ITT: Evaluation of our Shaping Places for Healthier Lives programme

The Shaping Places for Healthier Lives (SPHL) programme is a joint grant programme between the Health Foundation and the Local Government Association (LGA). It is funding partnership projects between local governments in England and partners from their local area to take system-wide action on the wider determinants of health.

Five projects will be funded through the programme, with the announcement of the successful projects expected in summer 2021. The projects will explore how coordinated action across systems of wider determinants of health can shape a place to help people live healthier lives.

The programme is supporting the teams with £300,000 of funding per project, with each project running for three years, from November 2021.

Evaluation of the Shaping Places for Healthier Lives programme

We are looking to appoint an evaluation team (or consortium) to evaluate the five projects and the programme as a whole. The project-level evaluation will analyse and inform system-wide action across the local systems that the five project teams take during the lifetime of the programme. The programme-level evaluation will draw together learning from across the five projects about systems approaches to the wider determinants of health, as well as how we fund similar programmes in the future.

The evaluation will enable the Health Foundation and the LGA to identify mechanisms that facilitate or obstruct the development and sustainability of cross-sector partnerships to tackle the wider determinants of health; understand how systems approaches are delivered in practice; make sure the project teams have a better understanding of applying systems approaches; and draw out learning from the design and delivery of the programme.

The successful evaluation partner will need to take a flexible approach to the delivery of this evaluation. There will need to be a balance between rigorous evaluation and an approach that builds in the need to learn and adapt as the projects progress and systems change. Applicants should therefore be familiar with both developmental and formative approaches to evaluation.

The evaluation partner will need to be familiar with a range of evaluation methods, for example reflective practice, and will be expected to run evaluation workshops with the five project teams at the start of the programme.

We will expect the evaluation partner to capture all findings in line with agreed evaluation and learning frameworks. These findings will be presented back to the Health Foundation, the LGA and the project teams throughout the lifetime of the programme, and formally through two learning reports and a final report.

The successful evaluator will be required to start working with us from around August 2021 and the final report will need to be completed by October 2024.

How to apply

If you are interested in submitting a proposal, please follow the steps below to complete your application.

1. Please read the Invitation to Tender for full details of the tender response requirements and selection criteria.
2. Please submit your tender response form on our online portal, AIMS. Please read the AIMS user guide before starting to complete the form. This is available on our website and via the online form on AIMS.
3. Update: We will hold an information call at 16.00–17.00 on Monday 21 June 2021. If you would like to attend, please register your interest by emailing sphl@health.org.uk. It is not mandatory, but you are encouraged to take part. If you have any questions about the evaluation or programme, please email them to us in advance of the information call if possible. Please note that we will not be able to answer specific technical questions about individual tender responses.
4. The deadline for online applications is 13.00 on Friday 9 July 2021. We will not accept proposals submitted after this time.
5. A response to your application will be made by 21 July 2021.
6. Interviews will be held on 3 August 2021 via Microsoft Teams or Zoom.
7.  The exact start date will be agreed following the final decision, but we intend to have an inception meeting with the chosen evaluation partner on 10 August 2021.