What enables the effective design, delivery and evaluation of local work and health programmes?
Scope
This report presents findings from an evidence review on what enables the effective design, delivery and evaluation of local health and work programmes.
The review covered programmes and interventions focused on a region, local authority, mayoral strategic authority, or integrated care board area, in England, Scotland, Wales, or Northern Ireland. The programmes included:
- clear elements of local tailoring and flexibility
- a target population of people aged 16 to state pension age
- a focus on both work and health outcomes
- an evaluation completed between 2017 and January 2026.
Audience
It provides insights for local and regional policy, delivery, data and evaluation teams, and senior decision makers. Learning from this review can inform local decision making on key areas such as the wider roll out of WorkWell and succession planning for Economic Inactivity Trailblazers.
Findings
The review includes case studies, practical examples and key insights into:
- Establishing effective governance through well-defined roles and responsibilities and clear communication channels
- Using mechanisms such as co-location and joint meetings to improve partnership working
- Prioritising funding models that allow locally-led target setting and utilise test and learn approaches
- Integrating service user feedback into service design and delivery where possible
- Embedding evaluation and Management Information activities in the commissioning and design of programmes
- Ensuring evaluation activities provide insights for day-to-day delivery
- Building delivery staff’s capacity and capability in evaluation activities.
Evidence base
The evidence base for this report is limited for the following reasons:
- There are key initiatives still in the process of delivery where evaluations are not yet available.
- In some instances, locally-led activities exist where evaluations have not been published or may not have been conducted.
- There were a limited number of relevant studies available. This means that the evidence base for this review included studies rated as low quality. Even where reports were high quality, findings related to the research questions drew on qualitative and sometimes subjective evidence.
- Reports generally included limited information about governance, funding models, or partnership arrangements.