Commissioning the Leeds Neighbourhood Network Evaluation supplier event

The purpose of this event is to engage the research and evaluation community to:

• Share our current thinking on how we will be commissioning the evaluation
• Get feedback and learn from them in order to improve our commissioning of the evaluation
• Enable potential bidders to meet each other and form consortia

We hope you will join us.

The Leeds Neighbourhood Network (LNN) supports older people to live independently in their homes and communities by providing a wide range of activities, advice and support services and through nurturing interdependence and reciprocity across the network members and volunteers. The networks have grown from a single neighbourhood in the mid-80s to a city-wide network of 35 organisations running 37 neighbourhood networks across the city of Leeds. Although each network is different they share common values:

• Involving older people in the management of the networks
• Responsiveness to local needs
• Drawing on and nurturing local assets (both physical and human)

It is widely believed that the networks make a significant contribution to preventing escalation of health and care needs and associated service use. Other cities are starting to show an interest in the networks but despite their long history there has been no robust evaluation to date, and as a result very limited evidence about the networks.

This evaluation will be the first major evaluation that the Centre for Ageing Better has commissioned since our new strategy was launched in July 2018. It will be a relatively well-resourced evaluation (circa £200k) with a reasonably flexible timetable, in recognition of the time and expertise it will require to build a meaningful and credible approach to evaluating such a complex intervention. We think the evaluation represents a great opportunity to deepen our understanding of community-based approaches to supporting older people and setting this in the context of other approaches used across England. We anticipate the evaluation and wider research we are commissioning around community support will be great value to us in achieving our ‘connected communities’ goal. And given the broad brief for this evaluation in terms of the range of issues we are interested in, offers a great opportunity for researchers with an interest in community-based networks and support to deepen their understanding of key dimensions of these forms of social support.