The last two days I’ve been attending a conference by The Rank Foundation up in Lancashire. Although specifically for youth agencies supported by the Foundation, the focus was on evaluating the work that we do.

In the youthwork field, it is widely established that it can be very difficult to effectively evaluate the impact that your work has on an individual, group or community. How, for example, can you prove that by taking a young person on outings each week, they are developing their communication skills and raising their self-esteem? Another common complaint from workers is that they are constantly pushed to provide quantative data (numbers attending, ages, etc.) rather than qualitative information about relationships, personal development or anecdotal evidence.

To this end, the conference aimed to explore the process of evaluation – teaching basics, identifying challenges and thinking through what development needs to occur in our own agencies. We talked, debated and planned in small groups learning from each others experiences.
Personally, I found it an enjoyable (although exhausting and intense) experience. I met some wonderful people doing fascinating work and facing similar challenges. I got to lead some workshops on “getting your message across through print” and recieved some positive feedback.

So what did I learn? If anything, I came away with a sense that we really need to knuckle down and focus the work that we do at The WIRE, something Mark and I have discussed for a while. This means really evaluating the service that we offer to the community as well as our in-house procedures and systems – no small task… although I did get some good advice on how to go about it!