Evaluation

Macc have commissioned an external agency, the Office for Public Management (OPM), to undertake an independent evaluation of the programme. All successful grant applicants will be expected to work with the evaluation team and to assess progress against the stated aims and objectives for their project.

It is vital that we demonstrate the impact both of the programme and each funded project. The evaluation findings will help to inform future funding decisions, and help to identify good practice from the programme. We need to know ‘what works, for whom, and why’, so that people working to reduce social isolation and loneliness for older people can implement more effective approaches in future.

The evaluation findings will inform the mid-programme event, the final programme event, as well as the evaluation report that will be presented to funders of the programme and local policy makers.

All projects will be expected to collaborate with the evaluation team throughout the duration of the programme. OPM will make sure that the evaluation is not overly burdensome, and is proportionate to the size of grant allocated to you.

The evaluation team will work with funded projects to capture data regarding progress, reflections on what’s working well and what has been more challenging, feedback from those accessing your service, and evidence of the outcomes you’re achieving.

There will be standardised reporting arrangements across all projects, and the evaluators will work with successful applicants for larger grants (£10,001 and above) to develop some bespoke measures specific to each project. The evaluators may also wish to contact the partners that projects are working with, as well as service users.

Smaller projects (less than £10,000 grant funding) will be supported by OPM to undertake a small-scale self-evaluation of their project.

The data will help to inform a series of short case studies that OPM will be producing of the grant funded projects – we need to know about what’s happened and what’s been achieved by each project.

Further information about the evaluation can be found in the application guidance.

If you have any questions about the evaluation, contact Lauren Roberts at OPM, on 0792 049 2222, or email: [email protected]