adopted by Child
Page 40 and 41: place. In one Wave One evaluation t
Page 42 and 43: provided by projects weakened the a
Page 44 and 45: confidently attribute any trends in
Page 46 and 47: A Wave Two evaluation report descri
Page 48 and 49: • Recruitment of the researcher:
Page 50 and 51: drawn on by evaluators include semi
Page 52 and 53: Chapter 3: How Local Evaluation Sup
Page 54 and 55: participation and work towards the
Page 56 and 57: highlighted in Table 1). These incl
Page 58 and 59: of had an impact. So we used a case
Page 60 and 61: Similarly an evaluator of a Wave Tw
Page 62 and 63: Evaluators sometimes struggled to a
Page 64: 6. A number of factors inhibit eval
Page 67: A number of evaluations described h
Page 71 and 72: for staff, typically dedicated part
Page 73 and 74: Where partnership working was descr
Page 75 and 76: strategic changes in children’s s
Page 77 and 78: 9. Evaluators reported that some co
Page 79 and 80: The importance of providing finding
Page 81 and 82: National Evaluation of the Children
show all

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

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?