Description of the programme
The Children and Young People Financial Education Innovation and Evaluation Programme was commissioned by The Money and Pensions Service in October 2020. It aimed to address gaps in the wider understanding of effective financial education by developing and evaluating new, innovative solutions or by evaluating existing but untested interventions.
Whizz-Kidz’s project was one of seven pilot projects funded, and was one of two projects with a focus on interventions for children and young people in vulnerable circumstances. The Whizz-Kidz project had a particular focus on young wheelchair users and their families.
The aim of the project was to allow Whizz-Kidz to support young wheelchair users and their families to produce their own content (e.g., videos, animation, blogs) about their experiences of money-related matters, with supporting information, to be added to the Whizz-Kidz website. They involved 14 young wheelchair users to develop the resources, then shared these resources via a digital campaign.
The study
Ecorys conducted a process evaluation of the Whizz-Kidz project between January and August 2021. The evaluation aimed to understand the effectiveness of the process of designing, implementing, and delivering the pilot.
The evaluation first involved developing a Theory of Change with the project team, to outline the anticipated activities, outputs and outcomes for the pilot.
The evaluation methods involved interviews with the two members of staff in the Whizz-Kidz project delivery team and interviews with two wheelchair users (aged 18-35) that developed resources for the project, reflecting on their involvement.
The evaluation also includes data analysed by Whizz-Kidz’s digital campaign agency, on the levels of engagement with the video and blog resources produced through the project.
Key findings
- The Whizz-Kidz pilot project (at the time of reporting) had implemented most of the activities it intended, although at a smaller scale and without the involvement of families.
- Consultation with young people and staff at Whizz-Kidz was effective in helping the project team to identify topics of interest for young wheelchair users, with online safety and gaming, general money management and higher education emerging as key themes.
- Recruitment and engagement of young people to take part in the pilot took much longer than expected for a number of reasons, including: difficulty in engaging young people at a time and age when they had examinations; key life-transitions to focus on; and, the effects of COVID-19 to deal with. Formalising the initial consultation process to identify pilot themes could have helped with later engagement, for example through gathering details of those willing to subsequently contribute to the project.
- Upon hearing about the project, some young people were nervous about contributing content because they did not feel like they had the authority to talk about money matters. Therefore, communicating to contributors that they did not need to be experts in money and finance was important for recruitment, as was clearly communicating the purpose and scope of the pilot to frontline staff so they could better explain it to the young people they support.
- According to those interviewed, the main delivery of the project – in terms of young wheelchair users developing and producing content – worked well, and the two young people interviewed reported a positive experience.
- Whizz-Kidz benefitted from having delivered a similar content production project during the pandemic, so they were able to develop resources quickly in the pilot.
- While the evaluation did not set out to assess the outcomes from the evaluation, it found that the contributors that interviewed felt that the project enabled them to share their experiences to help others.
- For Whizz-Kidz, the project helped to uncover the potential need for further, more detailed support on benefits and entitlements and earning money.
Points to consider
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Methodological strengths/weaknesses: Due to the low numbers of interviews (n=4) for this evaluation, findings should be interpreted with caution as they may not be representative of everyone involved in the project and cannot be transferred more broadly.
- Due to available timescales, it was not possible to assess the effectiveness of, and outcomes from the project for young wheelchair users, and for Whizz-Kidz as an organisation.
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Generalisability/ transferability: Project team stakeholders felt confident that the model could be transferred to other contexts in terms of the challenges facing young wheelchair users, such as education or accessing benefits.
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Relevance: The pilot project has helped to shine a light on young wheelchair users’ experiences with managing money and the challenges they face. In doing so, it has also underlined the need for further bespoke and tailored support for young wheelchair users, in terms of managing their money, understanding what benefits they might be entitled to, and considerations for education, employment and earning money going ahead and how changing situations might affect these.
