The development of collaborative capacity in health action zones

A final report from the national evaluation for the Department of Healt

Building capacity for collaboration: Context, strategy and capacity. Initial findings from the strategic level analysis of HAZs

Report for University of Birmingha

Involving child protection service users in social work education

This paper describes an attempt to incorporate the experiences of service user parents who had been involved in child protection services into the programme at a higher education provider in the London area. The aim was to explore their experiences and their perceptions of what social work contact had been positive or helpful. This is a difficult area of practice due to the sensitive and complex nature of social work intervention and engagement. The service users to participate were identified by a practitioner from the local authority. This paper presents an evaluation of this teaching session, and links this teaching tool with a range of current research in the area. Results showed that students reported benefits from being presented with the lived experience of these users. The links between theory and practice were also enhanced

Building Collaborative Capacity through `Theories of Change': Early Lessons from the Evaluation of Health Action Zones in England

©, 2002 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks and New Delhi). In the UK a great deal of attention is currently focused on the potential of the `theories of change' approach to evaluating complex public policy interventions. However, there is still relatively little empirical material describing its application. This article discusses the use of `theories of change' in the national evaluation of English Health Action Zones (HAZs). It locates `theories of change' within the wider context of evaluation approaches and assesses its strengths and weaknesses as an evaluation framework. The article then focuses on a key aspect of complex public policy interventions — cross-sector collaboration. Drawing on data about cross-sector partnerships and community involvement from the English HAZ evaluation, the article explores the contribution of `theories of change' towards examining the building of collaborative capacity in HAZs. The article also describes the `co-research' approach being employed within the national HAZ evaluation. It discusses how this approach can complement the use of `theories of change', contribute to managing change within organizations and communities and facilitate more effective use of evaluation within a local health context