The report describes the development of SIPs in Scotland. It identifies some common themes in previously published evaluation reports, looking at seven issues:

The research was commissioned by Communities Scotland. SIPs were established in 1999 and were integrated into community planning partnerships into 2006. SIPs were intended to focus on promoting inclusion in communities and prevent social exclusion from developing.

Thirteen of the original SIPs were area based and fourteen were theme based, ie. focusing on particular disadvantaged groups of people such as young people or minority ethnic communities.

The research was desk-based and involved a review of 27 separate evaluations carried out in 2003 of each SIP established in 1999. It also drew on an interim review of SIPs carried out in 2002 and a report on the transition to community planning carried out in 2004.

The review identifies a number of key lessons for the development of other programmes to tackle social exclusion. It says that the decision making processes for targeted programmes should be transparent, and the criteria for selecting priority areas should be made clear to local authorities and communities.

It also found that the early role of SIPs as project funders made it difficult for them to develop a more strategic function as regeneration partnerships. SIPs were established without clear guidance on how their performance was to be measured.

Many of the selected indicators were beyond the scope of SIPs to affect within their lifetime and there was a focus on expenditure rather than on outcomes. Most of the SIPs did not focus on equalities issues either in their activities or in their monitoring and evaluation work.

The diverse nature of the evaluations of the SIPs made it difficult to compare them. There were also limited opportunities for SIPs to share good practice. Given the relatively modest amount of resources available to the SIPs and their short lifespan however, they did demonstrate much good and interesting practice in community engagement, partnership work and local project development.

Communities Scotland
Thistle House, 91 Haymarket Terrace
EH12 5HE Edinburgh
Phone: +44 131 313 0044
enquiries@communitiesscotland.gsi.gov.uk

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01/12/2006

ODS Consulting

research

Urban Policy > Social inclusion & integration

Integration of social groups