Local Children’s Fund turns spotlight on prevention

The Children’s Fund has raised the profile of preventive
work and stimulated an important debate among agencies about what
prevention means, according to early findings from a national
evaluation.

But most Children’s Fund programme managers found it
unhelpful when the government announced that 25 per cent of the
fund should focus on youth crime and crime reduction. They reported
that the announcement caused “difficult changes” to
Children’s Fund partnerships’ plans of work.

Children’s Fund partnership work was having a positive
effect on other partnership-based developments locally, and because
Children’s Fund partnerships were mapping children’s
needs jointly, it was helping to build an understanding of the
connections between different aspects of social exclusion.

But there were concerns that growth in the capacity of local
voluntary sector groups, created as a result of the
Children’s Fund, would not be sustained once the
Children’s Fund money was withdrawn.

The
national evaluation of the children’s fund: early messages
from developing practice. Kate Morris and Neil Spicer,
University of Birmingham.