Report: Evaluation of the Sandwell Holiday Activities and Food programme

4 Jun

Abigail D’Amore Associates led a three year participant-centred evaluation to understand the impact of a national Department for Education initiative to support families in receipt of benefits-related free school meals during holiday periods.

Our brief was to design and implement a robust evaluation that centred co-created narratives with Sandwell families accessing the programme, to establish the impact of the programme. We took an ethnographic, participant-centred approach, spending time immersed in the Sandwell community and building trust and relationships with families and providers involved. This included:

Theory of Change: facilitated a Theory of Change process in collaboration with the Sandwell HAF project team and providers, leading to an evaluation framework including 14 outcomes that were subsequently evidenced.

Data collection: mixed-methods approach combining quantitative survey data with a robust qualitative approach anchored in the Equitable Evaluation Framework. This included regular survey data from families and providers, interviews/conversations with children, parents/legal guardians, provider organisations and Sandwell HAF team members, and collating statistical data.

Portrait series and exhibition: alongside family interviews, portrait photographer Emile Holba created 41 portraits to capture the authentic lives and stories of families, which were co-created by the families themselves. Coordinated and project managed an exhibition of the portraits in Sandwell Valley Country Park during April 2025.

Reflective sessions: facilitation of a series of reflective sessions with families and providers, feeding back emerging findings from the data and inviting considerations for further improving quality of provision.

Training and professional development: led online training sessions on evaluation processes and practice for grassroots community providers to support with their in-house evaluation and monitoring systems. Supported the Sandwell HAF team as critical friend with the design and production of two conferences for providers, that were designed to prompt discussion and debate around core themes emerging from the evaluation.

Reporting: Produced three interim reports (end of each programme year), a final three-year report and an online flipbook of portraits.

Read our three evaluation report here.

ADA associates who worked on this project were: Abigail D’Amore, Emile Holba, Jennifer Raven and Liz Pemberton.