Measuring Change
Many organisations, government departments and the voluntary and community sector have signed up to the principle of involving children and young people in decision-making. However it remains important to provide evidence that participation leads to change that benefits children and young people-and the wider community.
Why measure change?
Measuring whats changed as a result of participation enables an organisation to track the impact of their participation work and to what extent it has influenced decisions making. It is an important part of both evaluating and improving practice and celebrating young people’s involvement in creating positive change.
The Measuring the Magic? report identifies six questions to ask of participation work:
Do young people influence public decisions?
How are decisions improved by involving young people?
How do organisations benefit from involving young people?
How does the wider community benefit from involving young people?
How do the participating young people benefit?
How do other young people benefit?
Action Impact
Action Impact is a tailored programme that will enable you to measure and track your organisation’s impact. Through this change programme key team members can participate along with stakeholders. It has been extensively piloted in a variety of children’s service settings and is informed by research and practice from a range of sources. Carnegie Leaders in Learning Partnership and Participation Works are working together to deliver this innovative programme.
Find out more about Action Impact
Tools
Evaluating Participation Work: The Toolkit and The Guide - The Toolkit is a compilation of sample forms and activities that you can adapt or copy to collect information during your evaluation. The Guide is a guide to evaluating participation work.
Evaluating Participation Work - Evaluation in a Nutshell. This simple guide from Participation Works breaks down the evaluation process into simple easy to follow steps.
Involving children and young people in evaluation. This section of the Taking Part in Making Decisions: Training for 8 to 12-year-olds resource includes a series of activities for involving children and young people.
Recording Positive Activities
The National Youth Agency has developed two guides for Connexions staff to support the recording of young people’s participation in positive activities (National Indicator 110).
What's Changed Tool
The What's Changed tool from the National Youth Agency is a downloadable template you can use for capturing stories of change in the lives of young people. The Research team at the National Youth Agency support groups completing the tool, and feature completed stories of change on the What's Changed web-pages and in Children and Young People Now magazine.
Measuring the Magic?
This report examines the different ways in which involving young people in decision-making could be measured and evaluated.
Are you listening? A toolkit for evaluating Children’s Fund Services with children and young people. A toolkit for evaluating Children’s Fund services with children and young people.
The Checking the Scoreboard section of TAKING PARTicipation seriously toolkit explores decision-making and governance. Produced by the New South Wales Commission for Children and Young People, Australia.
