As child protection practitioners, many of us - whether it be in the context of policy, programming, service delivery or grant-making - will be familiar with the challenges of trying to undertake quality research, monitoring and evaluation (M&E) whilst operating within a context of limited human and financial resources. And whilst we know that increased quality evidence is fundamental for improved programming and policy, the very real day-to-day demands of developing, supporting or managing a program in a low-resource context can often overshadow this aspect of our work.
In an effort to support practitioners to address some of these challenges, a group of child protection networks and organizations - the Community Child Protection Exchange, the CP MERG, the CPC Learning Network, and REPSSI - came together to produce this joint newsletter reflecting upon some groups’ successes and challenges working on child protection research and M&E, including working with a limited budget in low-resource settings. This joint newsletter builds on the webinar “Research on a Shoestring” held jointly by all our networks and organizations in March 2014 and led by Dr. Lucie Cluver, Oxford University, and Dr. Monica Ruiz Casares, McGill University.
In order to bring you a range of perspectives about this subject, we talked to different child protection practitioners including researchers, representatives from child protection organizations, and donors – all of whom have a particular interest in collecting rigorous evidence. This issue presents some of the key insights which came out of these discussions and which we hope can provide support and guidance to us in our collective efforts to improve the ways in which we collect evidence about child protection.
We begin this newsletter with some words of encouragement from one of our contributors: “Don’t give up! Research with children, in low-resource contexts, and with a limited budget is difficult and messy. But it is absolutely possible, and with dedication and problem-solving you can find a way around most things. Having a child or teen advisory group is incredibly useful in guiding the research to be child-friendly and fun. When it comes to ethics, don’t be afraid to ask difficult questions, but do be prepared to have to take action when you get the answers.” – Dr. Lucie Cluver, Associate Professor of Evidence-based Social Intervention, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, Oxford University
-- Community Child Protection Exchange, CP MERG, CPC Learning Network, and REPSSI