Ageing Well impact reporting

An impact reporting template was developed for Ageing Well projects funded in 2021-2022 by the Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board (BNSSG ICB)

Identify and understand

The national Ageing Well programme, set about by NHS England, aimed to promote healthier ageing and address inequalities. The plan included three key policy areas:

• Urgent Community Response – increase the capacity of intermediate care services to deliver a 2-hour response to those in crisis at home and 2-day response for those needing rehabilitation to avoid or following a hospital admission
• The Anticipatory Care model – implement a proactive population health approach for people with complex needs
• Enhanced Health in Care Homes – roll out a tested approach to improve the provision and quality of NHS healthcare across all care home beds.

In BNSSG there was also a focus on providing dementia support and in 2021-2022 the BNSSG Ageing Well programme funded 17 projects. These projects covered a variety of areas, ranging from a secondary care clinician led advanced care planning project, to Voluntary Community and Social Enterprise sector (VCSE) led specialise dementia support for specific minority ethnic communities.

See more about step 1 in the evaluation cycle: Identify and understand

Assess

Commissioners wanted to know the range of activities and impact achieved by each of the 17 projects in the pilot period. However, evaluation capacity within each organisation differed and the Integrated Care Board Clinical Effectiveness team were asked to propose an approach to reporting on the impact of these projects. 

It was agreed, given the short time frames (between 6 months and 1 year pilot projects), that a light touch reporting template would be developed for all projects to adapt and use.

See more about step 2 in the evaluation cycle: Assess

Plan

To ensure a quality reporting template was developed the ICB Clinical Effectiveness team did the following: 

• Consulted with six locality partnerships colleagues and project leads to identify key requirements to be included in the template. Examples include:
• Activity and Outputs – detail of the localities areas projects were operating in, potential scalability, project timelines, patient engagement and demographics, and collaboration with other organisations.
• Experience and outcomes – any short term quantitative or qualitative data around experience or outcomes e.g., surveys, outcome measures, case studies; reporting on the main learnings, barriers and challenges; finances and added value.

The template also provided the option to share additional evidence related to the project e.g., previous evaluation reports, research studies from other areas, and reflections on impact. Reporting on reflections was offered in the form of an ‘Impact Framework’ developed based on the Disney Pixar framework in the ‘Time for Care’ narrative (March 2020).

See more about step 3 in the evaluation cycle: Plan

Do

During the months leading up to the reporting deadline the Clinical Effectiveness team also provided support through:

• Guidance and drop-in sessions to project leads around completing reporting templates. 
• Engaging with the University of West of England public health team (already involved in the evaluation of several projects) to support the drop-in sessions for project leads. 
• Supporting ICB Business Intelligence colleagues to provide advice and analysis around activity and outcome measures.
• Attending regular Monitoring and Oversight meetings with ICB Ageing Well programme leads and locality partnership leads to provide advice and support. 

See more about step 4 in the evaluation cycle: Do

Review and act

The reports provided by the 17 projects were reviewed by Locality Partnership Ageing Well leads and helped to inform extensions of funding and the development of further Ageing Well work.  

The work to complete these reports highlights there are discrepancies in evaluation capacity between different organisations and the need for clarity and support from commissioning bodies to improve the quality of evaluation work and reporting more broadly. This is particularly salient for smaller VCSE providers who tend to have less access to data analyst and evaluation capacity, compared with large NHS organisations.

See more about step 5 in the evaluation cycle: Review and act