Developing and Designing the Women's Centres: Sharing the Learning from the Development Phase

The Robertson Trust provided funding and support for the introduction and development of two asset - based and community - led Women’s Centres focused on meeting the needs and aspirations of women and girls including those who are most vulnerable. This research was commissioned to: 1) explore the effectiveness of the approach taken during the development and design phases of the Centres initiated by The Robertson Trust; 2) share learning throughout the evaluation process to inform future work in this area for the Trust, those involved in the programme and other interested organisations. As part of this, The Robertson Trust is contributing to the evidence-base about what works, what doesn’t work and why in developing a community led approach to the design and development of community - led Women’s Centres and to use that learning to help inform and improve local and national policy and shape future service delivery in this context. This project, designed to document and analyse the process and inform that learning, commenced in May 2015 and concluded in February 2017. Here we provide a summary of the learning from this project with the intention to inform the early stages of development of any further or related project of this nature.