Developmental evaluation of Together for Childhood

This report shows how Together for Childhood uses a place-based systems change approach to strengthen the way that communities and organisations work together to keep children safe from abuse.

Authors: Kandazi Sisya, Dr Thea Shahrokh, Alice Dutton and Dr. Claire White

Key findings

Our findings suggest that a place-based approach that seeks to achieve long-lasting systems change to prevent child abuse involves:

• identifying with and caring about a specific place and its community
• creating a shared vision and set of priorities that resonate with local communities
• fostering collaboration towards meaningful change at a neighbourhood or community level
• enabling community engagement, capacity building, and evidence-based development.

Recommendations

To make Together for Childhood a sustainable programme we recommend we:

• diversify funding streams for Together for Childhood in collaboration with the local system
• embed local ownership of Together for Childhood and capacity building to foster resilient and responsive child protection systems
• adapt the learning and evaluation approach to focus on capturing Together for Childhood’s contribution towards prevention and how these outcomes can be sustained
• develop a sustainability strategy that outlines how the activities and impacts will be sustained after the 10-year timeline
• influence local and national policies that address systemic issues impacting on the prevention of child abuse.

This report focuses on how Together for Childhood is making a difference to the prevention of child abuse and what are the active ingredients driving this. Active ingredients are the key aspects or mechanisms that drive the change towards the prevention of child abuse (Pote, 2021).

Authors: Dr Thea Shahrokh, Dr Claire White and Kandazi Sisya

Key findings

Progress towards abuse prevention has been made within each community

Better outcomes for children, families, communities, professionals and their organisations have contributed to systems change, ensuring timely and effective support for everyone.

The key principles, practices and features underpinning outcomes and, ultimately, change towards the prevention of child abuse were:

• a bottom-up approach
• collective action
• a culture of continuous learning and improvement grounded in evidence and focused on sustainability
• a trauma-informed approach.

Implications of the findings

Together for Childhood and others interested in place-based approaches to child abuse prevention must:

• see implementation and outcomes as interconnected
• use and measure the active ingredients in practice to make sure prevention activity is sustainable
• focus the learning and evaluation approach on the contribution towards prevention and outcome sustainability.

This report explains what we have learned about the effectiveness of Together for Childhood’s learning and evaluation approach.

Authors: Dr Stephanie Talbut, Dr Thea Shahrokh and Kandazi Sisya

Key findings

A placed-based systems change programme to prevent child abuse needs a learning and evaluation model that:

• contributes to building a shared language and structure
• carefully considers whether the methods used are appropriate and the role of quantitative methods
• recognises that locally known embedded evaluators are crucial
• focuses on progress and contribution rather than demonstrating a link between activities and outcomes.

Recommendations

Our recommendations for the next phase of Together for Childhood’s learning and evaluation work include:

• demonstrating Together for Childhood’s contribution towards systems change
• using new methods to better understand the effectiveness of implementation to prevent child abuse
• sharing evaluation insights to support the continuous learning feedback loop
• locally driven learning to understand change in Together for Childhood as well as generalisable insights.

This report provides an in-depth overview of the methodology used in the developmental evaluation.

It describes what we did, why we did it this way, lessons learnt and establishes the theoretical rigour of the developmental evaluation. By detailing the methodology, we aim to foster transparency, share valuable insights and offer open, critical reflection on the evaluation process.

Evaluation design

The data collection methods were largely qualitative and participatory, allowing us to explore the rich context and subjective experiences of participants through interviews, focus groups, workshops and an in-depth document review.

Authors: Kandazi Sisya, Dr Thea Shahrokh, Alice Dutton and Dr Claire White