Insights from ‘Your Community’ – a place-based approach to public service reform

Findings from an interim evaluation of ‘Your Community’, a neighbourhood-level, place-based approach to public service reform in West Dunbartonshire, aimed at supporting communities to become more sustainable, thriving, and aspirational, and to improve service delivery.

Summary

This report presents the findings from an interim evaluation of ‘Your Community’, a neighbourhood-level, place-based approach to public service reform in West Dunbartonshire. The community planning partnership piloted Your Community in 2014-2015 across 17 community council areas. The new approach was aimed at supporting communities to become more sustainable, thriving, and aspirational, and to improve service delivery.

Diagram showing the Theory of Change for West Dunbartonshire's Your Community with a central line of headings with columns above and below them: Inputs, Activities, Engagement, reactions / awareness, knowledge / skills, Behaviours / practice and Outcomes.

The ‘Your Community’ theory of change. Click on the image to see larger version

The evaluation was conducted as a collaborative action research project with the Communities Team of West Dunbartonshire Council, part of the What Works Scotland work with the West Dunbartonshire case site. What Works Scotland researchers worked with local practitioners to co-design the research methods, analyse results and write the evaluation report.

The aim of the evaluation was to identify those aspects of Your Community that were showing progress and potential, and aspects that were proving challenging, using an approach called contribution analysis (CA). Contribution analysis is a form of theory-based evaluation that is used to examine the inputs, processes and outcomes of a complex initiative. The process includes creating a logic model that describes how ‘in theory’ inputs and activities within a programme or project lead to outcomes. The resulting ‘theory of change’ is a tool that can be used for ongoing learning, reflection as the programme evolves.

This report provides insights into experiences and process of implementing the Your Community programme. The findings discussed in this report are likely to be of interest to practitioners and policy makers with an interest in place-based approaches, public service reform, collaborative governance and community empowerment. The original evaluation report was written for local community planning partners in the case-site area.