The Opportunities and Challenges of the Changing Public Services Landscape for the Third Sector in Scotland: A Longitudinal Study Year Three Report (2009-2012)

APPENDIX B: AIMS AND OBJECTIVES OF THE RESEARCH

The aim of the work is to track the opportunities and challenges that third sector organisations are facing with a changing public services landscape in Scotland between 2009 and 2014.

The original objectives were to:

• Measure the extent to which third sector organisations perceive the Concordat (and other policies such as Scrutiny Improvement, changes to budgets and, in time, BV2) have impacted upon their organisation and contributed to business decisions around business planning, workload and emphasis, organisational structure, staffing, behavioural changes within the organisation etc
• Determine the extent to which third sector organisations feel they have an outcome focus and whether this is aligned to the National Performance Framework and how this changes over time
• Identify the ways in which third sector organisations are building collaborations across the sector and with local and central government and other service providers and funders
• Assess the level of involvement of third sector organisations in CPPs and the extent to which they feel they are engaged in decision-making and how this changes over time
• Understand the ways in which local finance and funding decisions by public sector partners and funding/resources generated by third sector organisations themselves are impacting upon third sector organisations over time and whether they are contributing to offering good value for money
• Assess the extent to which third sector organisations feel they are delivering high quality, efficient and responsive public services and how this has changed over time
• Determine whether changes to the scrutiny landscape have been realised by third sector organisations and track this over time
• Identify any other perceived challenges of the changing public services landscape on third sector organisations over time
• Identify good practices from across the third sector where organisations are making the most of opportunities provided by the changing public services landscape
• Make any recommendations for improvement to ensure third sector organisations deliver high quality public services that are continually improving, efficient and responsive to local people's needs

In addition, at a meeting of the Research Advisory Group in February 2011^[39], the members agreed that the focus of the year two research should include the following:

• Relationships/ partnerships (Especially involvement of TSOs in Services Design/ co-production)
• Views of new local infrastructure (interfaces) and third sector engagement at local level
• Other partnerships
• Financing the third sector
• Outcome measurement (SROI and other impact measurements)
• Leadership and Governance
• Policy changes/ election context
• Delivering high quality services (case study examples)

The 2012 year research aimed to build on and extend the previous objectives as well as responding to emerging policy. At a meeting of the Research Advisory Group in November 2011^[40], the members suggested the focus of the 2012 year research should include the following:

• Partnerships and collaborations - continuing from year two
• Support for third sector (from Scottish Government and elsewhere), including: views on; experiences of; how well supported are organisations feeling
• Local Infrastructure (interfaces) and how dynamics might be changing
• Consequences of the Work Programme, Personalisation and Welfare Reform agendas
• Shift into prevention and early intervention and the extent this was happening (awareness of and impact of Change Funds)
• Involvement of third sector in public services design (and Public Social Partnerships)
• Skills challenges e.g. around leadership, governance, business skills and how these affect sustainability; relationship of skills to resilience amongst organisations
• Staffing and Volunteering issues
• Employment of staff including numbers of FTE and pay changes.

Where feasible, the research in year three was extended to cover the additional topics suggested.