Measuring the Process and I mpact of Children and Young People’s Participation Mererid Lewis, Emyr Williams and Stacey Jones Participation Unit
Aims of Presentation • To raise awareness of the National Children and Young People’s Participation Standards for Wales. • To look at how organisations can move forward from measuring the process of children and young peoples participation to measuring the impact.
Guesstimates!! Trial Question- How many people had a take-away on the weekend?
1.How many people know how they could go about doing a self-assessment?
2. How many people in this workshop have registered on the Standards Self- assessment website?
3. How many people have completed a Self-assessment?
Measuring the Process - National Standards for Participation These are a good quality process to help measure and promote the participation of children and young people in making decisions, planning and reviewing any action that will affect them. 1. I nformation- which is easy for children and young people to understand 2. I t’s Your Choice – enough information and time to make an informed choice 3. No Discrimination - every young person has the same chance to participate. 4. Respect- Your opinion will be taken seriously 5. You get something out of it- You will get something from the experience 6. Feedback - You will find out what difference your opinion has made 7. I mproving how we work- Adults will ask you how they can improve how they work for the future
Measuring the Impact- What’s Changed?
I mpact Assessment Project: Background • Standards and Kite-marking • Measuring Outcomes • A Common Framework • Links to other developments: WAG Outcomes Framework, RBA and Demonstrating Success
A number of challenges need to be addressed: • Currently No agreed indicators against which to measure effective child participation • There is a need to construct universally applicable indicators in order to be able to compare initiatives in terms of the outcomes and impact they achieve. • Children themselves have a role to play in determining the objectives in any initiatives in which they are involved. • The outcomes of participation are often qualitative not quantitative and therefore hard to measure • Long-term changes in children’s lives which cannot be measured within a short time period.
No simple answers exist to these challenges…. • However, Standards and Tools with which to measure child participation will: • Help define the legislative and policy environment needed to promote and respect children’s right to participation • Clarify who are the duty bearers and their responsibilities • Enable children to gain a greater understanding of what they hope to achieve. • Help identify what support and resources are needed to strengthen child participation. • Provide evidence to support the case for political commitment to the realisation of children’s participation rights. • Encourage donors to see the benefits of investment in strategies to promote child participation.
Impact Assessment Project Who? • Participation Consortium (Standards sub- group) • Anne Crowley,Cardiff University • Other inputs – NYA, Save the Children
Outcomes, Indicators & Performance Measures Outcome is a condition of well-being for children, adults, families or communities in plain language Population Children born healthy Indicator is a piece of measurable information which helps quantify achievement of an Outcome Rate of low birthweight babies Performance Performance Measure is a measure of how well an individual service etc is working 1. How much did we do? 3 types 2. How well did we do it? 3. Is anyone better off? = customer results
Performance Measures (RBA model) Quantity Quality How much How well Effect Effort did we do it? did we do? Is anyone better off? # %
Types of Measures Found in Each Quadrant How much did we do? How well did we do it? % Common measures # Clients/customers e.g. client staff ratio, workload ratio, staff turnover rate, staff morale, % staff fully served trained, % clients seen in their own language, worker safety, unit cost % Activity-specific # Activities (by type measures of activity) e.g. % timely, % clients completing activity, % correct and complete, % meeting standard Is anyone better off? % Skills / Knowledge # (e.g. parenting skills) % Attitude / Opinion # (e.g. toward drugs) % Behavior # (e.g.school attendance) % Circumstance # (e.g. working, in stable housing)
Impact Assessment Project What? FRAMEWORK Three dimensions of change: • changes to policy and services ; • changes to social and power relations and • changes to the children or young people’s personal development and well-being. • Other dimensions of change could be added depending on the objective of the participation activity, e.g. parents, community.
Impact Assessment Project What? FRAMEWORK • For each dimension of change a small number of indicators and suggested monitoring arrangements
STEP 1 – Purpose and Measuring Success • The first step is to decide on the participation activity/structure/mechanism that you want to evaluate the impact of and to document the purpose(s) of this example of children or young people’s participation. • Based on the purposes you have identified look through the Impact Assessment Framework and decide on the most appropriate indicators to be used and add others that are distinctive to the participation you are evaluating.
• For example: if one of the purposes identified is: to increase children or young people’s rights awareness then select indicators from the framework (under Dimension B.). If one of the purposes is: to enable children or young people to have a voice in shaping services, then some or all of the indicators under Dimension A. should be selected.
STEP 2 – Fill in the specifics • Agree the specific objectives of the activity you want to evaluate. • For example if the participation activity relates to trying to influence a particular policy, service or practice (that a youth forum has selected, for example) record the change that the young people want to see (see Indicator A4 in the Framework on page 5). • Try and be as specific as possible – it will help you later when you come back to assess the impact of children or young people’s participation. • Young people specifying they want ‘careers advice available in informal surroundings outside of school as well as in school and to have drop in sessions’ is going to be easier to evaluate in policy terms than young people specifying they want ‘better careers services’.
Under Dimension A: Impact on Polices/Services. • As well as recording the changes that the children or young people want to see, if you are using indicator A3 – record the issue(s) that the activity is hoping to raise awareness of and define who are the ‘relevant service providers’. • Add any additional indicators selected by children or young people.
Dimension B: Impact on Social and Power Relations. • If you expect or want to have an impact on broader social and power relations between adults and children/young people – have a look at the suggested indicators under Dimension B. • This can seem the most complicated ‘dimension of change’ in the Framework. Activities designed to challenge negative stereotypes of young people, demonstrate the valuable contribution young people can make and thereby encourage adults at all levels of society and in all roles (professional, parent, neighbour etc.) , to engage with, listen to and take into account children and young people’s views when making decisions about things that affect them, would come under this heading. The suggested indicators under Dimension B aim to help you capture evidence of change along these lines.
Dimension C: Impact on personal development and well- being. • All the indicators under this Dimension rely on ‘before’ and ‘after’ measurements. When looking to assess the impact of participation on the personal development and well-being of children you will need to decide on which children or young people the participation is expected to impact on – usually it will be the children involved in the forum or group but you may have a wider target group. • Again, the forum or group may wish to supplement the suggested indicators with one’s of their own.
STEP 3 – Data Collection • Collect the BEFORE information and store it safely. • Decide when you are going to collect the AFTER information. • In making this decision you need to consider: • At what point might you expect to see change? • Changing a policy or a service or how a service is delivered can take a long time – it might require a policy decision, an implementation plan, training before any changes are felt on the ground. • The availability of the data – some statistics are only published annually; surveys of children or young people in schools cannot be undertaken during school holidays or over examination periods. • How long the group or forum and/or individual members will be around for. • When you are reviewing the impact of the participation activity you will probably want to try and understand how these changes have occurred and what helped or didn’t help achieve a good impact or maximum benefits.
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