These case studies have been written up to provide examples of our work, as well as being interesting stories that demonstrate how evaluation can help you reflect and learn

Stories

Getting good feedback from users

A small arts project in Dorset which is working with prisoners needed help with designing short visual questionnaires for prisoners and staff. The response rate was good and from this work the organisation have found how they can improve the service as well as discovering important and valuable benefits. They have used this information in a funding application to develop the service.

Identifying people who need a service

Both a LETS group and a cancer support group have discovered why people were not joining or using their services; this resulted in the cancer support group which was 15 years olds deciding it was no longer needed as new resources had emerged; and the LETS group has developed better ways of promoting and delivering their services and allowing better access to the service for users.

Developing a quality assurance system

The trustees and staff of a black mentoring project have used their national quality assurance standards to identify changes and developments required in the way they run their organisation. They are developing a pack of friendly tools to take feedback from mentors and young people. Other organisations are using PQASSO, Quality Mark or the Guidance Standards, or in the case of a mental health organisation and a head injuries organisation developing their own standards.

What difference does the work make?

A children’s information service commissioned an evaluation of their core services to assist them in clarifying the direction and focus of the organisation. The trustees were involved in interviewing service users, a useful exercise for them in really discovering what the organisation did. Staff were involved in taking feedback from non users in a mall shopping centre using a market survey type tool. The staff and trustees of the service are now following up the learning from the evaluation by undertaking the development of a strategic plan.

A user led evaluation of an independent Living facilityIn the areas of auditing and evaluating existing services and identifying the priorities for service development, the needs, experiences, priorities and views of users and carers are crucial. This information is often best collected by other service users or carers as it is using the experts, who are also in a good place to get other users to speak. There are major barriers to user participation in any evaluation when there are concerns that speaking openly could put at risk a valued service or facility, or make them very vulnerable. For example, the residents of an independent living unit felt able to present an honest picture of their experiences of care to a small team of trained user evaluators precisely because they were being interviewed by other disabled service users. Commissioned by funders of a follow on project, the user evaluators worked with a wider reference group of service users to identify the purpose of the evaluation, the questions it needed to answer, develop tools that were participatory, acceptable and credible, and analyse, reflect on and judge the evidence. The criteria they developed around issues like independence and their data analysis drew on years of experience and direct knowledge. In this situation the evaluation becomes a tool of change, bringing gains for both services and individuals. The evaluation of the independent living facility led to major changes, enabling users to have more choice and control in their lives, as well as influencing the design of the new development. Individuals learnt new skills, their organisation developed wider networks, and local purchasers and providers gained access to users with evaluation skills. There was resistance from the service providers to a user research team, but they saw the research process was fair, open and involved the support of an independent evaluator, so had to take the findings seriously. The end product of the evaluation was the empowerment of the people who were part of the work as well as the report and the action that followed. The drawback was that like all participatory processes, it took time, money, facilitation, support, skills, and training.