ABSTRACT
Service evaluation is a theme that has only been seriously addressed by services over the last few years. In the past the concept of evaluating behaviour support was at best an afterthought. In most cases behaviour support, as with other specialist support work, remained outside the increasingly rigorous framework for monitoring schools' performance. An earlier tendency was for services to assume that as long as schools remained generally happy with support arrangements there was little to worry about and the success of support generally relied on maintaining the placements of individual children. There is little evidence that many services were involved in detailed monitoring and evaluation during the early 1990s, and nothing pre-1990. This was an era when LEA support services enjoyed a role untouched by the threat of Fair Funding and the increased autonomy of schools. Consequently the pressure to demonstrate value for money, accountability and progress against performance indicators and local targets was absent.
