Creative Health Quality Framework Evaluation Brief

Fee: £8,000 including VAT and expenses

Deadline: 5pm, Friday 28 July

Project: September 2023-June 2024

The Culture, Health & Wellbeing Alliance is seeking an evaluator for the new Creative Health Quality Framework between September 2023 and June 2024.

You can read this brief as a pdf here and listen to an audio version here.

1. Background

CHWA is the national membership organisation for creative heath for England. (We use ‘creative health’ to mean any creative or cultural activity that supports health and/or wellbeing.) Working with consultant Jane Willis, we’re building the Creative Health Quality Framework with the people who already do this work, to help individual creative practitioners, cultural and arts organisations, and partners from health and social care to plan, deliver and assess good practice.

You can read more about this here: https://www.culturehealthandwellbeing.org.uk/resources/creative-health-quality-framework

Audience

Who the Quality Framework is for

  • Freelance creative practitioners
  • Creative organisations / managers / producers
  • Health, social care and community sector partners
  • Policy makers, funders and commissioners
  • Researchers
  • Educators

Aims

What we hope the Framework will achieve  

  • Support practice development
  • Improve working conditions
  • Enable best use of resources
  • Support partnership development
  • Improve participant experience and outcomes
  • Advocate for Creative Health practice
  • Inform funding criteria and decisions
  • Guide research and evaluation

The Quality Framework will be launched in September 2023, after which it will be piloted, tested and evaluated against these aims until June 2024, before being developed and improved into a second iteration.

The evaluation of Quality Framework should assess the appropriateness, accessibility, ease of use, and impact of the framework in the creative health sector and amongst partners in health, social care, policy, research and funding. Findings will inform the Framework’s development in the next phase.

2. Evaluation Aims

We want to ensure that the findings from the evaluation inform the further development of the Framework, and are useful to the various target audiences for the Quality Framework.

As well as being open to understanding unintended impacts, we wish to explore and understand three aspects of the Quality Framework:

  • Its accessibility, and ease of use by its various target audiences
    • How accessible and easy is it to use?
  • Its appropriateness and perceived relevance for its various target audiences
    • How has the Quality Framework been used in practice?
    • How relevant is it to specific practices and contexts?
    • Which aspects of the Quality Framework are most / least useful?
    • What is missing?
  • Its impact on its various target audiences
    • What has changed as a result of using the Quality Framework?  
    • What impact has the use of the Quality Framework had on practice; partnership development; co-creation; project planning; learning and skills development; reflection and evaluation?

 

3. Proposed Evaluation Methodology

We would like the evaluation to address the aims given above. We are open to proposals for evaluation methodologies but we anticipate that it will be a mixed methods evaluation that will include:

  • Surveys, including a survey of the wider sector
  • Focused case studies of identified programmes of varying size, geography, audience and type – enough to involve a representative sample of the intended audiences for the Quality Framework

In terms of outputs required, we would like the final report to include

  • Findings relating to both process and impact
  • Recommendations for future development
  • Case Studies of the Quality Framework in use

 

4. Person specification

The applicant/s should be

  • An experienced evaluator with a sound knowledge of various methods including both quantitative and qualitative approaches
  • Comfortable working with diverse audiences including freelance practitioners as well as managers, funders and policy makers
  • Experienced in working in equitable, inclusive ways, including in relation to participatory evaluation methods that enable a diverse range of voices to be heard
  • Ideally experienced in working with the creative and / or health sectors
  • Experienced in coproducing creative and engaging evaluation methodologies
  • A good communicator - both written and verbal
  • Comfortable working independently, as well as collaboratively

We are always interested in hearing about transferable skills as well as direct experience.

 

5. Proposed Timescale

September 2023:

Evaluator Appointed                             

Sept – Oct 2023:

Case Study participants and organisations identified 

Evaluation Tools developed and approved for use

Evaluation Plan presented for approval by evaluator

Sept 2023 – March 2024:

Quality Framework launched

Evaluation Data Collection

January 2024:

Interim Report

April - May 2024:

Data Analysis

June 2024:

Final Report

 

6. Access

This is a remote working role. We are ready to adapt our working processes in discussion with applicants; please let us know about any access needs we can support. 

 

7. Fee and payments

The fee is a total of £8,000 (including VAT where applicable) which will be payable in three tranches upon receipt of invoice: the first on appointment, the second on delivery of the interim report, and the third on delivery of the final report. The fee is the total amount available for this work and so must include all time, materials costs and other expenses incurred.

8. Hours of work

This is an output-based contract but we would not expect the contractor to exceed 25 days of work.

9. How to apply

We would like to receive a CV, and a brief covering statement explaining your proposed approach and why you would like to do this piece of work, referring to the Person Specification and Deliverables outlined above by 5pm on Friday 28 July 2023.

The covering information can be submitted as an email, an audio recording or a video recording as you prefer.

We will interview during the week of 14 August 2023. When you apply, please confirm whether you are available for an online conversation during this week. If you can’t make it, we will find another mutually convenient time.

Please tell us about any access needs we can meet to support your application process. We’d also appreciate it if you could click on this link and fill out this Equality, Diversity & Representation form when you apply. This is anonymous and we won’t be able to connect it with your application, but it helps us assess whether we are reaching a wide pool of candidates. If the link doesn’t work for you let us know and we will find an alternative.

We are committed to ensuring our organisation is as diverse and representative as possible and are using the IncArts Unlock tool to support this process. We particularly want to encourage applications from people identifying with any of the protected characteristics as defined in the 2010 Equality Act, or who are from less affluent socioeconomic backgrounds.

Email: [email protected]