Workforce Development Innovation Fund 2015/16:

Evaluation

Please use this document to evaluate your project. Information will be used by Skills for Care to share good practice and learning with the adult social care sector through case studies and other resources.

Partnership name: (if applicable) / [insert]
Lead organisation: / [insert]
Location:
Grant number: / [insert]
[insert]

1

Instructions for completing the evaluation

This template should be used by all successful applicants of the Workforce Development Innovation Fund 2015 / 2016.

The document includes instructions in red text to provide background information useful for the completion of the evaluation.On completion of each section, you may wish to delete these instructions.

Please complete all sections of the document, ideally to the recommended length suggested. It is possible to copy and paste information as appropriate from your original bid or other documents into the evaluation. However, please avoid duplicating the same points across the evaluation, referencing other documents or including comments such as “see above”.

Good Practice and Sharing Learning from your Project

An important output from WDIF is sharing good practice and learning with the adult social care sector. It is likely that many other employers are experiencing similar challenges and can learn from your innovative work.

Skills for Care will share your learning in a number of ways, from reflecting on your findings and incorporating these into our products and guidance, to using the learning in a case study.

As part of Milestone 3 we are asking all successful WDIF applicants to provide a case study of your experiences to raise awareness to others in the sector. Skills for Care has produced a template for employers to use (available here). Case studies will be reviewed by Skills for Care and agreement made with the successful applicant before we publish via our Learn from Others resource.

Who should complete this evaluation?

Please involve colleagues closest to the day-to-day management and delivery of the project when completing this evaluation. As the information you provide may be shared with other organisations, please also involve any staff who have strong communication skills. Please remember that most readers will not be familiar with your particular project, so you will want to explain it in simple terms.

Report formatting

Skills for Care uses software to help analyse Workforce Development Innovation Fund evaluations so please maintain the report formatting (including headings, subheadings and paragraph style) throughout this document. If you are using Word 2003 or 2010, the headings are Heading 1 and Heading 3 and the paragraphs are Normal (Arial 11).

Please save this document as LeadOrganisationEvaluation.doc or LeadOrganisationEvaluation.docx. Please send it to us in Word.

If you have any questions about how to complete the template, please get in touch.

1Introduction

1.1 The Workforce Development Innovation Fund

The Workforce Development Fund (WDF) for 2015-2016is a funding stream from the Department of Health that is disseminated by Skills for Care to support the on-going professional development of staff across the adult social care sector. The WDF aims to increase skills and competence through qualifications, with the fundamental aim of improving service quality.

The Workforce Development InnovationFund (WDIF)is similarly focussed but aims to fund projects that are innovative in their approach to influencing workforce development in the longer term.Whilst many projects may involve or ultimately lead to adult social care qualifications, the WDIF is not limited to this.

For WDIF 2015-2016, a range of priorities were identified and Skills for Care were keen to fund projects that addressed some or all of these.

Please tick the priorities that your project was intended to address.

Table 1.1: Priorities

Priorities / Project aimed to address
insert  if apt
Projects that test approaches to skills development which support prevention and early intervention with a focus on the integration of services (health, housing, social care and other). Projects should make use of and build upon the ‘Principles of Workforce Integration’.
Projects that model approaches to developing a workforce with the skills necessary to provide improved person-centred care and support through multi-disciplinary working.
Projects that demonstrate an innovative approach to implementing Skills for Care’s workforce development guidance for employers seeking to minimise the use of restrictive practices in health and social care, particularly in relation to supporting older people with dementia.
Projects which identify what learning and development is required to ensure that those carrying out care needs assessments take an asset* (rather than a deficit) approach, thereby focussing on the skills and abilities of the person who needs support. Projects should align with the Care Act 2014 requirement that local authorities considerthe person’s own strengths and capabilities, and support available from their wider support network or within the community when making assessment of care and support needs.
Projects which enable care workers and people with care and support needs to use technology together, and which identify the workforce developments necessary to bring about, and embed these changes
Projects which develop innovative models of support to enable individual employers to robustly assess their personal assistants (PAs) against the Care Certificate. These will also demonstrate how the approach and Care Certificate Standards can be used to support local PA induction or quality assurance processes.
Projects which model approaches to supporting changes to culture and practice required by the Care Act, including:
  • embedding new ways of providing personalised support;
  • supporting best practice to enable the development of outcome focused care and support plans;
  • asset or strengths based assessment*;
  • supporting transition;
  • effective safeguarding;
  • meeting carer’s needs.

Projects which explore the benefits and efficiencies achieved by improving collaboration when delivering learning and development, including the delivery of the Care Certificate. Projects should focus on collaboration between employers and within supply chains in the social care and health sector.
Proposals which test a response to other significant and demonstrable policy drivers within the adult social care sector

All projects funded via the Workforce Development Innovation Fund must be scalable, transferable and sustainable.

All projects funded via WDIF must also:

  • deliver demonstrable business benefits and service quality improvements
  • deliver tangible resources or products which are developed and tested as part of the project and provided to Skills for Care when the project ends
  • result in an evaluation report which describes the project approach and lessons learned from delivery.

Please list below the tangible resources or products which you have developed and tested as part of the project and which you have provided to Skills for Care:

[additional rows can be added to the table if required]

Resources and products

1.2Background

1.2.1Organisational Background

Please provide some background information about your organisation including;

  • The size of the organisation
  • The location of the organisation
  • The type of organisation / service provided

Recommended length: between a quarter to half a page

1.2.2Project Background

Please provide some background to the issue that you wished to address with this project including;

  • How did you identify the issue?
  • What impact was the issue having on your business?
  • What impact is the issue having on others working in the wider adult social care sector (if known)
  • Did you consider other solutions before deciding on the project? If so, briefly summarise these and why they were not selected

Recommended length:between one to one and half pages

1.3Aims

This section should explain:

  • What the project was aiming to address;
  • Who would be involved in the delivery of the project and would any specific expertise be required;
  • How you determined what success would look like and how you intended to measure this at the outset.
  • Any specific goals or objectives that you had in mind.

Recommended length:between half to one and half pages

1.4What was done?

This section should explain the process that was followed to complete the project and should address appropriate points from the list below:

  • What activities were undertaken to meet the project aims and did the project meet its objectives?
  • How did you review the project and were any changes required as a result of this monitoring?
  • How you involved and engaged beneficiaries / stakeholders
  • What resources were developed and how did you know they were fit for purpose
  • What benefits, learning, changes or other effects resulted from your achievements in delivering this project?
  • Was the project delivered on time, on budget and to the necessary quality?
  • How did you evaluate the project?

Recommended length:between one to one and half pages

2Outputs

2.1Outputs

If your project generated any of the outputs listed in the table below from July 2015 – March 2016, please complete these in the table below. If these were not applicable to your project please insert N/A. If you did not set yourself a target, please insert N/A in the target column. If you identified specific numbers for any of the outputs below in your application, these numbers should be included in the target column.

You may wish to add rows to this table to include your own specific ‘countable’ outputs if you have monitored these. These may be particular to your project but may include for example new tools, approaches or products, new networks, marketing campaigns etc.

Table 2.1: Outputs

Output
Project outputs / Target / Delivered
No. of new training courses[1]
No. of new training resources packs or tools
Number of participants trained / Completed non-accredited training / Completed accredited qualification units
Target / Actual / Target / Actual
No. individual employers trained
No. Personal Assistants trained
No. trainers trained
No. social care staff (non-managers) trained
No. social care staff (managers) trained
Project-specific outputs
…
…

If your project has resulted in adult social care qualifications or qualification units being achieved, please give details of these, inserting another table if necessary to show what was delivered.

3Outcomes

Please complete the appropriate sections below based on the outcomes you said you intended to address in Section 1. For outcomes you did not intend to address please just insert ‘N/A’.

The information provided in the sections below is beneficial to other employers when considering their approaches to workforce development and is key in terms of sharing good practice and learning.

3.1Demonstrating business benefit and service improvement

Please describe how your project has successfully improved your business/service. What is the longer term impact of this achievement? If the project was not as successful as first hoped, why was this and what would you do differently?

Recommendedlength:between half to one page

3.2Sustainability

Please describe how your project has achieved sustainability beyond the lifetime of Skills for Care funding. What measures did you take to ensure it was sustainable? If you do not believe it is sustainable, please explain why.

Recommended length:between quarter to half a page

3.3Scalability

Please describe how your project is scalable and the likely scale at which it you plan to implement this work in future. By scalable, we mean capable of being easily expanded e.g. to more settings or parts of the country.

Recommended length:between quarter to half a page

3.4Transferability

Please describe how your project is transferable to others working in the sector and what plans, if any, there are in place to transfer it to new settings in future.

Recommended length:between quarter to half a page

3.5Good practice and learning

Dissemination of good practice

Please set out, in bullet points where possible, the good practice and key learning from this project. Points which should be addressed in completing this section are:

  • What the most successful parts of your project was;
  • What the most challenging parts of your project and how you would address this in the future;
  • What you would recommend to other employers considering a similar approach.

Recommended length: between half to one page

3.6Costs and value for money

See Appendix 1 for the cost summary table.

Describe your approach to ensuring value for money during this project and explain whether you felt that it was delivered:

  • Economically (How much did resources cost? Were they comparatively cheap or expensive?)
  • Efficiently (What was the unit cost of outputs you delivered, e.g. the cost per qualification? Please insert a table if appropriate).
  • Effectively (were your aims and objectives achieved?)

Remember that value for money can be considered in financial terms but also in terms of time and resource. Please include any lessons you have learned that would help future projects with respect to value for money.

Recommended length: between half a page and one page

Please complete the following question

QA1: To what extent would you have been able to deliver this project without Skills for Care funding?(Please check the box for one response below)

☐Could have delivered some of it but not to same scale

☐Could have delivered it but over a longer timescale

☐Mix of above

☐Could probably have delivered it without the funding

☐Could not have delivered the project at all

☐Not sure

3.7 Added Value

Please state why you think your project delivered added value; describe any unexpected positive impacts. When answering this question, please consider:

  • Did the project result in any unplanned benefits? If so, what were these?

Recommended length:between half a page to one page

4Next steps

Please provide details of what the next steps are for you or for other stakeholders in relation to the project.

Recommended length:up to half a page

Appendices

Appendix 1

Please complete the table summarising the funding you received from Skills for Care, plus any match funding that you and any project partners have invested in the project during this financial year.

If your project is selected for a case study the information provided below will not be included, although we may wish to make reference to wider contributions being made to the project costs.

An in-kind contribution is a non-financial contribution such as time.

Table 5.1Costs

Funding source / 2015/16
Skills for Care award / £
Lead organisation direct contribution (cash)
Lead organisation in-kind contribution
Other partners – direct contribution (cash)
Other partners – in-kind contribution
Total / £

Appendix 2

Recommendations to Others

Skills for Care wants other to learn about your project and what it achieved. The following questions are aimed at enabling adult social care employers to identify if the good practice and learning would be relevant to their business. Please select the relevant options.

The type of business this project will be beneficial for:

  • Options

☐Care homes

☐Nursing homes

☐Care agencies

☐Individual employers

☐Local authorities

Size of organisations

  • Options

☐Micro enterprise

☐Small

☐Medium

☐Large

Financial investment required

  • Options

☐Little or none

☐Small investment

☐Medium investment

☐Large investment

People resource investment requirement

  • Options

☐Little or none

☐Small investment

☐Medium investment

☐Large investment

From project planning to delivery – recommended timeframes

  • Options

☐1 month

☐1 to 3 months

☐3 to 6 months

☐6 to 12 months

☐12 months+

1

[1] This refers to the number of different training courses, not the number of times it was delivered. If you set out to and have designed two new training courses which were then offered to eight people, the number in both the target and delivered column would be two. The target will be as defined in your grant milestones.