Fairer Futures Partnership Programme: evaluation strategy

Scope of the evaluation strategy

This evaluation strategy is focused on the role of Scottish Government in evaluating the Fairer Futures Partnerships as a national programme of activity. However, it will also be underpinned and informed by a wide range of evaluation and learning work taking place both across Scottish Government and externally, including at a local level. Gaining a better understanding of how to effectively transform family support for people in poverty and what has been achieved is a shared endeavour across different levels of government and third and private sector partners.

In addition to local level evaluation activity, relevant Scottish Government evaluations include those relating to: the Whole Family Wellbeing Fund, the Child Poverty Practice Accelerator Fund, School-Age Childcare Early Adopter Communities, the Cash-First programme and the No One Left Behind employability approach. Some of these initiatives operate in the same areas as the FFPs and we will seek to co-ordinate and consolidate evaluation activity, avoiding duplication wherever possible.

The purpose of the national evaluation of the FFP programme is to better understand:

A. How to achieve transformational and sustainable change in the delivery of family support;

B. What approaches are effective and sustainable in different local contexts; and

C. What are the impacts of the approaches being taken for families, communities, public services staff and wider support systems.

Findings from the evaluation will be used to inform future policy and investment decisions and to support existing and future partnerships to learn and adapt their approaches.

Alongside the national evaluation there will also be wider evaluative, learning and improvement work conducted by local partners, and by external academic, research and practitioner organisations that we will wish to draw on to inform the national evaluation. One key element of this will be a programme of learning and engagement co-ordinated by Scottish Government in collaboration with the Improvement Service, which aims to create a platform for sharing best practice and creating momentum around taking forward the learning from the FFPs. The programme includes targeted support for partners on service design, goal orientation, project structuring, and monitoring and evaluation. The learning programme will complement and add value to the national evaluation and enable lessons learnt to feed back into local partnerships and to Scottish Government more quickly to improve policy design and delivery.