As independent evaluators we suggested that the following key questions should be addressed:

Are Children's Fund services reaching the right children and families?

What effect are the services having on their lives?

Is the attempt to meet the Children's Fund key sub-objectives (these are: higher school attendance and grades; lower youth crime; better health; high service use and easy access; real user participation ) making a difference in terms of user satisfaction?

Do the results show that value - intended and unintended - has been added?

These questions were answered by:

Making sure that children, young people and parents were involved in the evaluation process through listening, asking for their advice, and building skills so that they undertook as much of the evaluation as they wanted;

Taking a multi-method approach collecting qualitative and quantitative data, short term and longer term, using a variety of techniques including the internet;

Supporting the evaluation of the four services so that the process of evaluating and developing from evidence could continue after we finished;

Linking up to monitoring systems already identified in the St Helen's Children's Fund Plan (e.g. schools, police, health) where possible;

Making regular reports to the programme management committee to ensure that early findings fed into service development.

Publications/Outputs: Final Report

Our Partners: University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) - Grant Holder: Brian Corby

Project Funder: St Helen's Children's Fund