Case Study:
Providing evidence to gain additional funding
During their 2002 – 2004 ESF Co-Financing Programme, around £700,000 of European Social Fund cash was ploughed into advice and guidance projects supporting South London’s most disadvantaged youngsters. Connexions South London were responsible for managing the funded projects – and making sure those who most needed help were benefiting from them. They asked Marketry to conduct an independent evaluation to measure these benefits and establish how well their goals, the ESF objectives and the needs of young people were actually being met.
The task was a difficult one as Janet Cox, ESF Programme Manager commented, “the resulting ‘soft outcomes’ of advice and guidance services are notoriously difficult to measure as the perceived benefit can vary wildly from one individual to another.” Marketry’s two stage approach – two separate tranches of qualitative, in-depth interviews with 11 scheme providers and 93 young people – received praise from all parties and, importantly, succeeded in producing the hard evidence required by Connexions South London funders.
Marketry’s 360° evaluation report encompassed a wide range of performance measures, including satisfaction levels, progression routes and involvement; as well as partnership working, capacity building and best practice at a project level. It found that overall the projects were connecting well with their targets and clearly influencing the lives of many young participants.
By providing evidence of how ESF money was helping individual projects to create a significant and positive impact, and increase their delivery capacity, Marketry research played a vital part in helping Connexions South London negotiate a further £4 million of funding to help many more young people in the area to turn their lives around.
