Assess

1. Assess Plan Do Review Resource 1. Involving and engaging the right stakeholders. It is important to consider who will be interested in this service, evaluation or its findings. Engaging and involving all the right stakeholders right at the beginning is an important step not only in developing your service but also in ensuring a good evaluation. Stakeholders will be any one affected by the service or service change and this will include the users, providers and commissioners of the planned services. Engage all key stakeholders, including the patients and their carers, in the design, delivery and dissemination of the evaluation • Who are my stakeholders? • You may have already completed a stakeholder analysis as a part of your service planning, however if you have not completed one already then we recommend that you conduct a stakeholder analysis.This is ideally done as a group and could use existing forums such as the project team, steering group or advisory group. Don’t forget to involve your local and organisational experts in patientand public involvement, and your equalities and communications leads to help you. • Once you have conducted the stakeholder analysis this can then be used to inform: • Who to involve in the evaluation • What expertise and people are available to support the evaluation (including expertise in data collection, data analysis, communication, patient and public involvement) • Your project, evaluation and communication plans • N.B. Make sure you consider the needs of those that are seldom heard and are vulnerable. If you have not already, consider completing an equalities impact assessment for the planned service or service change. The NHS Institutes tool, part of its quality improvement tools, http://www.institute.nhs.uk/quality_and_service_improvement_tools/quality_and_service_improvement_tools/stakeholder_analysis.html will help you to conduct a stakeholder analysis. For more information about involving patients and the public then INVOLVE www.invo.org.uk, who are funded by the National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) to support public involvement in NHS, public health and social care research, are a useful resource.

2. Assess Plan Do Review Resource 2. Understanding your service – Context When considering your evaluation you first need to understand your service in terms of the outcomes you want the service to achieve and for whom (what need are you trying to address?), what will deliver these changes and in what context. The following are aspects of the service that are useful to consider when planning your evaluation.

3. Assess Plan Do Review Resource 2: Understanding your service – Theory of change A useful process for planning your evaluation is to develop a “theory of change” for your service. This can be useful way of articulating and providing a visual representation of the links between the various activities of service and how this will lead to the long term outcomes it is trying to achieve. To develop your “theory of change” working with your key stakeholders, some flip chart paper, pens and post-it notes consider the following questions1: Who the service is for? i.e. your case for change will usually set out the population group, their needs and characteristics, the problem it is trying to address What are the long – term outcomes you want to achieve? Then working backwards What are the intermediate outcomes (short and medium term) that will lead to these long term outcomes? What are the activities that the service will undertake to deliver these intermediate outcomes? What evidence (from research and local learning) is available to inform and support the links between activities and outcomes? i.e. what are your assumptions based on the evidence, expertise and learning? What other factors need to be in place to enable this service to work? i.e. what are your enablers? NPC guide to developing Theory of Change1- http://www.thinknpc.org/publications/theory-of-change/ Kellogg Logic Model Development Guide: http://www.wkkf.org/resource-directory/resource/2006/02/wk-kellogg-foundation-logic-model-development-guide

4. Assess Plan Do Review • Resource 2: Understanding your service – Accessing and reviewing the evidence base • It is important to consider what evidence is available to inform your planning and decision making in terms of the service as well as the evaluation. You will be used to using a broad range of evidence from multiple sources including needs assessments, public health and performance data, evidence from research and best practice as well as expertise and local learning. This evidence can be used to inform your evaluation, help identify the outcomes you hope to achieve and the activities (processes) and outputs that will deliver these outcomes. Understand what evidence is already available to inform not only your service design, but the type and level of evaluation you need. Our evidence toolkit http://evidence.apcrc.nhs.ukcan help you with accessing the best available published evidence from research, evaluation and the grey literature. How does this help me? Understanding your service, the context in which it is operating, providing a visual representation of your service and understanding the evidence and theory behind it can help you to identify what your should focus your evaluation on and the type of evaluation you might undertake. The diagram below tries to outline how this helps.