Oldham Children's Fund

The main impacts achieved across the Children’s Fund and On Track programme

The main impacts that were found to be achieved across the Children’s Fund and On Track programme are described below:

• The research found that impacts across the programme were generally positive.
• Participation in the Children’s Fund and On Track programme was found to reduce children’s, parents’ and families exposure to key risk factors and involvement in the interventions was found to assist in building resilience.
• Impacts on parents were greater (more significant) and more widespread than the impacts on children, in that more statistically significant impacts were evident for the parents’ interventions and more widespread impacts were achieved across the Every Child Matters outcome areas.
• Differences in impacts between interventions were evident and the most significant impacts were intervention specific – the programme contained a mix of high and low impacting provision.
• Few of the statistically significant impacts evident within any single intervention were common across the programme, possibly due to the differing aims of the interventions across the Children’s Fund and On Track programme.
• The site of provision may have affected impacts. Where there was no statistical relationship between sites and impacts, there could be an opportunity to share skills between providers working across different sites.
• Short term interventions had impacts that were equal to, or greater than those achieved by longer term interventions. For example a short-term intervention such as ‘Tell it like it is’ was found to have the same number of impacts under the Every Child Matters sub-outcomes as a longer term intervention such as Child Dinosaur.
• The extent to which impacts might be sustained needs to be addressed, especially for short term interventions where the recorded impacts may not be sustained over the longer term and the ‘distance’ between the intervention and the point of measure was shorter than in other cases.
• The accumulation of impact was not captured in the methodology, but evidence from parent interventions could suggest a cumulative impact, in that there was evidence of clear progression between the parents’ interventions of Survival Skills, STEPS and Parents’ Academy.
• The focus of an intervention – clear aims and structured approach – could enhance impacts, specifically in relation to work with parents.
• The impacts under ECM outcome areas varied, with fewer impacts reported under outcome areas such as ‘achieve economic well-being’ and more reported under ‘make a positive contribution’.
• There was greater variation under ECM sub-outcomes than anticipated – all interventions were found to impact on ‘mentally and emotionally healthy’ (Be Healthy), and none of the interventions were found to impact on ‘sexually healthy’.
• Overall the research found that children and parents, within some interventions, were experiencing greater positive impacts than those in other interventions – but all were gaining some benefit.

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