Listen Up - Social Welfare Portal

listenup!82 | Chapter 11“Planning and managing the work so as to bringabout particular outcomes – and then finding outwhat outcomes, intended and unintended, you areactually achieving.”CES, 2006The organisations in our project reported thatfunding applications and the different types ofmonitoring and evaluation required by differentfunders and commissioners could prove to be timeconsumingand not always appropriate.“The project has three different funders so theproject has to meet different monitoring criteria. Attimes these requirements can prove time consuming.However, the project does make efforts to rationalisethe data it collates so that each funder receives whatthey require.”Project worker, Experience in Mind,Mind in Brighton and Hove, and Hove YMCAOne project worker explained that their organisationhad found a clear gap in service provision for youngpeople presenting ‘high risk behaviours’. They hadapproached commissioners for funding, but thecommissioners had asked for evidence of this gap inthe form of consultation with young people usingthe service:“Although service user involvement is at the coreof Streetwise… due to the nature of ‘high riskbehaviours’ [such as drug taking] some young peopleare actively involved in, it is difficult to always be ableto engage them in consultations and ask them toarticulate their needs.”Project worker, Streetwise, NewcastleIn their briefing for commissioners, funders andpolicy makers, NCVO confirmed that some formsof monitoring and evaluation could be undulyburdensome and did not necessarily fit in with thework undertaken by the voluntary sector. Thosetaking part in the NCVO research from the voluntarysector gave suggestions such as:“… innovative thinking should be applied tomonitoring and evaluation methods where outputsand outcomes monitoring could entail on-site visitsby funders and face-to-face contact rather than justhaving to submit forms.”NCVO, 2005“… [having ] funders who are willing to attend eventsand accept alternative evidence of outcomes such asvideos, DVDs, and CD-ROMS.”NCVO, 2005IT systems can be a useful aid to monitoring andevaluation. One partner site raised the issue of usingIT systems to keep track of data and the lack ofknowledge their staff had in setting these up. As partof the project, partner sites were asked for a rangeof referral data and it became apparent that this wasan issue for several sites who could not easily accesscollated information.Recording and monitoring ethnicityIt is mandatory for all public sector organisationsand those that take public funds in other sectorsto record and monitor ethnicity. This is therefore aprerequisite for organisations looking for fundingfrom statutory organisations. At the time ofundertaking the research, we found that seven outof eight of the partner sites were recording ethnicitybut that there were potential difficulties in ongoingmonitoring: this is explored further in chapter 6. Aparticular barrier to undertaking effective monitoringis the fact that it is difficult to compare dataeffectively with the ethnic breakdown of the localcommunity, because local data may be based on themost recent census (2001). The need for better localauthority monitoring is therefore essential in helpingvoluntary sector organisations to meet the needs ofall young people in the community.