Rural Community Interventions

Rural Community Interventions

Review of Evidence on Rural Community Interventions

This report presents the findings from a review of existing evidence on interventions and policies to support the sustainability of communities in rural Scotland. It identifies key learning from the selected examples, particularly in terms of their success factors and approaches to evaluating their impacts. The review builds on work already undertaken as part of the Scottish Government's Strategic Research Programme 2022-2027 to analyse the evolution of rural and island policies and interventions in Scotland since 1945.

What did we do?

Desk-based evidence gathering focused on the identification and synthesis of main findings from reviews and evaluations of selected previous interventions. Where information was available:

• the aims of the interventions are outlined
• evidence about outputs and outcomes achieved are summarised
• the evaluation approach is described
• and the methodological approach is analysed

Initial work took a broad approach to identifying a range of relevant interventions and policies from different time periods over the last 30-40 years; follow-up in-depth review work focused on interventions where it was felt that there would be the most useful learning for Scotland.

What did we learn?

There have been a number of high level rural policy documents published in Scotland since 1945. The issues raised in these documents tend to persist over time (e.g. housing, service provision, economic diversification, etc.) and they were not systematically evaluated. Since 1945, theoretical approaches to rural development have evolved from a focus on exogenous interventions (a sectoral approach driven from outside rural areas which were regarded as marginal), to endogenous interventions (emphasising the need to build local assets with local people having control over actions that are taken), to a neo-endogenous or networked approach which recognises the importance of external actors and resources, but with local people holding the power to steer development processes for local benefit. Asset-based Community Development (ABCD) argues for a positive approach to development, emphasising assets (not deficits) with network-building at the core.

Common success factors

The interventions spanned different geographies, priorities, timescales and actors. From these we identified a set of common success factors:

• Genuine commitment to empowering communities and hearing all voices
• Early mapping of community assets
• Programme flexibility to enable tailoring to local circumstances but also clear, achievable objectives which are developed in partnership
• Transparency of local governance and decision-making structures with inclusive opportunities for everyone to get involved
• Strong, equitable partnerships based on trust and shaped from the bottom up, with strategic commitment by all involved and clear roles and remits
• Recognition and support for i) animators (facilitators) working with communities to build capacity and confidence, and identify assets and potential development strategies, and ii) the vital role of volunteers
• Long-term support (ideally multiannual funding) which reduces uncertainty for staff and volunteers and enables innovation
• Appropriate levels of administration at project and programme levels
• Different mechanisms and geographies for sharing best practice and learning.

Evaluating rural community interventions

The key findings with regards to evaluating rural community interventions include:

• Recognition that the impacts of rural community interventions may not be visible immediately or even in the short-term
• Community interventions are likely to generate easier to measure outputs as well as 'softer' outcomes; tools such as Social Return on Investment and the Social Value Engine can assist with measuring less tangible outcomes
• Evaluations should collect both quantitative and qualitative evidence from all stakeholders, including from community members themselves
• Recognising the merits of different evaluation types is important, including dynamic, formative, process and impact approaches
• Evaluation should be an important part of any project built in from the outset but extending beyond the life of the programme to measure longer-term impacts
• Having common evaluation frameworks across similar funding streams may be helpful so that evidence on impacts can be shared more effectively and usefully.

What do we recommend?

A series of recommendations can be made to inform future larger-scale reviews in this area:

• Maximising the use of existing evidence on rural community interventions
• Investigating and evaluating long-term impacts from interventions
• Evaluating evaluation frameworks and tools for a rural context
• Learning from the delivery of rural community interventions outside Scotland
• Demonstrating that community-led local development delivers national/ regional policy objectives
• Ensuring that all voices across all communities are heard.

You can read the full report using the download link below or you can find the report using the DOI: https://doi.org/10.58073/SRUC.26984782.v1