Capturing the Learning - Overarching Messages from Evaluations of AP/DCYA Projects

Project Background

Over the past few years, the Atlantic Philanthropies (AP) have been funding an initiative to promote prevention and early intervention for children and youth in Ireland and Northern Ireland. This has involved investing, sometimes jointly with government, in a cluster of organisations that have developed and delivered services based on evidence of what works.  The initiative supports services working in a wide range of areas such as early childhood, sexual health, literacy, social and emotional learning, crime and violence prevention, youth mentoring and parenting support.

As part of the initiative, many of the services have taken part in independent evaluation studies using mixed qualitative and quantitative methodologies.  The studies have explored process and implementation issues, and measured outcomes using robust approaches such as randomised control trials (RCTs). Each study has been supported by an expert group of independent advisers.

During the next three years, the services and research teams will individually publish results from their evaluations. However, there is exciting potential for the findings to be pulled together to provide a strong evidence-base to inform future early intervention and prevention policy and practice for children and young people across the island of Ireland, and elsewhere. This project aims to synthesise the collective, overarching learning from the initiative as a whole.

Project outputs

Project Outline - download 

Contact

For more information about this project, please contact Dr Helga Sneddon hsneddon@effectiveservices.org