I have over 25 years’ experience of social policy research and evaluation and have led major evaluations of public policy across a range of agendas including anti-poverty, community regeneration and support for vulnerable groups.

My research focuses on three core areas:

• Neighbourhood and community-based approaches to improving outcomes for disadvantaged areas
• Models of public service delivery – particularly addressing the involvement of communities and service users, and developing evaluation tools and capacity in public service contexts
• The role and impact of voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations

Much of my research has focussed on interventions at the level of neighbourhood or local community. This included the evaluation the New Deal for Communities, where as Deputy Director of the evaluation between 2001 and 2010 I co-led a large-scale evaluation of a neighbourhood regeneration programme adopting a complex, quasi-experimental, longitudinal impact evaluation methodology. The research generated more than 100 outputs (https://extra.shu.ac.uk/ndc/) on the economic, social and physical regeneration of neighbourhoods, and assessment of outcomes for both ‘people’ and ‘places’. More recently, I led a five-year evaluation of the Early Action Neighbourhood Fund to explore how partnerships between public and voluntary sector organisations can shift community resources toward early intervention. This project, which reported in 2020 (https://www.earlyactionfund.org/evaluation) was a partnership with major UK funders including Comic Relief, the National Lottery Community Fund, the Esmee Fairbairn Foundation, Barrow Cadbury Trust and Legal Education Foundation to build evidence on the funding conditions that best support interventions aimed at 'disrupting' public service systems to allow for the more effective use of local assets in meeting community needs.

I have utilised theory- and systems- based evaluation approaches extensively in my research in this area. An exemplar is work on Children's Communities to build evidence on the impact of neighbourhood-based approaches to improving outcomes for children in disadvantaged areas (https://www.childrenscommunitynetwork.org.uk/evaluation-and-learning).

A longstanding interest in models of public service delivery has focused on relationships between the citizen and the state, and on developing evaluation tools and capacity in public service contexts. Early work focused on developing tools to assess the impact of anti-poverty policies adopted by UK local governments in the early and mid-1990s. A key finding was the importance of context, and national and local political processes in shaping the allocation of resources to address social need. These themes have been developed through my more recent work in this area which has supported service providers to better understand the impact of their work. An exemplar is a collaborative partnership with Doncaster Council and NHS Doncaster CCG to understand the impacts of health and social care integration, and build new a measure of citizen well-being to inform the commissioning of services across both domains.

My research is also concerned with the needs of vulnerable groups, particularly young people and lone parents. In relation to young people, work has included the impact evaluation of the myplace programme (2012-13) which involved Department for Education capital investment of £240m in youth facilities. I have since worked with colleagues in the Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research on the evaluation of Talent Match, one of the National Lottery Community Fund's strategic programmes addressing youth unemployment (https://blogs.shu.ac.uk/talentmatch/blogs/). Support for young people is a continuing area of interest, and I am currently working through the evaluators’ panel for the Youth Endowment Fund to assess the impact of a programme of support to vulnerable young people being delivered by Wakefield Youth Services. My research on lone parents has focussed on employment support. A significant project was an evaluation of support for lone parents who are furthest from the labour market in Scotland, funded by the National Lottery Community Fund (2013-17) and led in partnership with the University of Strathclyde. This research has produced a rich stream of academic outputs focusing on innovation and co-production in employment support. More recently, my research on vulnerable groups has extended to people facing multiple disadvantage (Complex Needs evaluation for MHCLG) and low income families (evaluation of Your Work Your Way for the Child Poverty Action Group).

A third theme third in my research is the resourcing and impact of voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations. This research is informed by the two themes articulated above: the VCS has a distinctive role in the delivery of services and the scale and quality of voluntary and community sector shapes service provision, particularly in response to limitations in state capacity to meet community needs. Early research included assessments of funding and grant making practices in voluntary organisations and on the sustainability and impact of voluntary sector infrastructure. This developed into methods to assess the scale and value of the voluntary and community sector in local areas. I am currently working on a learning and evaluation contract with the Nationwide Foundation.

I am an expert in evaluation theory and practice and have acted as an evaluation advisor to UK government departments (BEIS, DHSC, Defra), Welsh Government, local authorities, charities and foundations.

In a voluntary capacity I am a Trustee and Vice-Chair of the Mercia Learning Trust, providing strategic oversight of the education of more than 3000 primary and secondary pupils across six schools in Sheffield.

Research interests

• Evaluation
• Social impact
• Neighbourhood and community regeneration
• Community capacity and engagement
• Lone parents
• Children and young people
• Voluntary and community sector

2024-2029 Centre for Collaboration in Community Connectedness, Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC).

2023 Review of Neighbourhood Regeneration, Local Trust.

2020-2022 Evaluation of Your Work Your Way, Child Poverty Action Group.

2019-2021 Evaluation of Branching Out, Youth Endowment Fund.

2018-2020 Evaluation and Learning Partner, Nationwide Foundation.

2017-2020 Children's Communities Evaluation, Save the Children.

2015-2020 Evaluation of Early Action Neighbourhood Fund, Big Lottery Fund.

2018-2019 Complex Needs Process Evaluation, MHCLG.

2014-2019 Talent Match Learning and Evaluation, Big Lottery Fund.

2013-2017 Evaluation of Making it Work, Big Lottery Fund Scotland.

2016 Evaluation of Sheffield's Enhanced Primary Care Programme, NHS Sheffield CCG.

2016 The evaluation needs of Better Care Fund providers in Yorkshire and the Humber, NHS England.

2014-2016 Evaluation of Supporting and Maintaining Independence programme, Doncaster Metropolitan Borough Council.

2014-2016 Evaluation of Stockport Targeted Prevention Programme, Stockport Metropolitan Borough Council/ Nesta.

2012-2013 Evaluation of Myplace, Big Lottery/ Department for Education.

2000- 2010 New Deal for Communities Evaluation, Communities and Local Government.

Key clients

• Child Poverty Action Group
• National Lottery Community Fund
• Save the Children UK
• Nationwide Foundation
• Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government