Community Learning Development Resource 603 – 02
EVALUATING COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT PRACTICE
SUMMARY
How can we evidence, measure and demonstrate the success of our practice, for the different stakeholders in community development and regeneration work? This resource (603-02) identifies some understandings and practicalities of evaluation.
KEY IDEAS ABOUT THE EVALUATION OF PRACTICE:
- Evaluation includes all aspects of measuring and evidencing the efficiency and effectiveness of our work, including how well our monitoring and reviewing contributes to improvements and planned developments in what we do
- We need to understand the value of evaluation, how it works for us and how clients and other stakeholders can be enabled to participate effectively with us in the evaluation of our work
- Within our practice there are in effect two key processes:
- Estimating, evidencing and measuring the success and achievements of those we engage with – Assessment
- Estimating, evidencing and measuring how well the experience we provided has enabled them to achieve success – Evaluation
- It is helpful to see the estimation of client success and learning (Assessment) and the estimation of the contribution of the experience (Evaluation) as two different but essential processes. There is a need for workers and agencies to ensure that both processes are carried out effectively.
- Evaluating means looking at aspects of our work, e.g.,
- how well do we plan?
- how effective is our face-to-face work with local people?
- how well does our practice help deliver benefits for our clients?
- how well does our work impact on and improve neighbourhood and community life?
- should we be doing this work?
- We evaluate for a variety of reasons, including:
- To find out how effective we are in enabling clients to build their individual capacity and contribute to community development
- To find out how efficient we are in terms of the effort and cost
- To identify the strengths and weaknesses in what we do
- To identify any gaps and shortfalls, that we need to address
- To identify areas for improvement and development
- Who might evaluate the work:
- Ourselves as workers?
- The agency?
- Clients/learners – being given ownership of the processes?
- Other stakeholders – funders, inspectors, partner agencies?
- Local representative bodies – the Local Strategic Partnership?
Developing evaluation practice and ways of evidencing and measuring our work, demands time and effort if we do not have much in the way of an established and validated evaluative framework and processes.
In evaluation we should provide and analyse both soft evidence – often narrative and anecdotal descriptions of the work, and hard evidence – usually measurable and statistical evidence of the success of the work.
Evaluation processes and outputs, prompt the thinking and planning for improving and developing our practice and performance and importantly provide evidence and information about success for stakeholders – clients, workers, agencies and funders.
Workers, in community settings, frequently find themselves in the position of designing and using their own local evaluative methods.
Evaluative practice within community development and community-based learning is frequently challenged by funders, etc., for not providing adequate hard evidence – quantitative data of the quality and cost-effectiveness of the work.
’Self-evaluation is a form of evaluation whereby the project seeks to understand and assess the value of its work. The project is the judge. The use of self-evaluation techniques allows those people involved in the project- whether they be managers, staff or users – to reflect upon their practice and to view their project in a different way. In this way the process contributes to the development of an organisation’’. (Charities Evaluation Services)
PROMPTS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION
- Is evaluation an essential activity for any worker or agency?
- In your experience is evaluation of practice one of the most neglected aspects of community development work?
- Why should the funding of community development and neighbourhood regeneration work require projects to assess the achievements of their clients, and evaluate and prove the effectiveness of project practice?
- If we believe that people should have ownership of the assessment of their own learning and achievements, should we also seek to give them a stake in the evaluation of what workers do, and how might we do this?