Part 2: Co-determining the outcomes that matter with young people leaving care: a realist approach
Abstract
In the current policy and commissioning environments for services aimed at improving the lives of children and families, increasing priority is placed on the ability to measure and demonstrate the effectiveness of social... [ view full abstract ]
In the current policy and commissioning environments for services aimed at improving the lives of children and families, increasing priority is placed on the ability to measure and demonstrate the effectiveness of social welfare intervention. However, this is often delivered in the context of complex social systems in which a multiplicity of factors interplay between those individuals who are managing, providing and using social services. This complexity presents significant methodological challenges in understanding the effect of intervention on individuals’ lives. Often the pressures to produce highly aggregated outcomes data mean that the experience and the voice of those using services is overlooked and the connection between data and lived experience is lost.
The objective of this study was to trial a more ‘bottom up’ approach to measuring outcomes known as Goal Attainment Scaling (GAS) which engages service users alongside their practitioners in co-determining the goals of intervention. Consistent practice in setting, scaling and reviewing means that a quantitative measure of goal attainment can be drawn across the service.
This study was concerned to frame ‘evaluation’ and ‘outcomes measurement’ as participatory and reflexive activities that should be embedded within service delivery. The over-arching aim was to facilitate reciprocal or ‘bi-directional’ learning between the providers and users of services which could underpin interventions, particularly with vulnerable populations of service users.
GAS was implemented with practitioners and young people within the context of a leaving care support service provided by a voluntary sector service. Stein’s resilience theory (Stein, 2005) was used as an organising framework for analysing goal choice and the outcomes ‘footprint’ for care leavers with differentiated support needs in order that services might better time, tailor and target interventions towards discreet service user groups.
The trial was evaluated using a realist research strategy and adopting a mixed methods approach in developing, testing and refining a number of theories about what might work best for service providers and beneficiaries. This revealed the significance of context when introducing new approaches to outcomes measurement and evaluation into practice environments, betraying a concerning picture of the pressures and constraints on practice experienced by a large leaving care service in a climate of austerity and cuts to public services. An analysis of context, mechanism and outcome drew on Astbury and Leeuw’s classification of situational, action formation and transformational mechanisms (Astbury and Leeuw, 2010) to reveal how the generative causal chain unfolded throughout the course of the trial, distinguishing between the broader forces that were in play and those at individual and interpersonal levels. The study contributes empirical knowledge about how contextual conditions might support or present barriers to the use and implementation of evaluation.
The research illustrates how complex and interrelated policy and practice environments interplay with the challenging aspects of transition for young people and their heterogeneous pathways from care. Important learning for evaluation research, the implementation of evaluation in practice and the policy and practice agenda for ‘leaving care’ is identified.
Authors
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Julie Harris
(University of Bedfordshire)
Topic Areas
Please select one of the following:: Realist evaluation , Please select a maximum of two themes from the following list:: Theory in Realist Approach , Please select a maximum of two themes from the following list:: Designing Realist Evaluati
Session
OS-1 » Realism in Action I (11:30 - Monday, 3rd October, Barbican Centre, 4th floor - Frobisher Room 1)
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