Wakefield Area Working Evaluation Framework - Literature Review

The Wakefield Metropolitan District Council (MDC) Area Working programme offers a radical and innovative approach to service improvement and redesign with the aim of better meeting community needs and addressing inequalities. Community participation is a core component of the Wakefield model, which is underpinned by the wider goals of encouraging active citizenship and community empowerment. There is an acknowledged need to evidence whether the Area Working approach leads to improved services, to what extent there is meaningful community engagement and ultimately to assess whether it makes a difference to people in their neighbourhoods. This literature review addresses a range of key questions that will usefully inform the development of an evaluation framework in relation to the deployment of Area Working within Wakefield. The aims of the literature review were to scope existing models of evaluation used to assess the deployment and impact of Area Working and to identify potential evaluation frameworks and benchmark indicators. A systematic literature search was undertaken to identify published and grey literature on Area Working and similar programmes and relevant literature was reviewed. This search was supplemented by key literature identified through previous research. This brief report presents a summary of findings and makes some recommendations for the development of an evaluation framework for Wakefield Area Working Programme.