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How Good is Our Community Learning and Development? 2 Self-evaluation for Quality Improvement

Introduction

The aim of this publication is to support the continuous improvement of CLD provision by helping us to evaluate the work we do with stakeholders. Self-evaluation helps us to:

• recognise the work we are doing which has a positive impact on the lives of young people, adults, and on the community;
• identify where good quality needs to be maintained, where improvement is needed and where we should be working to achieve excellence;
• identify what we can do to make things better for young people, adults and the wider community; and
• inform stakeholders about the quality of services in the area.

The process of using self-evaluation for improvement requires activity based round three questions.

How good is our community learning and development?

This is the key to knowing if we are doing the right things in our work with young people, adults and the community and that, as a result, we are:

• providing appropriate, responsive, well-promoted, accessible and high-quality services for young people, adults and community groups;
• setting and achieving ambitious targets for participation, retention, outcomes, quality improvement and Best Value; and
• systematically self-evaluating and improving the quality of all the services we provide for young people, adults and the community.

How do we know?

It is essential that we base any judgements in answering the question above on evidence of outcomes and impact. The performance and quality indicators, indicative themes and self-evaluation questions in this document help us to measure and evaluate how we are doing.

What are we going to do now?

The evaluation of the effectiveness of the work we do with young people, adults and the community and the extent to which we meet their needs should help us see what is working well and where we should be taking steps to improve. Plans for development are most effective when based on robust evidence of what works well, from our own self-evaluation and, when appropriate, the good practice of others and from research.

This self-evaluation guide gives advice on finding out the answers to these questions, and links self-evaluation to planning for improvement and reporting on our performance. The diagram overleaf sets out the process for self-evaluation and improvement and places questions about how good our CLD is at the heart of the process.

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