The Children’s Play Programme Evaluation was commissioned by the Big Lottery Fund in September 2008. The final report of the three year evaluation is now available.

The Children’s Play Programme was funded by the Big Lottery Fund and was part of a wider £155 million Children’s Play Initiative, with the aim of raising the profile of children’s play. The evaluation found that the Children’s Play Programme played a significant role in raising awareness of children’s play at a local level. The programme also led to an expansion of open access play, and engaged children and families in decision making about play spaces.

While engaging local communities was seen as a sucess factor in promoting play opportunities, nearly a fifth of portfolio leads survyed for the evaluation cited negative attitudes to play amongst residents.

You can read the full report here

Pathways through Participation is a Big Lottery Fund qualitative research project lead by NCVO in partnership with the Institute for Volunteering Research and Involve. The study ran for two and a half years and the final report has now been published.

The study looked at the ways in which individuals become involved and stay involved in participation over the course of their lives. Focusing on three case study areas (Leeds, Enfield and Suffolk), the research involved in-depth interviews with a range of stakeholders as well as focus groups to discuss earlier research findings. 

The report looked at participation from a broad definition categorising it into social, public and individual participation. The study identified widespread participation with all respondents engaging in some form of participation at some stage in their lives.

The reports three main conclusions were that participation is personal and must be viewed from the perspective of the individual taking part, participation must be encouraged, supported, and made more attractive, and that significant barriers to participation are entrenched.

The final report and a summary of the final report can be read here

Ecorys are pleased to announce that the final evaluation report for Reaching Communities in England and Northern Ireland has now been published.  A range of evaluation evidence sources were used in the research, including programme data from 1,436 projects, feedback from 804 projects via annual surveys, and 37 case study visits.

The evaluation found that overall, Reaching Communities has supported a diverse range of projects to achieve an array of positive outcomes for an extremely broad range of target groups and local communities. Over 50 different types of activity were delivered by the programme ranging from advocacy to artwork; languages to life skills; recycling to respite care and youth diversion to volunteering.

Click here to download the final report