South Staffordshire & Shropshire NHS Trust: Evaluation

Willis Newson provided consultancy to help South Staffordshire and Shropshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust’s (SSSFT) ongoing arts programme to develop a robust evaluation framework for its work. The arts for health team at SSSFT work with artists, musicians, writers and other creative professionals to deliver stimulating arts-based activities for service users across the Trust. They wanted to evaluate in order to assess the impact of their programme on service users and staff and to advocate for the value of arts and health practice within the Trust.  They also wished to ensure the sustainability of their programme in the future.

A guided approach was taken.  We provided training to develop the arts for health team’s knowledge of evaluation practice and this was reinforced through mentoring and supervision at key points during the piloting of the framework. A comprehensive toolkit will help ensure the team feels confident in implementing its own evaluations in future.

Download a case study for this project.

“We have gone from years of gathering masses of data but with no tools to collate or assess it, let alone a process to share it or reflect on it, to having a much clearer rationale for collecting data, tools to collate it, criteria to assess it against and a plan for reviewing and sharing it.”

Emma Yorke
Member of the Arts for Health Team