Make the Promise True: a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for Measuring Quality in Child Protection Service Delivery in Zimbabwe

Promising Quality: making sure that we deliver excellent services for children, (UNICEF 2012a), is an innovative monitoring and evaluation framework of original and standardised measures developed in Zimbabwe to support child protection providers to deliver quality services for children within a multi-agency child protection system. It is intended to meet the demands of governments, donors and other stakeholders for information on the effectiveness and efficiency of development programming but importantly is a practice which ensures downward accountability to children. It can also be utilised to track programme performance, and in broad terms, value for money in child protection service delivery. Further, Promising Quality has important implications for the creation and strengthening of different types of social capital between children, organisations and government. Promising Quality is constructed to encourage children’s full and meaningful participation in the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) process; it poses three questions and uses four specifically designed instruments to find out if an organization is delivering what children need where and when they need it. In so doing, gaps in the functioning of a comprehensive child protection system are highlighted such that improvements in programming, policy advocacy and investment can be made. This paper argues that Promising Quality - its inception and continuing evolution - is a core component of a rights-based, participatory national child protection system in developing contexts and beyond because of its ability to track gains in efficiency as well as child protection outcomes.