Kathy Evans OUTCOMES FOR CHILDREN: an Overview from the VCS

The Voluntary Sector 64,000 charities (half of all charities) in England have children, young people and families as their main beneficiaries (2009/10 data) And a further 21,000 ‘civil society’ organisations Total income - £3.3 billion (core c.yp.f service sector), PLUS £8.7billion in wider sector serving cyp as part of but not the focus of their delivery 96% operate at local level only 54% do not employ any paid staff 91% have an annual income of less than £100k 53% have an annual income of less than £10k Only 1% of their total income is from corporates

‘Business Storms’ in the Voluntary & Community Sector Increasing fuel bills, high price inflation, pension costs. Public grant-giving diminishing; competition for all funds high Do more for less while it costs more to get less Donation income relatively resilient Salary cuts and workforce reductions highest of all 3 sectors Increasing service demand from children, young people and families is reported right across both VCS and statutory services. Organisational strength substantially weakened by investment and asset value losses and continuing low interest rates Ongoing cashflow pressures on reserves. Adaptation to new business models, social finance opportunities and more commercial ‘trading’ models is being embraced, but cannot be achieved quickly, and open to question as ‘effective’ in some practice areas. The primary blockage to taking up social finance opportunities for many VCSO’s is low, or highly uncertain, revenue funding prospects. Severe simultaneous pressures on all areas of VCS business models

‘Locality Storms’ in Children and Families Services Changes in one public authority, body or service have knock-on impacts for other agencies in the ‘support chain’ Training budgets are under severe pressure right across statutory and voluntary agencies, Some charities are having to consider rationing criteria or waiting lists to manage and prioritise increased service demand Early intervention levels of support appear at highest risk of being reduced or cut, potentially storing up problems for the future as unmet needs may escalate to further increase demand for higher cost and complex services later. Risk levels and risk transfer are serious issues – both financial risks and caseload risks The ‘Chaos Theory’ of Interdependence

Demonstrating Impact on Children’s Outcomes in the VCS Same belief that making a real difference in children’s lives is the only goal worth setting ourselves and we have to know, and show, that we do Drivers and demands to ‘prove impact’ are not restricted to public sector commissioning at all – charitable funders and even small grants providers now demanding increasingly high evidence standards Donors have ALWAYS wanted to know what difference we make, in the most tangible terms possible, and VCS often have great stories to tell of what they achieve…….BUT: Different funders have some very different ideas / frameworks and expectations of what constitutes convincing evidence for different kinds of work Different funders have very wide-ranging ideas about desirable / feasible / measurable outcomes for a VCS organisation to account for Much of what the VCS sector does is not an intervention or a service, nor a ‘model’ nor a ‘programme’ – it is ‘doing something rather than nothing with whatever we can muster’; being something to take part in; someone to talk to (unconditionally); somewhere to find sanctuary, solace, fun or escape, friendship, solidarity, voice.

The problem with ‘evidencing’ real life!

Impact on Outcomes: A Whodunnit Puzzle Measurable improved learning outcomes, BUT: Whodunnit? A role ? A ‘Programme’ ? A ‘Sector’ ? Statutory or Voluntary

Jenny: A Grade student overall – maths was a struggle Parents hired private tutor when predicted a C at 14 Alex: Young carer, mother with bipolar disorder Was in foster care aged Whodunnit Now?

Whodunnit? Answer: Alex and Jenny They achieved their grades – and they have the most critical ‘intelligence’ about what helped them most Who or what helped you the MOST in getting that A in maths? Jenny: “My 1:1 time with my maths tutor obviously helped a lot, but I don’t think it all really made sense to me until I started volunteering as a mentor with the children in my old junior school. That’s when I finally started feeling confident about maths” Alex: “More than anyone else, I’d say Jenny. If she hadn’t been sitting next to me and explaining the stuff she was learning from her tutor, I’d have fallen way behind. And if she hadn’t been my friend on the end of the phone the night before the exam when I was panicking, I might not have turned up!”

Lessons from the ‘Whodunnit’ tale Outcomes belong to the person whose life they describe – services and agencies can only ever appropriately claim to have contributed to achieving them, however significantly No account of impact on a person’s outcomes is complete without their own assessment of what helped and what didn’t. Their insights can be as radically challenging to ‘assumed wisdom’ as some RCT evidence. What children do with / for other people in their lives can be as ‘active’ a variable in achieving their outcomes as what anyone else does with/for them ‘Secondary’ outcomes and unintended impacts matter When outcomes are good / improving we can afford to be relatively sanguine and inclusive about evaluating ‘contributions’ to success. However, service / programme evaluation has little to offer the accurate ‘diagnosis’ of what has gone wrong when children’s outcomes are poor Long / short term and ‘cumulative’ influences on outcomes are hard to ascribe and to isolate. Blame tends to get passed backwards, credit tends to be held among the present ‘players’ The most influential family, friendship and professional ‘roles’ in children’s daily lives are not usually time-limited, planned, ‘programmed’, or impact/outcome assessed.

Commissioning for Localism – including VCS contribution to outcomes in LA commissioning strategies Sutton: Outcomes Based Accountability collaborative outcomes reporting to LA into a single balanced scorecard co-producing measures & mechanisms – helping VCS to show what they contribute in ways that are manageable, consistent and useful outcomes ‘belong’ to the children, monitored in one dataset by LA, and all agencies contribute in different ways Torbay: Asset-Based Community Development (ABCD) start with the ‘what helps you most / least’ question to children, families and communities how can we strengthen, support the relationships and groups through which you help yourselves and each other? process generated 2 new parent-led social enterprises, even before commissioning plans developed then…commissioning to fill gaps and add capacity, with community members in ‘driving and deciding’ seats – community panels and hubs integrated in Early Help and safeguarding triage processes

Some challenges for the ‘evidencing outcomes’ agenda What is the future for public sector commissioning ‘models’ – more programmes or more personalisation? Can we keep it all in proportion? Is it the management model we must evidence, or the practice modality/philosophy? Can we disentangle evidencing impact and outcomes from contract compliance? Can we expect competing organisations to share evaluation learning when it may be their ‘USP’ for the next bid? While we should embrace the challenges and learning that come from scientific approaches to evidence, can we remember that great practice with children is really an art? Can we recognise the ‘Wisdom of Solomon’ being asked of those with budgets to cut deeply while improving outcomes for children? Use evidence where it helps, but they also need space to fund models so new or different that there is no evaluation evidence, because in their judgement it is simply the right thing to try