Queen’s academic in NI children’s services improvement call

An academic from Queen’s University Belfast has called for a more rigorous evaluation of how money is spent on improving children’s lives.

Dr Liam O’Hare said that despite Northern Ireland’s place among the global leaders in assessing the quality of children’s services, value for money was far from being guaranteed.

Dr O’Hare was speaking ahead of a three-day international conference in Belfast called Improving Children’s Lives, which starts today.

“We’re calling for three things really,” Dr O’Hare said.

“Number one is for people to work together across all different services, so health, education, social care and justice.

“Number two to make sure services are making real changes in children’s lives – improving their outcomes.

“And number three for people to understand that this isn’t just the right thing to do this is a responsibility of the UK government to do this.”

The theme of the conference is that children’s services will be most effective when they are: children’s rights-based; outcomes-focused and evidence-informed. The conference aims to stimulate dialogue on interdisciplinary research and practice and will be of interest to practitioners, scholars, service commissioners and policy makers.

For more, visit: http://www.improvingchildrenslives.org/Events/