Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 2) | Page 121

Practice Issues

Dear Social Service Practitioners,
Very often, we hear responses such as “we will monitor, ” “why not monitor
it for a while?” and “what have we done with the monitoring?” but what
does monitoring mean and entail in practice?
Monitoring is often about collecting information that will help to answer
questions about a programme, service or the use of resources. The output
of monitoring should enable decision making, and these decisions are best
set up upfront to determine what and how we will monitor.
If this is the case, the information can be collected in a planned, organised
and routine way. The information can then help the provider or owner to
report on progress and help in evaluation.
All programmes and services have records and notes. There should be a
structure to discuss what staff are doing and facilitate supervision. This simple
checking becomes monitoring when information is collected routinely and
systematically against a plan. The information might be about activities or
services, users, or about outside factors affecting the programme or project.

A good monitoring system
Information for monitoring is collected at specific times: daily, monthly or
quarterly.
Here are some basic points for a good monitoring system:
• collect data at the most natural point of everyday activities, and get
commitment from those collecting the information by explaining why
they are doing it and by buildling a simple, user-friendly system
• make sure that everyone responsible for monitoring has clear and
consistent guidelines
• make sure that monitoring records are completed fully and accurately –
people may not regard it as a high-priority activity
• provide feedback on the results of monitoring to those collecting
information, and explain how it is being used to make the programme or
service more effective
• check that the programme or project is not collecting the same piece of
information more than once.

120