OLD KENT ROAD FAMILY ZONE
Developmental Evaluation
Impact on Urban Health
This five-year project, with core funding from Impact on Urban Health to the Old Kent Road Family Zone (OKRFZ), aims to strengthen governance arrangements and understanding of local needs to tackle drivers of inequalities and help children thrive. Our developmental evaluation on this aims to bolster learning and support equitable approaches to decision-making to affect change.
The need
The OKRFZ – established in Surrey Square Primary School – seeks to create the conditions and infrastructures for children and young people to thrive in the Old Kent Road area in London. It aims to develop approaches to understand local needs and context through community engagement, and design partnerships, services, social infrastructure and tests of change to tackle drivers of inequalities and help children thrive. There is a focus on shifting power and building local confidence, capacity and capabilities for the local OKRFZ partnership to ‘own’ this learning and development.
Our response
We have been commissioned to carry out a developmental evaluation primarily to support the ongoing development of the OKRFZ during this important formative period, alongside generating learning to inform Impact on Urban Health’s wider children’s mental health programme. The developmental evaluation aims to:
Take stock of learning to inform the continued development of OKRFZ’s vision, model development and strategies for change.
Understand opportunities, routes, and mechanisms for affecting change (in particular, the best role that OKRFZ and schools might play within the local system, and Impact on Urban Health as a funder.)
Inform a shared understanding of the conditions required to bring about such change, including how power is shared and redistributed and how the voice of young people, families and communities is elevated and influences decision-making.
Inform the development of the necessary partnerships, infrastructures and cases for further investment and support to inform the next steps for the OKRFZ.