Meaningful outcome evaluation: a practical approach for public services

Delivered by Dr Ailsa Cook and Dr Sarah Morton, this seminar will bring together insights from their years of work with public service organisations. Both well known for their ability to develop practical tools backed by robust evidence-based approaches, Sarah and Ailsa have been working together to develop a new innovative approach to outcome evaluation and bring this to a wide range of public service organisations.

The seminar will be of interest to people working in the public or voluntary sector who are commissioning, reporting to or developing outcome approaches and to people interested in public service reform, evidence to action and new approaches to accountability and performance management.

Many organisations want to tell the story of the unique and innovative ways they support the people and communities they care about, but this isn’t as simple as it sounds. Across public services organisations are grappling with the conceptual and practical challenges of working towards and evaluating outcomes in complex systems. This includes the need to clearly understand the change mechanisms at the core of any approach; to streamline and improve data and evidence to tell their story, and the desire to develop a more evidence-based picture of what is and isn’t working.

Over the past five years Sarah and Ailsa have been working together to develop and test practical approaches that help organisations understand their contribution to outcomes, and use an outcome approach to understand and drive change. In 2017 they founded Matter of Focus (formerly Outcome Focus). Since then, they have supported more than 30 public service organisations and teams to embed meaningful outcome evaluation in their day to day work through consultancy and their new software tool, OutNav. In this time, they have worked with government departments, local authorities, health boards, public bodies and local, national and international charities. In this seminar we will share our insights from this work and propose that there are ways of working with outcomes that are both practical and robust.

Please join us for drinks and networking after the seminar where we will be marking the launch of our new company name Matter of Focus and talking about our journey from idea to thriving mission-led company.

If you can’t attend but would like to know more, please sign up to our mailing list to receive a copy of our accompanying white paper after the event.

Programme

2.45pm - Arrival
3.00pm - Seminar
4.00pm - Networking and drinks
5.30pm - End