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NEW: The Kinship Care Practice Guide translates the strongest evidence into actionable recommendations. Find out more.
This case study details Hertfordshire County Council’s (HCC) experience of developing an evaluation plan to assess the outcomes of their ‘Parenting when Separated’ programme. This included a redesign of existing measurement tools, a review of outcome measures, and a workshop to upskill practitioners on how to use the tools. The aim of the evaluation plan was to routinely collect outcomes data to inform future service design and support future investment beyond the Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) Local Grant.
Leveraging their Workforce Development Grant, HCC conducted a needs assessment which identified increased needs of families where parents are in conflict, and a lack of confidence amongst practitioners in supporting families with emerging conflict. HCC responded to this need by using their Reducing Parental Conflict (RPC) Local Grant to continue workforce development and training for the delivery of targeted services. HCC now have established support pathways for a universal and targeted offer for RPC which encompasses the Parenting When Separated Programme and OnePlusOne’s digital offer, as well as one-to-one parental conflict support through Early Help practitioners and partners.
Until recently, data collection for reducing parental conflict largely relied on numbers of referrals to interventions, which is useful to assess uptake of services but lacked key information about what impact these programmes had for families. The tools being used to measure outcomes were inconsistently implemented and recorded, making it difficult to assess potential improvement of outcomes. Feedback from practitioners highlighted that the tools felt lengthy and unsuitable for some parents. HCC sought to expand on their evaluation of services and implement an evaluation plan that could identify potential improvements in outcomes for parents and children accessing the Parenting When Separated intervention using measures that are acceptable, accessible, and appropriate for practitioners and for families.
Step 1: Building an evaluation plan
The first step involved clarifying the aims of the evaluation of the Parenting When Separated programme and establishing an evaluation plan. HCC partnered with an evaluation team at Anna Freud to review the intended outcomes of the programme and identify relevant measures against those outcomes. HCC had previously developed a Theory of Change model detailing which outcomes they hoped to achieve through their RPC work and were able to use this model alongside the Parenting When Separated programme documents to identify and refine measurement tools to assess outcomes (see the table below). This step also involved reviewing feedback from practitioners to better understand the barriers to implementing existing measures and reviewing course feedback from parents who had completed the programme. This scoping process revealed a need for consolidation of Parent Goal Setting measures and course feedback forms to simplify the data-collection process.
Outcome |
Measure/indicator |
Timepoint |
|
|
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| Improve child/rens emotional health and wellbeing
|
|
|
| Improve child/rens relationship with others |
|
|
| Improve separated parents communication and cooperation post separation |
|
|
| Reduce referrals to specialist services
|
Measured through the Early Help Module where parental conflict and outcome of support is reported and calculating frequency of ‘unsuccessful’ support that led to families being stepped up into safeguarding. |
|
Step 2: Refining & clarifying measures
HCC approached Parents Plus – an organisation which develops, implements, evaluates and disseminates evidence-based parenting interventions for services supporting families and children – to co-design new forms and guidance to refine their measurement tools in alignment with feedback they received from practitioners. As part of this refinement process, HCC codesigned a new Parent Goal Setting form which now contains questions about parents’ confidence and support needs after the course. To aid clarity, HCC developed an information sheet for parents which outlines the course content, aims, outcomes and outcome measures. HCC also revised their referral form to include questions from the parental conflict measure, ‘Brief Acrimony Scale’ to assess parent satisfaction. As part of routine data collection, parents are offered a follow up questionnaire three months after completing the course to review the Brief Acrimony Scale and better understand sustained improvements in outcomes once parents have had time to practice skills learned in the programme.
Step 3: Training
Practitioner feedback identified a need to improve staff knowledge and confidence in capturing data to evidence outcomes. Alongside redesigning measurement tools, HCC also prioritised co-designing guidance and workshops for practitioners in collaboration with Parents Plus. The workshops are designed to improve practitioner understanding of the importance of capturing data and improve confidence in using measurement tools with families as a means of exploring outcomes.
Since embedding an outcomes framework and evaluation plan, HCC have been able to provide evidence to support future planning beyond the RPC Local Grant, including buy-in from the Voluntary and Community Sector, as they develop their Family Hubs model. Early evaluation of service data reflects the impact of RPC work in the number of cases completed as ‘short-term work’ compared to Families First Assessments as recorded through their Early Help system, reflective of families receiving the right support at the right time preventing the need for specialist services.
Having better clarity in the data collection process has reinforced the value of routinely collecting, reporting and sharing data to support evaluation. Collaborating with service providers to redesign outcome measures and training materials in alignment with practitioner feedback has been beneficial in driving the progress of the evaluation and ensured outcome measures are acceptable, accessible, and appropriate for local families and staff. HCC reflected on the importance of ensuring evaluation processes are considered from the start and the utility of having support for this at the beginning of the grant period.
The evaluation findings will support future planning beyond the RPC Local Grant including buy-in from the Voluntary and Community sector and alignment with Family Hub development as a key commissioning priority for the Early Help Strategy in Hertfordshire. Future activity includes:
