Evaluation Projects

Building on our previous evaluations of Aspirations, a mentoring program designed to support children who are looked after, we have collaborated with BLGC (Bolton Lads and Girls Club) to evaluate its transition into a new phase. This phase entails an expanded focus on providing increased assistance to young people as they enter the workforce, including activities such as CV writing, placements, exposure to diverse opportunities, and ongoing mentoring. 

Our evaluation process has served as a valuable means to delve into the experiences of the participating young individuals and explore the ways in which they have grown. Specifically, we have examined changes in their confidence levels, their sense of hope for the future, and their expectations regarding their own capabilities. This work has been useful in understanding the impact of the program on their personal development. 

The evaluation will continue, enabling us to further explore the outcomes of this project. We eagerly anticipate the findings and the insights they will provide regarding the effectiveness of the expanded program in supporting young individuals in their journey towards a brighter future. 

We have enjoyed working with London Gypsies and Travellers (LGT) as they embarked on a three-year project to tackle the issue of unsuitable and insecure accommodation for Gypsy, Roma and traveller communities in London.

The project focused on identifying the barriers and challenges faced by  Gypsy, Roma and traveller communities, and developing solutions to improve their access to safe and secure housing. The project also worked to influence local and London-wide policy, and to support the collective voice of Gypsy, Roma and traveller communities in the fight for better housing. In parallel, London Gypsies and Travellers  also undertook a one-year project in Hackney to tackle homelessness amongst young families from Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities. The project provided support and advice to families, and worked to prevent them from becoming homeless in the first place.

We have worked as an evaluation partner for LGT and helped them to measure the impact of the projects, and to identify any areas where improvements could be made and build capacity this has involved the creation of an evaluation framework, developing understanding and methods around case studies and working together to analyse the data collected to create a report.

Good Things Foundation and Libraries Connected collaborated to research libraries role in digital inclusion. We were delighted to be the appointed research partner facilitating and supporting this research which included the co-creation of a framework around digital inclusion in libraries; in depth interviews with a range of people in 12 library services and a wider survey to all library services in England completed by over 75% of library services.

As the world become increasingly digital, with many services, advisory and support groups moving online, the problem of inaccessibility and digital exclusion increases, particularly for people and communities who need these very services and support most. Libraries play a vital role in supporting digital inclusion both as an individual service offer and as a wider part of the local ecosystem of support for communities.

WSA director Wendy working with Leila Baker led on this research which is now available on the Good Things Foundation website.

We were the learning partners for the pilot of ‘Peer to Parent’ which is a peer support collaborative in Essex supporting parents and families during the perinatal period. As learning partners we discussed key learning with a wide range of people involved including; those delivering peer support, those working in the perinatal system like the Perinatal Mental Health team and midwives and those commissioning services.

We ran learning events, had open discussions and spoke to people one to one. The aim of the Action Learning approach is that we can feed in learning as we go to have a direct impact on the service delivery and be of maximum support to all involved.

The action learning workshops provided a great space to share ideas and discuss how to best deliver support alongside existing perinatal services and what was needed to encourage all parents and partners to get the support they need, when they need it. We followed up with reports from each workshop, capturing everyone’s pledge and commitments to feed into the future direction of the Peer to Parent collaborative.

We were part of Local Trust’s Communities Responding to Covid-19 research project. We worked alongside a wider team, convened by University of Birmingham Third Sector Research Centre, conducting research in 26 communities in England. The research involved working to capture responses to Covid-19 in these communities. We have led on fieldwork with Big Local Conniburrow as well as contributing to various briefings, analysis, and a workshop. We were especially proud to co-author are search briefing on Sustaining Community Action with colleagues Angus McCabe and Angela Ellis-Paine. You can access the reports and outputs from this research here.

We worked with Maternal Mental Health Alliance’s (MMHA) as the external evaluators. This spanned from 2013 when the Alliance was first being set up until 2022. Last year we completed our evaluation report for MMHA Everyone’s Business campaign’s work between 2016 and 2021. The campaign sought to ‘turn the map green’, working to increase the amount of Perinatal Mental Health specialist support across the UK.

Our work consisted of a large number of individual and group interviews, case studies, a focus group informed by lived experience and a secondary data review.

It evidenced MMHA’s growth over the 10 years since its inception by a small group of people with a solid vision, to it becoming well positioned to represent the sector. The report marked the culmination of our evaluation work with this important Alliance and now charity. The summary report is now available to read here.