Mapping evaluation of UK childhood bereavement services

Abstract

This article reports a study of evaluation strategies and tools currently used within UK child bereavement services. Data were sought from a representative sample of services across the UK on the evaluations’ users, the data requested, and organisations' existing evaluation strategies. The study found that child bereavement services were struggling with a considerable burden of demand for information from a range of users – chiefly funders and commissioners of services. However, a mapping exercise revealed that a considerable amount of the data required by evaluation users was the same, and that it was being obtained from evaluations that services overall were already undertaking. The most common forms of evaluation were post-intervention user satisfaction surveys of core interventions, using self-completion questionnaires. However, collection of basic data was limited and patchy, and evaluations of outcomes and organisational processes and reporting on the findings were less common. Based on these findings, the researchers propose the development of a set of common evaluation tools that could be used across all child bereavement services.

Keywords:

• Childhood bereavement services evaluation
• outcomes
• outputs
• evaluation tools

Acknowledgements

With thanks to all participants, and to the Clara E Burgess Charity, who funded the study.