What would be lost if there was no further evaluation in youth work?

Imagine… budgets squeezed so tight that no resource nor capacity for evaluation remains. Or youth workers en masse refuse to participate in data gathering. Or a policy change signals an immediate closure of all What Works Centres (WWCs). Or a failure of the cloud system where a major funder stores its data. Fanciful ideas, perhaps, but it’s not impossible to conjure scenarios where evaluation disappears from youth work. 

But would it matter if evaluation in and of youth work stopped? Don’t we already know that youth work - and youth workers - change young people’s lives? Aren’t there enough testimonies, and, increasingly, quantitative data, to provide powerful evidence of the transformative potential of youth work? So, is more evaluation really the best use of today’s limited resources? In the short term, perhaps, these arguments have some merit. But in the long run, I believe youth work would suffer catastrophically.  

Above all, youth work would lose credibility. Initially, and crucially, it would lose credibility with funders, especially government. Given the ongoing constraints affecting the national economic outlook, the prevailing rhetoric of evidence-based public spending is here to stay (even while the evidence for some politicised projects is almost non-existent). Programmes and ideas that don’t meet (or show commitment towards meeting) the expected evidential standards of the WWCs will increasingly struggle to access funds.  

Youth work is particularly at risk. With established WWCs for youth employment, educational achievement (including social and emotional learning), and reducing youth violence (not to mention the WWC for children & families and the recently closed What Works Wellbeing), young people are one of the demographics best addressed by the work of WWCs. Youth work can, of course, benefit from these WWCs and their mission to grow the evidence base for effective support and provision for young people. But youth work is different: it is based on voluntary engagement, holistic development, developing a ‘covenantal relationship of trust’ between workers and young people, and encouraging critical engagement with society. Other services for young people use different philosophies and do not share or centre these commitments. Youth work will (continue to) suffer financially if it can’t match these other services in the commitment to developing an evidence base that meets the needs of institutional funders. 

Furthermore, if evaluation stopped, youth work would lose credibility with young people themselves. Without evaluation and the reflective practice that sits alongside, youth work would struggle to innovate, improve, listen, or learn. Although core principles of youth work may not change over time, the societal context of youth work is in continual flux and young people and their needs and wishes evolve too. If youth work isn’t evaluated (not by funders, partners, allies, nor by young people themselves), it will not adapt to meet ever-changing needs. 

Fortunately, it’s unlikely evaluation will disappear from the sector. We know there is a strong commitment to evaluation and learning practices in youth work. Providers and practitioners want to ask research questions and use data to improve their provision and services. But structural barriers to conducting effective, robust, meaningful and practice-aligned evaluation remain. Infrastructure organisations committed to this work have a crucial role to play in calling for diverse forms of evaluation and evidence and appropriate and reflective support for youth work providers.