Over the past decade, Ireland has introduced significant policy, legislative and organisational reforms to reduce child poverty and promote better outcomes for children and young people. To support efforts across government and promote change for children and young people, Ireland implemented its National Policy Framework for Children and Young People, Better Outcomes, Brighter Futures (BOBF) between 2014 and 2020 (Department of Children and Youth Affairs, 2014[1]). The framework was followed by a number of key constituent strategies that set out in greater detail the programme of work in particular areas. These include, the First Five strategy, the National Youth Strategy for 2015‑20, the National Strategy on Young People’s Participation in Decision Making 2015‑20, the National Model of Parenting Support Services, and the LGBTI+ National Youth Strategy. Following the midterm review of BOBF (DCEDIY, 2018[2]), the Advisory Council concluded that BOBF had led to important first-time initiatives, such as the convening of different government departments to discuss child poverty, stronger child and youth participation in policy making, and stronger engagement with the voluntary sector. Nonetheless, it was also recognised that barriers to cross-government working needed further attention along with more prioritisation of policy interventions.
Recent changes, including the expansion of the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA) to the Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) in 2020, along with the ongoing reform of Tusla, the Child and Family Agency, and the implementation of the European Child Guarantee and Young Ireland: The National Policy Framework for Children and Young People 2023‑28 (DCEDIY, 2023[3]), provide an opportunity to realise an ambitious response to child poverty and to improve outcomes for children and young people. To this end, the OECD assisted Ireland, through the European Commission’s Technical Support Instrument and delivered in co‑operation with the European Commission’s Directorate‑General for Structural Reform Support (DG REFORM), in reviewing measures to strengthen current policy and governance arrangements for tackling child poverty and improving outcomes for children and young people (OECD, 2024[4]).
As part of said technical assistance, this report provides guidance for the development of a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system for Ireland’s new policy framework for children and young people. The report details the sequential steps that should be considered when developing a robust results-based M&E system, building on international good practice examples and existing indicators in the BOBF indicator set, which is the main indicator set currently in use to track progress in outcomes for children and young people in Ireland. While BOBF did not plan for the design and implementation of a results-based M&E framework to track the progress and performance of the policy framework, its indicator set has certain characteristics that gives it the potential to become the cornerstone on which a results-based M&E system could be built.
The BOBF indicator set was first published in 2017, alongside an accompanying methodology report in 2019 (DCEDIY, 2019[5]), and later updated in 2022 (DCEDIY, 2022[6]) and again in 2023 when it was renamed as the “Children and Young People’s indicator set” (DCEDIY, 2023[7]).1 According to the 2019 methodology report, the main objective of BOBF’s indicator set was to track progress for children and young people aged 0‑24 across the five national outcomes outlined in BOBF. The report clearly states that BOBF indicators were not designed to explain whether or how a particular action or commitment on the policy framework would lead to a particular outcome of interest. Nevertheless, the indicators were useful to support the monitoring and implementation of BOBF, by identifying trends in the outcomes of interest and allowing for international comparison (DCEDIY, 2022[8]).
The objective of this report is to explore how an M&E system could be developed for Ireland’s child and youth policy framework, building on the key elements of BOBF. The report starts with a brief explanation on the purpose of an M&E system (Section 2), then details the necessary steps to be considered when designing such a system, including: the development of a results framework (Section 3), monitoring for results (Section 4), planning for evaluation (Section 5), and reporting and dissemination of findings (Section 6). A concluding section summarises the main messages of the report and provides concrete recommendations (Section 7). It is important to highlight that there is not a unique way to build, and perhaps more importantly, maintain a results-based M&E system. This task should rather be understood as a work in progress and under continuous improvement.