Research and evaluation is important in this area, as it often provides the corroborative evidence to ensure initiation or continuation of funding and it generates the necessary evidence base which allows demonstration at a national, regional and local level to policy makers and commissioners of services of how important and under-resourced an area this is. This section provides some things to consider if you want to undertake research or evaluation in this area.

• Doing service evaluation research will necessitate making good links with local services. Without their help it is often very difficult to access users of the service e.g. children, families and problem drinkers.
• Getting help from people at all levels of the service – management, middle managers and data to day practitioners - is vital to good and effective working in this area.
• Funding can be hard to come by but there will be opportunities within your own country (and even through organisations such as the EU); consider the Government, other national, regional and local organisations and charitable organisations. Multi-disciplinary collobrations are often encourage so consider partnerships with services, charities or academic institutions.
• In undertaking your work you may have to abide by certain ‘quality control' guidelines, such as ensuring that your research is registered on appropriate local and national systems, that your work has been approved by a local research office and that you have the appropriate research ethics approval. Your employing organisation or local research support unit (or equivalent) should be able to help with these issues.
• There will be a variety of quantitative and qualitative methodologies for you to consider when undertaking research and/or evaluation work in this area. Your employers, local research support unit (or equivalent), university library etc. should be able to help. If you do not have the full range of research skills necessary then consider a collaboration with a research unit or academic department or institution.
• The national ENCARE website for your country should be able to provide more specific information to help you out.
• It is important that the work that you do is disseminated, through publications, conferences, the Internet and so on.
• For service evaluation it will be important to involve both staff and the users of the service (e.g. children, families and problem drinkers).

In the UK the Scottish Executive's Effective Interventions Unit has produced a guide on conducting evaluations of services and groups for families and carers of drug users. There is a lot here that is equally relevant to alcohol misuse, and that could be useful to those wishing to conduct such work in other European countries.

A Toolkit that will support those who wish to develop or extend services to meet the needs of children (and families) affected by alcohol misuse has been developed in the UK. Despite being developed in the UK we hope that the Toolkit will contain useful tips on research, evaluation and service development in this area.