Who: CPAG (Child Poverty Action Group), a UK charity working on child poverty. Via a Co-production Lab Wales project. The CPAG Wales team had been running a “Cost of the School Day” programme during which pupils were selected as Youth Voice Champions, learned about poverty and stigma, carried out research with their peers, and presented recommendations to alleviate child poverty to their Headteachers and senior leadership teams.
The brief: I joined the project partway through to add capacity as the original consultant had to step back. The aim was to evaluate the “Cost of the School Day” programme by running evaluation workshops with the pupils who had been involved.
What I did:
- Some of the evaluation sessions had already been carried out and audio recorded, so I reviewed those for inclusion in the evaluation report and to replicate in my sessions.
- I carried out 3 more evaluation sessions in primary and secondary schools, which were interactive and creative sessions using drawings, storytelling, and graphic visualisations to capture the children and young people’s views.
- I also interviewed 3 Heads or Deputy Heads from participating schools, 1 representative from the Local Authority, and held several reflection and learning sessions with the CPAG Wales team.
- The feedback and the impact were positive across the board. I collated all the findings into a comprehensive report for use by the CPAG UK team, and a child friendly version for distribution to the participating schools and pupils.
