LAmbeth early action partnership (leap) evaluation

Evaluation

The Dartington team are working with a team of community researchers from Lambeth to undertake a mixed method developmental and then summative evaluation of LEAP, which is the A Better Start Project in Lambeth. We are taking a community participatory approach, working with the services that form the LEAP partnership, the LEAP core team and community members to understand what’s working well, what improvement looks like and what effect LEAP may have had on the lives of families and children in the Early Years.

The need

The Big Lottery Community Fund (BLCF) funded A Better Start programme in Lambeth began in 2015, working with services providing support to children and babies aged 0-3 and their parents and carers. The three main outcomes were to improve speech and language, diet and nutrition and social and emotional development. While there is a whole programme evaluation commissioned by the BLCF looking at lessons, learning and effectiveness across all the five A Better Start areas, LEAP were also keen to understand the impact they may be having in Lambeth.

Our response

The Dartington team will be working with LEAP and the services themselves to understand what LEAP partnership services need to drive their improvement journeys and ability to flex and adapt to the rapidly changing context in Lambeth. As part of the developmental evaluation, we will be providing capacity-building training and ongoing support and critical friend mentorship to embed learning practices and ensure that services have all they need to grow in confidence of their impact.

The summative evaluation will begin with a systemic theory of change for all of LEAP, exploring and describing how the services and supportive activities of LEAP work together within the partnership for impact on outcomes for children and families in Lambeth. We will build upon the work of the newly developed shared measurement system and supplement this with qualitative data collection to understand these contributions for a full, rich picture of what has worked, for whom and why.

Our team

We’re delighted to be working alongside four Community Researchers living and working in Lambeth. This is part of our commitment to integrating approaches to evidence and building in lived experience, both individually and from the community, to build a better picture of the systems supporting families in Lambeth.