EVALUATING COMMUNITY CARE IN SCOTLAND - CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON A STUDY OF POLICY IMPLEMENTATION

The paper describes the reality of evaluating the implementation of th e reforms in community care in Scotland in 1993. In doing so it report s a trajectory familiar to evaluative researchers: the presentation of problems at the design stage, and their imperfect solutions; the emer gence of delays in implementation, causing modifications to plans and timetable; discoveries made during the research which affected the hop es invested in the original design, and the adoption of pragmatic solu tions; the outcome of the research and its reception. The paper ends w ith some critical reflections on the study and on evaluative research in general. It is suggested that evaluative research occupies a middle ground which results in the inevitability of compromise, queries whet her there is truly an audience for uncompromised evaluation, and argue s for the continuation of dialogue after completion as a guard against the ephemerality to which evaluation is often prone.