Cash First Learning and Evaluation: Independent Evaluation

Tender description

The Scottish Government wants to work with local partners towards our shared ambition of ending the need for food banks in Scotland, as set out in our recently published Cash-First Plan. Our two-year Cash-First Programme (‘the Programme’) will provide funding and practical assistance for up to eight local Partnerships to collaborate and deliver activities that improve urgent access to cash in a crisis, generating evidence that can be shared to inform future policy and practice. The Scottish Government is seeking to procure the services of an organisation to undertake an independent evaluation of this Programme. The Evaluator will assess the implementation of cash-first activities by Partnerships, the role of the Learning Partner (who will assist partnerships to deliver interventions) and the impact of the Programme as a whole. The Scottish Government has already appointed a Learning Partner to facilitate improvement and learning within and between Partnerships, and to support the gathering of evidence for the Programme evaluation. The Learning Partner services requirement is available to view as a supporting document in the Invitation to Tender pack, for your reference. Nourish Scotland was awarded the contract for the Learning Partner element. It should be noted that the successful bidder for the evaluation will be expected to collaborate and share some data and resources with the Learning Partner in order to effectively fulfil the Programme objectives. Specifically, the Evaluator will be expected to seek the Learning Partner’s views on the evaluation framework, develop a joint Data Sharing Agreement and support the Learning Partner to identify and supply evidence that is relevant to the evaluation.