London mayor's office reveals details of Project Oracle evaluation programme

At a seminar for the voluntary and community sector at City Hall yesterday (27 April), delegates were told that Project Oracle will help youth programmes of all sizes to establish what impact they have had on young people’s lives and help to address the current evidence void in the youth sector.

Project Oracle will initially try to determine which types of interventions work best in preventing violent youth crime, but it will also identify projects that work more generally to improve the lives of young people in the capital. 

Youth programmes seeking validation have to complete an online self-assessment form to establish how they have improved outcomes for young people. Projects then need to provide supporting evidence and undergo a validation process by the mayor’s office, where they are interviewed over the phone and face to face.

Finally, the mayor’s office and the youth programme will draw up an improvement plan to help raise performance and address any weaknesses. At the end of the process, they will receive a validation rating of between one and five, depending on the evidence to support their effectiveness.

Projects rated as a level five will have to have achieved the highest standards of evidence equivalent to internationally renowned programmes such as Family Nurse Partnership.

Christian Steenberg, programme manager for the violent and youth crime team at the Greater London Authority, said: "There are hundreds if not thousands of projects doing incredible work with children and young people but which were struggling to find the evidence of what they were doing is good. Our challenge was to translate very complex and clinical standards of evidence into practical steps that practitioners and local providers are actually going to find useful." 

The Project Oracle evaluation framework will be officially launched later this year, but organisations are being encouraged to express an interest in taking part from this week.