ABSTRACT
In moving towards a situation where every user and provider of a service can confidently self-evaluate, there are a number of hurdles to be leapt over—not least of which are the ideas that evaluation is difficult, uncomfortable, time-consuming, technically mysterious and requires specialist expertise. In evaluation, it is critical to retain this perspective throughout because it is the decisions about the user’s or consumer’s needs—expressed as values—that provide the ultimate benchmarks for all evaluative judgements about whether or not a service or other effort is working. Administrators, funders, businesses and managers who are remote from the ground have a huge stake in this kind of evaluation being done, as their own success and ultimate reason for being stem from and back to those same critical reference groups, and the kinds of lives they are resourced to lead.
