CRIME REDUCTION INITIATIVES
Neil Watson, a former national director of the Home Offi ce’s Positive Futures youth programme, now of research group Substance, discusses public sector project monitoring and evaluation.
people from deprived communities, using sport and other activities to mitigate the risk of them becoming involved in crime or anti-social behaviour. At Leyton Orient Community Sports Programme we worked with teenagers on diffi cult London housing estates. Participant numbers increased but I couldn’t really articulate what we were ac- tually achieving.
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In 2000 the Cabinet Offi ce rang and asked the programme to trial two projects in their pilot Positive Futures drug preven- tion programme. The next 12 months were a challenge but we started to engage more 16-19 year olds, the numbers of sessions in- creased and we began to collect stories.
These anecdotes – the highs and lows of the projects, individuals’ achievements and personal progress – helped us to tell the story of the programme more generally. Mixed with hard statistics about the volume of participants and number of activities, we began to talk more confi dently about how the project had impacted the lives of young people and their families.
For example, stories like the one from Grant Cornwell who now runs the Tottenham Hotspur Foundation. Grant had spent
40 | public sector executive Mar/Apr 11
ver the past 20 years I’ve worked on projects with thousands of young
months working on the Gascoigne Estate in Barking and was regularly getting 60 youngsters to his football sessions. The only condition for selection was that play- ers had to arrive before 7pm. At 6.45pm Grant got a call from one would-be player pleading to give him an extra ten minutes as he was stuck in traffi c. He agreed and at 7.10pm the young person jumped out of his car and ran across to the hard play court.
Grant used this as an example of commit- ment, something the rest of them would need if the team were to progress. And while the teenager had got his place it was also an opportunity to remind him that he really shouldn’t be driving a car at 16.
In 2001 drug policy moved from the Cabinet Offi ce to the Home Offi ce. The Positive Futures programme expanded and I be- gan working on the other side of the fence – in Whitehall as director of the Home Offi ce Positive Futures scheme. It became evident very early on that if there was to be any long-term future for the programme it needed to do more than line up a few statis- tics and tell one or two anecdotes.
Most people outside the Home Offi ce were saying the emphasis should be on prov- ing how many young people had reduced their substance misuse, criminal and anti-
social behaviour, while those in the Drug Strategy Directorate were more concerned about engagement levels, achievements and progress of the young people.
We began working with social research co- operative Substance and Sheffi eld Hallam University to develop a new monitoring system which would evaluate the pro- gramme and prove its value. Since then, the 91 Positive Futures projects around the country have been recording the progress of their participants in a way that allows the Home Offi ce to have an accurate view, at both micro and macro level, of the im- pact of each project.
Project staff collect a wide range of evi- dence about participants. How many young people started playing competitive sport, took on extra responsibility or were successfully referred to a support service? How many went on to employment, gained a qualifi cation or became a volunteer? And how did a young person’s level of engage- ment change?
Now project workers fi lm interviews with family members, they collect feedback from teachers, gather comments from the project’s Facebook wall and young peo- ple write diary entries about their experi- ences. They record whether a young person
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