Happy New Year to everyone! 2024 promises to be an exciting year for CES as we will be partnering with a diverse range of organisations and causes to create meaningful impact for people across Ireland and Northern Ireland. Here’s s little taster of some of the projects we will be working on.
We are delighted to be working in partnership with Chime, the National Charity for Deafness and Hard of Hearing People. Our specialist evaluation team will be reviewing Chime’s hearing aid service. We will conduct focus groups and interviews with staff who deliver the service, and survey support staff and service users to get their views on how well the service is working for them.
We will also review international literature around best practice and service delivery standards. This will help us to identify areas where Chime's service can be improved and to benchmark its performance against other jurisdictions’ service delivery.
We believe that this comprehensive review will provide valuable insights into how Chime can continue to improve its hearing aid service and meet the needs of its service users.
We will be delivering our next set of ‘Evaluating Impact’ training sessions to Community and Voluntary Sector organisations from March to May, and September to November.
This training programme has been specifically designed to build capacity in the sector by providing organisations with the practical skills and tools they need to effectively evaluate and communicate the impact of their projects and services.
Participants can select the session that is most appropriate for them and can take part online or in person. More information is available here: Change Management Training and Workshops
We are looking forward to the launch of our new research report which explores the power of community education in supporting lone parents to achieve improved educational, economic and social outcomes for themselves and their children.
Our research team visited community education settings across Ireland and spoke with over 200 people involved in community education – including community education providers and lone parents.
This research was funded by the Beachaire Fund and will be launched in the Spring.
We are excited to join a new national partnership programme ‘Criminal justice Open Research Dialogue (CORD)’ along with 40 other organisations involved in criminal justice research. The aim of the partnership is to embed a culture of interdisciplinary open research in criminal justice in Ireland.
The project recognises the potential for interdisciplinary open research to inform criminal justice policy and practice in Ireland, advancing public safety, health and equality.
Other partners include universities and technological universities, criminal justice policymakers, agencies and oversight bodies, third sector justice services, civil society and minority advocacy bodies, and research infrastructure.
We are looking forward to sharing our learning and knowledge and to learn from others working in the field.
The SupportingTraveller and Roma (STAR) pilot project in education was established by theDepartment of Education in 2019 with the aim of improving attendance, participation and school completion in specific Traveller and Roma communities regionally.
CES has been commissioned to carry out an evaluation to provide an understanding of the implementation, outcomes, and impacts of the pilot programme, in terms of meeting the goals of the improving school attendance, participation, and school completion among Traveller and Roma children and young people.
The findings of the evaluation will consider how to achieve a long term impact for these communities and will inform future policy development at the Department. Our work will complete in the Spring.
Photo by Wil Stewart on Unsplash
