John Pinkerton - Family Support - Linking Project Evaluation to Policy Analysis

First published 2000 by Ashgate Publishing

Reissued 2018 by Routledge

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Copyright John Pinkerton, Kathryn Higgins and Paula Devine 2000

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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 00132584

ISBN 13: 978-1-138-71700-8 (hbk)

ISBN 13: 978-1-315-19674-9 (ebk)

The authors would like to acknowledge the interest, support and commitment of a number of people throughout Part Two of the Family Support Project from which this book is derived. In particular we would like to thank the members of the Centres Strategy and Policy Group and the projects Research Advisory Group. We are also grateful to the Friday Group for their spirited contribution to the research.

Special thanks are also due to the service users, management and staff in all six settings who took part in the project. Such co-operation, time, effort and enthusiastic contribution to the research project were very much appreciated. We also acknowledge those linked to the settings from outside agencies who gave generously of their time to this study.

We would also like to thank Shirley Smart who contributed substantially to data collection during this phase of the research, not forgetting the efforts of all other members of the research interviewing team. Finally particular thanks is due to Rosaleen Gormley from CCCR for her technical support and endurance in the production of the finished manuscript.

This chapter sets out the aims of the book, describes the origins of the Northern Ireland family support research which prompted it and summarises the findings of the first part of that study. As a result of those findings it is suggested that to advance understanding of family support requires simultaneously addressing what is meant by the term and how it can be best researched. The difficulties in defining family support are then discussed and an argument is made for grounding any understanding in detailed description and analysis of existing policy intentions and linked forms of practice. The issue of how this can be done is then considered as a challenge to research. The chapter closes with a brief outline of the rest of the book.

Family support has been described as, probably the primary policy matter facing child welfare as we approach the twenty first century (Frost 1997, p201) and yet there is considerable contusion and debate over what is meant by the term and whether the policy works in practice. It is the contention of this book, that if family support is to develop, questioning must continue as to what it is exactly, both as a policy intention and in the practiced expressions of policy. If that is to be done settings which provide family support must be identified and understood in terms of their organisation, the needs they meet and the services they provide. At the same time questions also need to be asked about how best to research family support in a way which allows it to be analysed as a policy intention and evaluated as it is expressed in practice. It will be argued that at the present stage of our understanding this requires undertaking formative evaluation which draws on well developed research techniques.

A central concern of the approach to be advocated and illustrated in this book is how to link the analysis of policy intention with the evaluation of its expression within practice. In the words of an American writer surveying the family support field:

It will be argued that to make the necessary connections there is a need to address a range of links - between various types of need and service; between categories of practice setting; between different approaches to evaluation. In achieving that linkage the varied concerns of a range of stake holders have to be drawn together - not just the evaluator and the policy maker, but also the operational manager, the practitioner and the service user. Indeed the importance of connections with even wider constituencies, for example through politicians and the media, also needs to be recognised.

No claim to achieving a definitive, grand synthesis of all these links is being made for the approach to be advocated here. Rather what is offered is a way of identifying components that tend to lie hidden behind the overarching concept of family support, plus a means to separate them out whilst still being able to recognise and explore the linkage between them. Such an approach is required in order to move the debate about family support beyond descriptive case studies and prescriptive generalities to a more rigorous, integrated analysis of the policy intentions and practice expressions of family support. This requires an attention to detail which will be illustrated from research done on developing family support in Northern Ireland by the Centre for Child Care Research, Queens University Belfast. It is important to stress that although the approach being shared emerged from that work in Northern Ireland, it aims to articulate both questions and answers about family support of general relevance to the broad constituency with an interest in the area - academic and contract researchers; professional evaluators; child welfare policy makers; operational managers and practitioners; students of social policy and in professional training; and community activists and service users.

It is also important to stress that the argument being advanced is provisional. This is in part because the work on which it is based reflects an attempt to use a specific vantage point - that of academic researchers at a particular stage in a research project trying to answer questions about a limited number of practice settings during the early days of a policy initiative within one region of the United Kingdom. In addition, any contribution to the debate about family support is bound to be provisional because the field itself is constantly growing and changing and thereby requiring the redefinition of existing questions and answers and the emergence of new ones. Acknowledging in this way the provisional nature of the methodology and substantive findings to be presented should be taken, not as an apology, but as an invitation to all those in that broad constituency concerned with family support to take from the book whatever aspects aid them in pursuing their particular concerns, within their own specific context.