A qualitative evaluation of the St George’s Home Life Campus Programme for young people

M.A. (Clinical Social Work)Abstract: CYCCs easily overlook the monitoring and evaluation aspects of their programmes, given the complex and challenging environment in which they operate to provide care to children and young people. Previous research also shows that young people face challenges related to their physical, emotional, social and financial support when they transition out of care. Thus, the focus is to provide the best services to these young people so that they develop the ability to know where, how and when to use their energies to improve themselves and how to seek help in their favour. The main aim of this study was a qualitative evaluation of the Life Campus Programme (LCP) St George’s Home, a programme of COACH. The LCP is a short-term residential care programme, where children are admitted to through the Children’s Act No. 38 of 2005. The LCP is expensive to run and funding has become increasingly scarce. In this context, programme evaluation plays an important dual role of ensuring that money is being spent wisely on a programme that really does work and providing evidence of success to secure additional funding. The study employed a qualitative research design, and data was collected via interviews utilizing a semi-structured interview schedule. The research population was all the young people who had exited the LCP in the year prior to data collection. The research sample consisted of 11 participants who had left the LCP a year ago. Data was analysed using thematic content analysis. The findings generated showed that participants remembered and are using some of the skills that were taught to them. The perceptions of the young people indicated that they benefited from the LCP; the majority were grateful for their learnings and that it indeed built skills that they are using in their home environment today. Thus on a positive note, while their struggles and hardships continue in their everyday life, the participants are able to show resilience in dealing with some of life’s challenges