Chapter 4: Democratic Caring Evaluation for Refugee Children in Sweden

What is a democratic caring (DC) evaluator and what does it mean to be one, especially in terms of practicing responsibility for the stakeholders one works with in evaluation contexts? This chapter discusses the challenging issue of the responsibilities of evaluators, citing an evaluation of the reception of unaccompanied and separated children (UASC) in Umeå, a northern-Swedish community of over 100,000 residents. DC evaluation does not refer to a new evaluation approach. The notions of DC evaluation and the DC evaluator are used here in discussing what it means to be an evaluator who develops evaluation within a democratic and caring society. The discussion builds on both democratic evaluation and care theory. It is suggested that an enlightened DC evaluator is informed both by democratic evaluation and by research into good care, applying this knowledge reflectively during the evaluation process. This chapter discusses what is involved in developing a DC evaluation with a special focus on the evaluator’s responsibilities and good care.