Evaluation
Delivered by UCL, the University of Exeter and Anna Freud
The evaluation team is a partnership between UCL, the University of Exeter and Anna Freud. The team is carrying out an evaluation of Kailo so that we can learn from the experiences in Newham and Northern Devon.
The aim of this evaluation is to learn more about how and why Kailo works in local areas, and to learn more about young people’s experiences of taking part in Kailo. We hope that our findings will help us to improve Kailo before we launch it in new places.
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
Young Person’s Advisory Group
The developmental evaluation was supported and shaped by two advisory groups, one in Newham and one in North Devon. We think it’s important for young people to be involved in every step of this evaluation and couldn’t have done this work without them!
“The YPAG is a space for creatively evaluating the Kailo Project through collaboration and open conversation. It enables us to look into the work being done in a constructive way, with all having an overarching goal of improving life for those with mental health issues.”
(North Devon YPAG member)
What have we been doing?
The Young Person’s Advisory Groups (YPAGs) met monthly and took part in a range of activities to shape the evaluation. These included:
- Learning about Realist Evaluation approaches and methods.
- Reviewing participant information sheets and consent forms.
- Redesigning context-mechanism-outcome configurations, generated by researchers as part of a rapid realist review.
- Helping design and co-facilitating focus group discussions.
- Exploring creative ways to share research findings.
Some of our group members have written blogs about their experiences of being involved in the Kailo YPAG, which you can read here and here.
some of the words used by group members to describe the North Devon YPAG
Evaluation publications:
Developing programme theory for a place-based, systems change approach to adolescent mental health: A developmental realist evaluation
- Allen, K., March, A., Alexandrescu, B., Harris, J., Stemp, R., Li, S., Kennedy, L., Davies, K., Malhotra, T., Santana de Lima, E. and Hobbs, T
- 2025
Place-based approaches to improve the mental health and wellbeing of children and young people: a rapid realist review
- March, A., Allen, K., Davies, K., Harris, J., Bethel, A., Kennedy, L., Malhotra, T., Stemp, R., Alexandrescu, B., Hobbs, T. and Fonagy, P.,
- 2025
Our People
_________________________________________________________________________________________________
