An interim evaluation of the Sahara Project

The University of Salford has been commissioned by Manchester Women’s Aid to conduct an interim evaluation following the first two years of the Sahara Project from 1 November 2014 to 1 November 2016. This will provide Manchester Women’s Aid with the opportunity to evaluate and plan for service provision beyond the end point of the three-year funding. This evaluation will also enable Manchester Women’s Aid (MWA) to demonstrate accountability to the Big Lottery providing an evidence-base to be used in future tendering processes. The following questions were addressed by the evaluation: An interim evaluation of the Sahara Project 3 www.salford.ac.uk/shusu • To what extent has the Sahara Project met its intended outcomes? • How effective is the current model (consisting of casework and groupwork) in terms of outcomes from the perspective of stakeholders including: service users; and service providers who refer to the Sahara Project? • What would have happened were service users not able to access the service? Would there have been implications, such as cost or limited alternative service provision? • What impact has the service had on the lives of BME women and children living with or fleeing DVA in the city of Manchester? The BAMER category captures a wide range of backgrounds and ethnicities and in addition to the evaluation of existing service provision, MWA has a particular interest in gaining better insight into those groups of women and children from the BAMER umbrella for whom there are more barriers to accessing their services. As a result, a targeted consultation exercise supplemented this evaluation with feedback gained from members of a group identified as harder-to-reach than others in the BAMER category; the Gypsy Roma Traveller (GRT) community.