Invitation to tender:
External evaluation for Women in Prison’s “Health Matters” project
About Women in Prison Ltd
Women in Prison (WIP) is a unique, women-only organisation that provides gender-specialist support to women affected by the criminal justice system and campaigns to expose the injustice and damage caused to women by imprisonment. We campaign for a radical reduction in prison places in favour of community solutions and want to see considerable investments in community alternatives to custody such as women’s centres.
WIP works in prisons, in the community and “through the gate”, supporting women leaving prison. We run three women’s centres that all incorporate liaison and diversion schemes for women involved in the criminal justice system. Our combined services provide women with support around advocacy, complex needs, domestic and sexual violence, education, training and employment, housing, mental health, parenting and substance misuse.
About the Health Matters Project
Funded by the Big Lottery under the Women and Girls Initiative, “Health Matters” is a new three-year project set up to support women in the criminal justice system around their health. The main objective of the project is to give information, advice and support to women in prison around their healthcare needs. We aim to do this by:
· Helping women identify and understand their healthcare needs
· Helping women approach healthcare and wellbeing in a holistic way and understand the link between mental health and physical health, nutrition, substance misuse, stress, anxiety and other related factors
· Acting as a bridge between women and prison healthcare, helping to manage expectations where necessary
· Providing education material and workshops
· Providing a link between prison and the community
· Advocating to help women set up appointments and access services in the community
Through our practical service delivery working directly with women, this project aims to affect longer-term systems change for vulnerable women.
Staff Team:
1 x Operations Director (part-time)
1 x Project Manager (part-time)
2 x Health Matters Advocates (full-time)
1 x Information Co-ordinator (part-time)
Project Outcomes
Outcome 1: Increased provision of holistic, person-centred approaches for women and girls at risk.
How: mapping current provision for women entering each prison, identifying barriers to accessing healthcare and underlying contributory issues i.e. domestic violence, sexual violence, substance misuse, mental ill health; providing support/referral to support for women.
End of 1st year - 2 indicators achieved include:
• 25% reduction in gaps or delays in health care provision on entering prison;
• 25% increase in number of women receiving holistic support to address related
contributory factors, preventing improvement in health and wellbeing.
Measuring progress against outcomes: repeat mapping exercise of health care and specialist complex needs provision completed in pilot sites, to demonstrate improved access to health and specialist complex needs provision for women entering prison.
Outcome 2: Increased role and voice for women and girls in co-producing services.
How: active encouragement of a continuous strong user voice ‘start to finish’ including project design, delivery, monitoring, evaluation/dissemination through formation of focus groups and support to service-users planning and designing the groups; and supporting women’s participation in/input to and guide of the project work plan.
End of the 1st year 2 indicators achieved include:
• 4 Focus groups in HMP Downview and HMP Bronzefield and 2 meetings of a Regional Service-Users Group, providing feedback on successes through art and other innovative formats (decided by the groups);
• 4 meetings of service-users steering group (membership 10-15 women) with 4 reports providing oversight of progress against project plan - evidencing involvement of service-users in co-producing the planning, designing, editing and distribution of project materials including 1st draft/content of health handbook.
Measuring progress against outcomes:
• Self-evaluation analysis of all focus groups in each prison/associated community;
• Attendance of service-users at steering group meetings (target 80%), 4 reports from meetings, draft of 1 health book/manual, 3 magazine articles written by service-users.
Outcome 3: A greater number of women and girls are supported through the provision of improved specialist services.
How: provision of specialist healthcare advocacy and associated wellbeing/complex needs support for women during and on leaving prison, including co-ordination of follow up health and wellbeing referral services for women on release.
End of the 1st year 2 indicators achieved include:
• 40% increase in women reporting satisfaction with healthcare and related specialist complex needs support during sentence (i.e. receipt of treatment/medication, access to support for related issues e.g. domestic violence or pregnancy);
• 40% increase in women receiving appropriate healthcare and wellbeing services on leaving prison (i.e. no gaps to treatment, continued specialist support for complex needs).
Measuring progress against outcomes: project statistical records for women supported will evidence improved timelines for access to treatment and support in/upon leaving prison; increased number of women receiving holistic support (baseline established in pre-pilot mapping exercises and consultation).
Outcome 4: Better quality of evidence for what works in empowering women and girls
How: A full independent project evaluation, (mapping current systems in prisons, reviewing policies, information materials, systems and training of staff) will provide new current evidence of what works in empowering women in prison to overcome barriers to improving health and address underlying factors; informing and improving approaches to supporting women in their healthcare and associated complex needs.
End of the 1st year 2 indicators achieved include:
• Fact based mapping report detailing current health services and associated complex needs support in pilot prisons;
• Up-to-date analysis of women’s feedback, detailing challenges to accessing health care and holistic/complex needs support on entering prison.
Measuring progress against outcomes: full assessment of current prison systems including a baseline, comparison and analysis of questionnaires completed by women in prison pre-project and after 12 months.
The Evaluation:
The external evaluation will help WIP evaluate its working practices as well as its management of large-scale projects and will provide learning for future projects. It is envisaged that the evaluation report will be disseminated to relevant agencies and practitioners within the criminal justice and women’s sector in order to positively impact upon the future development of similar services for women affected by the criminal justice system.
We have extensive experience of delivering services for our client group and of monitoring and evaluating our projects. We are committed also within this project to robust internal monitoring and evaluation. However, given this project’s focus on learning and adapting as well as affecting systems change, we feel this project needs an external evaluation of the key outputs as well as a deeper level of analysis, reflection and review.
We are looking for an external evaluator to add an additional level of monitoring to our existing systems as the project progresses and to provide in-depth analysis and reflection of the project outcomes at the end of this the project. The successful candidate would need some knowledge and understanding of the issues facing women in the criminal justice system. Some experience of undertaking work in prisons would be beneficial (albeit not necessary) in order to deal with the additional barriers to access associated with prisons.
1. Aims of the evaluation project – evaluation terms of reference and scope
The following are a minimum set of evaluation criteria that may be expanded on:
a. To assess the performance of the project in relation to its original aims and objectives, including how well the project delivered its proposed outcomes and to what extent the project benefited the people it set out to support
b. To explore what difference the project made, and specifically what aspects of the work made that difference: not just whether it worked or not but also what worked and why. This includes whether the project encountered any challenges and whether it was able to adapt appropriately
c. To work with the project team to ensure learning from the evaluation is fed back into the project in a timely fashion to effect changes in delivery
d. To assert which external stakeholders could benefit from project learning and how to best disseminate findings
2. Methodology
The tender proposals submitted should specify a suggested methodology which will need to be flexible given the flexible nature of the project. This evaluation will need to be formative in nature with evaluation built into the action learning cycle of the project. The proposal should outline what types of evidence will be collected and analysed, and how this will be done.
We are open to innovative, creative and unusual approaches but require realistic proposals of how the desired information would be collated and analysed and examples of how this has worked in past projects. For example, we would need clear plans for how to get service users to engage and back-up plans for how to deal with any lack of engagement.
We would also like to hear your plans for dissemination of findings and sharing of learning.
3. Key Outputs and Timescales for the Evaluation
Bidders will be required to submit detailed proposals covering:
· Understanding of the brief and its context
· Proposed research and evaluation methodology
· Detailed work plan, including any key project milestones e.g. proposed meetings and reports as well as timescales for completion of each output
· Evidence of previous relevant and appropriate evaluation experience
· Evidence of individual study team members’ qualifications, skills and experience; individual roles and responsibilities within the study team and their input at each stage of the work
· Comprehensive risk assessment –the successful bidder will have taken all reasonable measures to mitigate any potential risk to the delivery of the required outputs. Therefore, the bidder should submit a comprehensive risk assessment covering:
- the key assumptions underlying the proposals and the anticipated challenges that might be faced;
- the estimated level of risk involving these assumptions /challenges and
- proposed contingency plans that the bidder would put in place to mitigate any occurrence of each of the identified risks, with the ultimate aim of ensuring that the evaluation is completed in a timely and credible way
· Bidders should complete the pricing schedule in part 4 of this section, providing details in the work plan
Note to bidders: please treat the generic template below as a set of minimum
requirements and tailor it to produce detailed costings of your work plan
4. PRICING SCHEDULE
Tender forLength of Contract
Name of Contractor
Address
Post Code
Telephone
Work plan timeframe / Work plan stages /tasks / Evaluation team time input – no. of days broken down by each individual evaluation team member against each task / Totals
Key dates & timescales / 1. Individual work plan stages with a breakdown of individual activities /tasks (preferably in chronological order)
2. Identify delivery of key outputs /deliverables / Time sub-totals per stage /task
Total of days per evaluation team member / Total days for evaluation team
Corresponding day rates per evaluation team member
Total fees per evaluation team member / Total fees
Total expenses
Total fees & expenses excluding VAT
VAT
Total cost (fees & expenses including VAT)
NAME (BLOCK CAPITALS) ______
DATED ______
SIGNED ______
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