Together for Childhood is a long-term approach bringing together families and local partners to make communities safer for children. We’re working collaboratively in Glasgow, Grimsby, Plymouth, and Stoke-on-Trent to develop and test effective place-based approaches to prevent child abuse.
To help understand what difference Together for Childhood is making, we used a ‘storytelling approach’ called Transformative Evaluation. Community members and local partners across all four sites were asked to describe the most important change they experienced as a result of their involvement with Together for Childhood. These stories were shared and discussed with key stakeholders, and one story was selected from each site to reflect the most significant change.
The report describes how Transformative Evaluation helped us identify and understand the changes happening across all four sites. It builds on previous round of findings from our previous Transformative Evaluation of the approach1 , to consider what the latest stories can tell us about how Together for Childhood is making a difference to local communities.
Author: Kandazi Sisya
Research team: Rosie Jardin, Claire Sloan, Claire White, Alice Dutton, Thea Shahrokh, Stephanie Talbut
References
Coster, D. and Moore (2022) Hearing stories of change: using a Transformative Evaluation method in the evaluation of Together for Childhood. London: NSPCC.The individual activities involved in Together for Childhood join up and influence each other. Their collective impact adds another layer to the quality of change achieved.
Putting the voices of children and young people at the centre of policy and practice makes us better placed to meet our goal of preventing child abuse and neglect and keeping children safe.
It only takes a few changes to make a significant difference to how a community works together to prevent child abuse. Strong community relationships and continuous learning help support this ‘ripple effect’.
Please cite as: Sisya, K. (2023) The art of storytelling: how Together for Childhood is building stronger communities and preventing abuse. London: NSPCC.
Learn more about Together for Childhood, an innovative, evidence-informed approach to bring local partners and families together to prevent abuse.
Learn about the Transformative evaluation method used to evaluate Together for Childhood, a place-based project that aims to make communities safer for children.
Find out what we’ve learnt about how the Together for Childhood design principles are working in practice and the differences Together for Childhood is making in local communities.
