Age UK Isle of Wight

About the work

Age UKIW provides support to older people on the Isle of Wight. In 2015 they received funding to be part of the National Lottery Community Fund’s Ageing Better programme, delivering the Age Friendly Island project.  The project aimed to create an environment where the community is set up to help older people live safely, enjoy good health and stay locally involved. It also aimed to influence the way organisations work to better meet the needs of their older service users or customers. Following the initial 7 year programme, AgeUKIW received an additional two year Reaching Communities grant to continue the work, further embedding the principles of Age Friendly into communities and organisations on the island.

What we did

Shephard & Moyes has developed a long-term relationship with AgeUKIW.  This started in 2015, when we were part of the Ageing Better Support Team which provided strategic and programme management support to all Ageing Better programmes.  We worked alongside the Programme Managers and Board to improve programme management approaches and delivered a range of training to the partners, including evaluation, co-production, customer journey mapping, risk management and legacy planning.

Since 2018 we have produced annual evaluation reports on the Age Friendly Island project, capturing data from strategic partners and older people involved in the project to understand how the project is changing the way the island supports older people.  We also provided advice and support in completing their funding application for the Reaching Communities grant.

In addition, we carried out a review of AgeUKIW’s approach to impact measurement across the organisation. We facilitated workshops with the Trustees and senior management team to develop an overarching strategic framework for the organisation, and then repeated this exercise with project teams to create individual Theory of Changes for each programme or service area within the charity.

The difference we made

Our support to create an organisation-wide impact framework led AgeUKIW to identifying significant commonality between different elements of their delivery. The result of our work was a fundamental shift in the organisation’s structure, moving from individual programme to multi-disciplinary teams, and the development of a common approach to monitoring and evaluation across the charity.