Activity Evaluation packs
to help evaluate some of your services and activities with parents/carers

Whenever you run an activity within a children's centre, you might want to think about using this ready made pack. Not only will it act as evidence for audits or when used with our 'What is a Good Children's Centre Toolkit', but it will also help you to get feedback in order to improve your activities and services within the centre.

Developed with practitioners at a council, their children's centre managers and their statistical analysis team, the pack consists of eight elements. These are:

• An 'instructions/how to use' leaflet

• A4 activity questionnaire (200 copies)

• A3 laminated poster to put up in the centre. This can be branded/customised with your logo

• Coloured smiley face stickers (to use on the above poster)

• A flat pack 'ballot type' box to put the questionnaires into

• Evaluations sheets to assess responses (25 copies)

• Evaluations poster to track responses on an ongoing basis (3 copies). These posters enable you to store the overall results of each evaluation and to share results with other centres and managers

• An order form for refills of any item with the pack (3 copies)

The questionnaire consists of nine 'general' questions using a 'tick box' approach. The questions can be used for most activities that a parent/carer might be attending in the centre. Questions cover three key areas; what a child likes at the centre, what the centre does for the parent/carer and what the parent/carer feels about the centre. 

Within the pack, the instructions leaflet tells you how to use the pack and gives details of how to evaluate your findings on an ongoing basis. The laminated poster can be customised with a logo and is for putting up in the centre to show visitors and users of the centre how you are doing. The results are shown on the poster using coloured 'smiley faces' and can be changed to reflect the current situation with regards to each question. The evaluations sheets and posters are for analysing results for each activity you choose to evaluate and for keeping results on an ongoing basis. The ballot box is for parents/carers to put their filled in questionnaires.