Evaluation of the 'You First' Programme for Young Parents

8 HOW EFFECTIVE ARE THE MANAGEMENT AND SUPPORT STRUCTURES IN PLACE FOR THE PROGRAMME?

The effectiveness of the management and support structures in place for the programme

8.1 Management of You First followed the standard structure in place for any Barnardo's programme and sat within the development team while it was being designed and tested. As the pilot progressed, management of You First was moved from the development team to Children's Services operations. The structure included an Assistant Director, a Children's Services Manager and the facilitators. The transition that took place as You First moved from a developmental project to a fully-fledged programme appeared to work smoothly both at management level and at a facilitator level. Facilitators felt supported by You First management and felt they were given all the resources they required both before and after the transition. The change in facilitators made no detrimental effect on the running of the programme.

8.2 Beyond this standard management structure, a new element was introduced to You First as a consequence of the partnership between Barnardo's, the Scottish Government and NHS Lothian. A project review board was created to provide overall leadership of the programme, to oversee any significant decisions and for the You First team to feed back their progress. You First management found this process extremely useful. As the board brought together many different types of professionals, it stimulated discussion and provided the You First team with learning they could use to improve the programme. A senior stakeholder also spoke positively about the project review board. She felt that there was a real commitment from all partners to make the programme successful and that they all shared the same goals. She also thought that it was beneficial that there was local, as well as national, representation on the board.

Measuring the objectives and outcomes of the programme

8.3 In the pilot stage of the You First programme, the main measure of the objectives and outcomes has been this external evaluation. However, it is important that the You First team ensure that there are appropriate self-evaluation mechanisms in place to continue to measure progress in the future. Although parents complete self-assessment questionnaires, these are only short term measures and we have some reservations about the effectiveness of these as an objective measure of outcomes (for more details please see section 1.11 of Appendix 4). Another option is to use existing objective measures. For example, the Warwick Edinburgh Mental Wellbeing Scale (WEMWBS)¹⁸ could be used to look at the effect of the programme on parents' mental wellbeing. Local areas could also explore what they want the programme to achieve in their area and identify short/medium/long term outcomes. Examples of how these outcomes could be measured include uptake of local services, feedback from local stakeholders or longer term monitoring of parents' destinations.