Children and Young People’s Perspectives on Reintegration

Informing the development of a toolkit to monitor and evaluate reintegration programmes with children

An inter-agency project was established in 2012 to develop a joint monitoring and evaluation (M&E) toolkit for organisations working with reintegrated children. As part of the wider project, consultations with 89 reintegrated children and young people were held in June and July 2013 by nine Partner Organisations in seven countries in Eastern Europe and East and West Africa. This consultation was Commissioned by the Centre for Rural Childhood, Perth College, University of the Highlands and Islands Scotland, UK and Home: The Child Recovery and Reintegration Network. This consultation was generously funded by the Oak Foundation. This resource has been written by Helen Veitch, Consultant on Children’s Participation.

The consultations with children and young people covered their views in three broad areas:

• Firstly, the most significant changes which children and young people felt had happened to them from their involvement in a reintegration programme.
• Secondly, the indicators which show that a child has ‘successfully reintegrated’ (in the specific contexts of each consultation) and, of these, which indicators are most important to children and young people.
• Thirdly, the views of children and young people – as well as staff running consultations – were sought to identify how to involve children and young people in M&E processes for reintegration programmes.

This resource covers children and young people’s experiences of big changes in their lives since they became involved in the reintegration programmes; indicators of reintegration as identified by them across the different contexts, and how these many indicators were inter-linked; and finally their recommendations to improve guidelines for those planning Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) consultations with reintegrated children.