Guidance for measuring the impact of Contextual Safeguarding responses in neighbourhood contexts.
The Outcomes framework guide (linked in the Related Resources carousel below) will assist you in setting measures for your responses and interventions. After setting your goals the framework prompts you to describe what you hope will be happening (after you’ve intervened), what will show that you’ve reached your goals, and how you will know this.
The most straightforward way of doing this is to re-run the activities that led to you setting your goals (i.e. your assessment methods) to see if you get different results. For example, say your goal is for ‘young people to have a positive identity in the context’, you may have identified this goal through doing a survey with young people who said that they think adults look down on them. Once you have intervened to try to change this (for example through youth work and guardianship), you can re-run the survey and find examples of young people saying that they no longer feel adults look down on them.
One common pitfall is that we tend to focus on measuring effort instead of change. For example, "There are adults who live in this neighbourhood who used to be hostile towards young people and who now feel positively towards them – they know their names and look out for them" is a measure of change, but "We made an information sheet so people can share concerns about young people" is a measure of effort.
While it may be good to share information, for this to count as a measure of change you would need to know 1) if it is being used and 2) if people are reporting with a caring intention or to increase the surveillance and punishment of young people. You can find other examples in the Outcomes Framework Guide in the Related Resources below.
Research shows how inequalities shape safeguarding responses and therefore shape what we know and what we measure. When you set measures, be alert to the intersecting inequalities and differences that young people experience. The ways we measure changes to contexts should be diverse, to mitigate assumptions and discrimination – i.e. not relying only on what adults say has changes in an area, but also listening to young people, parents and others.
Using the Outcomes framework guide in the Related Resources below, you will be guided to record the changes that have occurred following your intervention in the neighbourhood. This will give you a picture of the safety that has been built and whether there is more work to do, with a new set of modified goals.
Remember: to be confident that you have built safety into a context, you need to gather information about young people, guardianship capacity and the environment/ resources. For example, it is not enough to say that you have created new guardians in a context if the only evidence you have for this is that, from your perspective, a few adults seem to have shifted their attitude towards young people. Although this would be part of measuring change, it cannot be the only measure you use. You also need to know if young people experience more guardianship.
In the Related Resources carousel below you will find both a blank template and an exemplar of a filled Outcomes Framework for a neighbourhood context.
