Made to measure? Evaluating community initiatives for children: Introduction (original) (raw)

AI-generated Abstract

Practitioners of children's services face significant pressure to evaluate and measure the effectiveness of their work due to government mandates for evidence-based practice. This process is complicated by diverse evaluation methods, conflicting views among researchers, and the burden of multiple assessment requirements for different programs. The symposium discussed in this paper aimed to identify challenges and advocate for a broader focus on community-level evaluation rather than on individual programs, which may provide a clearer understanding of the overall impacts on children's long-term outcomes.