Making a Difference - Community Food and Health

Evaluation
At the outset of the project the initiative had developed a very simple tool for evaluation,
recognising later that it was lacking in some important elements. Although feedback from
the activity was overwhelmingly positive, its approach needed to be more systematic.
Being involved in the Self Evaluation Collaborative gave an opportunity to further develop
the project by taking a more systematised approach with a clearly defined overall aim, a
set of clear outcomes and indicators and a variety of ways of gathering information about
indicators.
Discussion
Kenny posed the group some questions to kick start the discussion:
How do you decide what you can deliver and How are you going to get others to
recognise the difference you make
Participants emphasised the importance of exploring local need so that the activities are
right for the communities you work with. In order to have the capacity to facilitate similar
activities it is really important to have a range of delivery partners working together. All
agreed that getting parents involved can be a challenge for various reasons. Kenny spoke
about parental involvement with the Food Dragons and its unexpected knock-on effect:
getting parents leading and involved in other nursery activities, take up of training
opportunities, and increased employment prospects.
It is important to consider and embed evaluation processes before you start so that you
can track learning and skills before, and what has been developed during, and after, the
activities. This can inform how you work with different groups and what works for them,
how you might develop and change programmes, as well as gathering information and
evidence about the impact of activities. Having this information is important for getting
others to recognise the difference your work is making and sharing effective practice.
Participants also touched on what they had heard earlier in the morning about measuring
outcomes, particularly in the long term. In relation to delivering on priorities this centred on
how confident they are of their ability to cope with what appears to be quite complex
outcome frameworks. This is a real challenge for many. The group expressed their
understanding in that they do not feel they have been asked to do anything different but
need support to reduce their anxieties about translating the language of outcome
frameworks at ground level. They felt aware that evidence of impact will be needed to
secure funding and pursue sustainability, but they require guidance on how to demonstrate
this effectively and meaningfully.