Provision of a Project Evaluation Service for the New Work Connections Project

Descriptions

Denbighshire County Council is seeking to establish a contract for the provision of a service to evaluate the New Work Connections Project across the Counties of Denbighshire, Conwy, Gwynedd and Ynys Mon in order to determine the fulfilment of the project’s objectives, including its effectiveness, impact and sustainability. It is anticipated that this evaluation process will combine both formative and summative techniques in order to deliver a full qualitative and quantitative evaluation. The main aim of the evaluation is to determine the fulfilment of the project’s objectives, including its effectiveness, impact and sustainability. It is anticipated that this evaluation process will combine both formative and summative techniques in order to deliver a full qualitative and quantitative evaluation. Formative - examining the delivery of the project, the quality of its implementation, and the assessment of the organisational context, personnel, procedures, inputs, and so on. Summative - examining the effects or outcomes determining the overall impact.The evaluation of the project is seen as a crucial element and will play an integral part in explaining the reasons behind the project’s successes and failures in order to share good practice with others and identify what may work better next time. The project has a strong emphasis on the development of processes and protocols, aimed at streamlining the current wide range of services. Increased collaboration will contribute greatly to making efficiencies and therefore, to the sustainability of services. It is expected that greater collaboration between; social care, health, education, training, employment services, and third sector bodies will result in more holistic services for participants. This should improve effectiveness in meeting needs and therefore the evaluation must enable the project to demonstrate the need for this type of support to continue at the end of the funding period. The evaluation will be carried out as a combination of internal and external responsibility. Internal evaluation will be a crucial part of the work of the local project managers and will dovetail closely with their responsibilities for the setting-up and operation of the monitoring and data collection processes. The consistent direct contact of the project managers, with delivery agents and participants will enable the building of an on-going formative picture of project activity, whilst the periodic involvement of the external evaluator will allow the capture of appropriate and relevant’ snapshots’ of activity. The combination of both these information sources will ensure the widest and most informative bases for evaluation.Evaluation will be ongoing throughout the life of the project to demonstrate progress in the implementation of the project’s objectives and to contribute to the on going planning and review of the project informing further development of the project and sustainability of the service provided.Further information on the project requirements are contained within the Evaluation Specification document contained within the tender documents.The length of the project is anticipated to be approximately 4 years.