Learning, Skills and Worklessness Case Study 2

Swansea Training Pathways - ESF end of Programme Evaluation

Wavehill conducted an evaluation of Swansea Training Pathways. This ESF-funded project has been providing specialist training to build capacity and transferable skills amongst young people and the people who work with them in the voluntary and non-statutory sectors. In order to evaluate the impact of the programme Wavehill undertook:

• A stakeholder consultation amongst delivery bodies, partners and beneficiary organisations;

• A review of outputs, client outcomes and a cost-benefit analysis of the programme's activities;

• A comprehensive round of beneficiary consultation, including over 100 interviews and a series of live observation field-visits.

In this study, we found that the programme had had to change its way of delivering training to enable busy participants to ‘dip in and out’ of the training programme as an when something interested them, or time permitted them to take part. The programme found that the best way of engaging beneficiaries was in offering them ‘menus’ of training options that would be useful to them in their work, rather than asking them to commit to a long-term training programme. By doing this, it far exceed its ESF targets and succeeded in training far more people than it set out to do.

The evaluation process culminated in a forward strategy workshop for the service provider to develop ‘Lisbon-friendly’ proposals for the continuation and extension of the programme under Convergence. This included a session on objective setting, strategic planning, developing a performance framework, and self-evaluation.

Client: Swansea City Council