Извършване на оценка на изпълнението на

2.Executive Summary

This evaluation is a mid-term process evaluation of the effectiveness in the first three years of implementation of the 2008-2018 National Strategy for Children.

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  Relevance – the degree of relation between the identified goals and priorities of the National Strategy and the existing social and economic problems which should be accomplished by the Strategy; the degree to which the set targets correspond to the whole political framework, to the needs of the policy authorities (State Agency for Child Protection (SACP), Ministry of Labour and Social Protection, Agency for Social Protection) and to the general deficits in the country;
  
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  Effectiveness – the degree to which the goals and expected outcomes identified at a program level are achieved i.e. to what extent the effects produced to that moment correspond to the goals that had been set in the strategy; the factors contributing to achieving or not achieving them were analyzed, as well as the likelihood for these goals to be achieved by the end of the programme period;
  
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  Efficiency - to what extent the achieved results correspond to the invested resources, the extent to which the desired effects are attained at a reasonable price i.e the general implementation was assessed in view of the correlation between the financial, material and human resources used and the achieved results;
  
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  Utility – The whole impact on the beneficiates should be the subject of the final evaluation of the strategy implementation or of an impact assessment (i.e. ex-post evaluation). Despite that fact, the team analyzed those effects and their utility to the moment accounting for possible changes and any impact on the children and families as well as the society as a result of the strategy.
  

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  The National Strategy for Children 2008-2018 is the first strategic document in Bulgaria, which claims to target all the children. The planning process involved representatives of all related ministries. Memoranda of agreement had been signed, as well as agreements for cooperation, mechanisms for interaction; experts of different fields had been involved into the planning process – social policy, education, and health care. Despite that, the planning of National Strategy for Children was not preceded by an adequate analysis and assessment of the achievements of the previous strategies for child protection. There had been no preliminary and subsequent assessment of the impact, nor shared vision and mission of the system. In spite of the participation of many stakeholders there was practically no cooperation between the sectors because the strategy had not planned for sufficient measures towards systemic changes (the social, health care, education systems).That means the strategy has failed to influence them in a way that they would become proactive supporting all children’s development and preventing their social exclusion;
  
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  The National Strategy for Children has not significantly influenced the condition of the children in Bulgaria in any of the fields it targets. On a number of indicators, the quality of children’s life has actually got worse. The reasons are that it is a mechanical collection of sectorial policies and the connection between them is not visible either in the analysis nor the measures planned. As a result, the systems deal with consequences rather than the root problems behind children’s social exclusion;
  
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  A main challenge for the planning teams had been setting operative and strategic goals, because there was either no shared vision for child’s welfare, nor definition for the concept or ways of measuring it. On one hand, this is caused by the lack of synchronization of the strategic documents during and after adopting the strategy. On the other hand, there was no analysis of the social-economic situation, no proper assessment of the needs of families and children or the social conditions (political, economical, social, technological, etc.). This only leads to a partial correspondence between the set goals and priorities in the field policies for the children. The lack of a common methodology for planning also has lead to measures and goals being set at inappropriate and varying levels of programme planning;
  
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  Although the National Strategy for Children attempts to target all the children, it actually focuses on the children at risk only, which are 2% of the whole child population in the country, (deinstitutionalization, children in trafficking, crime, etc.), rather than on the support to families and risk prevention as well as towards improving welfare and development of all children. To a large extent all of that makes this strategy look like yet another “social” strategy for children and not like a strategy for the development of all Bulgarian children;
  
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  A serious challenge in the process of the realization of the strategy is the existing barrier to the full use of monitoring data for management purposes (evidence-based decision-making). The monitoring process as it is carried out now is ineffective due to, on one hand, lack of mid-terms goals and deadlines (there is no action plan behind the strategy, the action planning is done on an yearly basis only, and this holds the risk of losing the focus on the general framework of the strategy). On the other hand, there is no common methodology for collecting evaluation data, the developed performance indicators and the indicators for effectiveness (i.e. indicators for outcomes and objectives) have not been applied in practice. The weak monitoring and evaluation capacity of the system , as well as the lack of a clearly identified and adequately empowered coordinating authority when it comes to policies for children, puts at risk the management of the strategy in a way that it cannot respond to the needs of services and performance quality .
  

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  In the National Strategy for Children there is no designated budget for implementing the measures planned. In the National Program for Child Protection for 2008 and 2009 the resources and financing are planned mainly “within the approved budget” or “from the Human Resources Development Operational Programme”. As late as 2010 resources from other programmes were planned in the National Program for Child Protection as well, mainly donor programmes and a few national ones;
  
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  The expenses for social inclusion are increasing faster than the actual number of socially included children for the period of the evaluation as well as the cost of successful social inclusion of one child; the expenses for deinstitutionalization are increasing, while the number of the deinstitutionalized children is not growing significantly. The expenses for institutional and residential services are twice as many as the resources for community-based services , which does not correspond to the declared priority for supporting children in their family environment;
  
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  The resources for providing equal access to education are increasing faster than the number of children involved, while the resources allocated for improving the quality of the education are growing at a slow rate, similar to the rate at which dropping out of school decreases;
  
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  There are no specially allocated resources for improving children’s health, they are part of the general budgets for health care.