Conclusion

• Author: Applica, Directorate-General for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion (European Commission), Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
• Pages: 11-11

Case studies on the effectiveness of funding programmes – Key findings and study reports

11

• Greater flexibility should be in troduced in EU fund regulations, so that a wider

range of measures is eligible for support, responding to the particular and urgent

needs of th e programmes c oncerned. Programmes shoul d include two phases,

for which adequate, separate funding should be allocated. The first phase would

include all the preparatory activities such as planning, tendering, personnel

recruitment and setting up monitoring and evaluati on arrangements. The

second phase would include the implementation of the programme.

• Fewer programmes and larger funding would boost the poten tial impact of the

programmes and cut their associated management costs.

• Future sustainability of the programmes should be assured – if projects cannot

be sustained once EU funding ends, most of their effects vanish over time. Th e

EU could encourage Member States t o continue such projects through buildin g

political support and implementing legalisation that requires the continued

operation of established services.

3 Conclusion

The programmes reviewed had a positive impact on the groups of children targeted. More

children than usual attended the facilities provided and the number of places available

increased substantially. The lives of the children also improved significantly in many cases,

especially their health and well-being as well as their social skills, in one case, the

improvement extending to vulnerable children outside the group target ed.

In addition, several programmes benefited parents by improving their parental competence

and employment situation as w ell as prompting changes in the general perception of the

children targeted and their families.

There are a number of lessons to be drawn from th e programmes reviewed for the futu re

use of EU funding to assist vulnerable children in order for this to be most effective. In

particular, programmes should:

• be properly planned and designed, tailored to local and individual needs and be

located close to the children targeted;

• involve parents, include awareness-raising campaigns and develop relations based

on trust;

• involve t rained staff used to working with disadvantaged children and prefe rably

from the same community as the disadvantaged children concerned and pay th em

decent wages;

• ensure close cooperati on between all those involved and elicit the support of local

politicians;

• avoid stigmatisation of the children concerned and their families;

• be built on hard experience and a w ell-conducted ex ant e impact assessment and

involve ex-post impact evaluations as a requirement, which could be made a

precondition of EU financing EU;

• allow a wide range of measures to be eligible for support i n order to enable the

most appropriate approach to be implemented.