We offer a wide range of research services which aim to improve the evidence-base from which public services are delivered. This includes secondary research such as literature reviews, rapid evidence assessments, data analysis, modelling and benchmarking as well as primary research such as questionnaires, interviews, focus groups, workshops and community surveying. We are particularly skilled at engaging with groups commonly referred to as ‘hard-to-reach’.

We undertake evaluations to help our clients identify what works including a focus on strengths and areas for development. Our evaluations can be:

• Real-time: especially useful for innovative projects or service re-design, we provide real-time and rapid-cycle feedback on performance enabling teams to adapt in light of new information.
• Formative: providing evaluation of services or programmes at implementation milestones to support practice and outcomes improvement.
• Summative: providing evaluation near the end of project or programme, helping to take-stock on progress achieved and supporting judgements about future delivery.

We are skilled at a range of evaluation approaches including: theory-driven, theory-led, realist, contribution analysis, and experimental and quasi-experimental designs.

We support clients formulate research questions, develop and refine theories of change and logic models and produce accessible evaluation frameworks and plans that ensure all partners understand how success in implementation, process and impact will be demonstrated. We also advise on the most appropriate evaluation designs, approaches and methods that will address our clients’ key questions.

We specialise in mixed-method evaluations. This means that we like to deploy a mixture of qualitative and quantitative methods in order to best explore different aspects of a programme and its impact, and to triangulate findings. We seek to understand: what works for whom, how and in what circumstances. Finally, as well as understanding ‘if’ things work, we like to understand ‘why’ they work and to test the theories or hypotheses behind them.

Clients typically ask us to undertake four different types of evaluation:

• Feasibility studies: understanding the extent to which a project or programme can be evaluated and how this should best be set-up.

• Process and implementation evaluations: helping to understand the extent to which a project or programme has been set-up and implemented successfully, including understanding factors enabling or inhibiting its success.

• Impact evaluation: understanding the extent to which a project and programme has achieved its objectives and has had a positive impact for the people it is designed to support.

• Economic evaluation: understanding whether projects or programmes offer value for money, are cost-effective, have a positive cost-benefit analysis, or provide a positive social return on investment.

A large portion of the projects or programmes that we evaluate are complicated or complex interventions which are being introduced into complex systems and which seek to have impact on the system as whole. We are able to factor-in systems thinking to ensure that we account for this and provide valuable insight.

Increasingly our clients are looking for greater certainty about the scale and nature of any impact that is being achieved. As a result, we are working on a number of evaluations that involve methodologies such as randomised control trials and quasi-experimental designs. See our news section for examples.

These bring together our experience in safeguarding with robust evaluation and audit skills. We regularly undertake case file audits (across children’s services, youth offending and adult social care) helping clients understand the effectiveness of practice and management oversight. Our team includes registered social workers as well as former inspectors to give you reassurance that work will be undertaken robustly.

We help our clients solve problems and explore areas for growth, improvement and innovation. For our clients in the public sector this is often about effectively responding to austerity and identifying ways of delivering services in more efficient and more impactful ways. For our clients in the third sector this is often about identifying opportunities to grow and develop.

We help clients design and implement performance improvement strategies. Our preference is to work on projects that build the internal capacity of your team using group and one-to-one coaching, mentoring and training. We also offer more intensive types of support via improvement teams (providing a scaffold to existing teams of practitioners and managers) and interim managers. We regularly work with practitioners, managers and leaders.