Challenges in Evaluation of Intervention Programmes with Children: Reflections from a Research(er) Perspective

This paper will review some of the challenges that researchers, evaluators and designers of intervention programme for vulnerable children may encounter. The challenges considered in the present paper are around methodological issues, specifically the issues of validity of outcome measures; and service users’ involvement, particularly children’s perspectives, in research evaluation. The author draws on extensive experience of conducting research on evaluating the outcomes of interventions for looked after children in the UK and the article invites the reader to reflect upon some of these challenges.