Dr. Maria O'Dwyer:

I thank Deputy Dillon for those questions. The first question I will pick up on is about outcomes and outcomes measurement. It is an area within the child and family sector where significant strides have been made in the past number of years. What happened in Ireland traditionally in policy development around delivering services was we tended to pilot everything. We would have pilot after pilot, then evaluations of them, and then we started something new. The first national children's policy involved asking what are we looking for and what do we want to do differently. That meant that for the first time we were going to undertake some collective mapping and gathering of collective data. Rather than always looking at individual projects, they were banded together to look at the data that emerged both individually and as a collective. The early based childhood initiative and project would have been the first big attempt at that nationally in terms of a national evaluation on the measurement of child outcomes.

With regard to outcomes frameworks, it can get quite complicated. We look at things quantitatively and we want data and datasets. What we need to do with outcomes frameworks is the balance of both, qualitative and quantitative. At the end, the question is always whether it was value for money. That is wearing the financial hat. The ultimate question is whether it benefited children and families. If it did, how do we do more and how do we learn to do it better? If it did not, how do we change it? There are many tools used and there is an attempt to standardise those as well. In Ireland at the moment, the Centre for Effective Services, CES, currently develops a significant database on outcomes and outcomes gathering. We work closely with the CES on promoting and informing that where we can.

Part of it is ensuring that going forward we are not duplicating the data we are gathering. Another part of it is that we now have enough instrumentation on research to be able to drill down to specific projects so while we can take collective data we also need to know about local context.

When a policy has been implemented nationally, many of its outcomes traditionally have been measured through Dublin. We know that what happens in Dublin and the measurements for it will not be the same as in Kerry and in Donegal. That kind of contextual and geographical element in outcomes frameworks is really important as well.

I refer to the qualitative piece when we are trying to map outcomes for children. We, as well as for many of the members, agencies and partners with whom we work, have honed the focus on the voices of the children for whom the services are provided and of the parents of service users. For long time, services were done onto children and families, instead of being done with them. We are now starting to see children’s voices being incorporated into those outcomes frameworks. It is important to flag there can be much lip service in regard to that. For an effective mapping or any kind of outcomes gathering, however, we want to make sure that those processes are genuine and that they are done in consultation with children and families.

We are lucky to have the kinds of data sets that we have in Ireland at the moment. We can see that, for instance, with the recent ESRI publications. The Growing up in Ireland study has given us a fascinating insight into the longitudinal development of children and into how families are supported and what that looks like. We are starting to see how that started with babies. For instance, in the "Seven Up!" documentary years ago in the UK after the Second World War, they mapped children at longitudinal junctures. We are starting to do that here now. It is creating significant data in understanding what goes on in the home environment. For so long, the kind of data we had gathered on children was reported by parents. What we need is data that has an insight into the home environment, which is obviously formative for child development.