Ageing Better

They were a key component in the success of our 8 year strategic programme involving 14 large partnerships across England.

About the work

Ageing Better provided over £100 million to 14 communities who were taking a test and learn approach to tackling social isolation in people aged 50 and over. Alongside the funding provided for partnerships and projects, the National Lottery Community Fund also funded a support team, evaluation and learning work. Shephard & Moyes were members of the support team and led on the learning work in the latter stages of the delivery.

What we did

Our involvement in Ageing Better started as members of the support team led by Hall Aitken. We provided project management support to the team, ensuring the Lottery were kept up to date with progress against the deliverables. We also provided direct support to the partnerships. This included practical support in developing business plans. We also provided support to kick start collaboration, use design thinking in developing the partnership and supporting a process of reviews as the partnerships developed.

In 2019 we took on the lead for collecting the learning from the delivery across the partnership. This led to us running first face to face learning sessions and as Covid-19 developed running on-line learning sessions. The online learning sessions involved capturing key insight as to how the partnerships were pivoting as Covid-19 caused wide spread isolation.

The difference we made

We developed a process that allowed the key learning from 14 different partnerships to be collated. It allowed us to identify common learning points from seemingly very different delivery. The process of developing the learning reports provided us with an in-depth insight into what works and doesn’t to tackle social isolation.