Our approach to research enables organistions to do this. We place their most important assets – the people that work for and with them – at the centre of our work. This means listening to learn from their expertise and experience. And importantly, staying with them to put learning into practice.
Our team’s personalities define our approach. We’re empathetic and analytical people. We have backgrounds in social policy, gender, criminology, behavioural science and public policy, but we’ve also worked providing frontline services to vulnerable and disadvantaged people. We’re expert in person-centred, qualitative approaches.
We work with organisations to understand what they need from a project, design the most suitable research methods, and build a team with the most appropriate skill set. We use quantitative measures and metrics, behavioural science, grounded theory and participative approaches.
Our greatest strength is understanding where value is created, and building systems that help you to recreate it. This means identifying the parts of your model – staff, skills, services or relationships – that are crucial for growth and impact.
Not all services are ready for standard evaluation. Some – particularly those that adapt and disrupt – never will be.
They need rapid feedback, collaborative methods, lots of testing and learning, and building measurement frameworks that flex with projects.
Impact measures are important for funders and decision-makers. They don’t tell the whole story about your organisation. But they do help you to improve your services and demonstrate the value of your work to others.
We don’t just talk about how to do great research: we do it ourselves.
Our frontline teams provide support to the long-term unemployed and to migrant families. Our research is aimed at strengthening these services by harnessing the insights of our staff and clients. It also increases the evidence base and provides practical learning for those who share our mission.
You can see examples of our own research below.
