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

for staff, typically dedicated participation officers, to work on promoting participativestrategies, the need to train practitioners and service managers and to provideorganisational support for Children’s Fund service providers to develop effectiveapproaches to participation. It is also widely acknowledged that considerableinvestment of time is likely to be required in order for participation strategies tobecome effective, hence many evaluators recommend that partnerships factor inrealistic timescales in enabling participative practices to become an integral part ofservice delivery and strategic involvement.The positioning of voluntary and community sector organisations within partnershipswas identified by a number of local evaluators as being an important factor inencouraging a wide range of stakeholders to participate in Children’s Fund activities,particularly at operational level. A Wave One report, for example, suggests thatvoluntary and community organisations have the skills to draw ‘…families andchildren who have not traditionally engaged well with mainstream services [intoparticipative activities]’. Several reports describe how voluntary and communityorganisations have been able to bring a more flexible approach to project activity,and are more willing to experiment with appropriate and innovative ways ofaccessing and involving service-users.Some reports raise the concern, however, that lessons relating to participatory workcould potentially be lost if engagement with the voluntary and community sector isnot sustained. This could be done, for example, by ensuring that resources are inplace to support ongoing staff training. Similar concerns related to sustainability weredescribed in other evaluation reports; a number of evaluators highlighted theimportance of partnerships having in place strategies, protocols and guidance tobring coherence to participative practices. For example, a Wave One local evaluationasserts that in order to ensure ongoing accountability, permanent structuressupporting participatory practices need to be implemented and sustained:‘Partnerships need to be both imaginative and transparent, with clarity of objectivesand processes’.4.3 Key Messages from Local Evaluation: Partnership WorkingMany reports analysing partnership working adopted the Guidance document as areference point in defining expectations of how partnership boards should beoperating. Some later reports also referred to the emerging policy context ofpartnership working described in Every Child Matters to help define important54Chapter 4