Hestia

The challenge 

Hestia is a domestic abuse support provider in London and the Southeast of England. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Hestia launched the Safe Spaces programme. The programme offers a network of more than 6,000 physical spaces in pharmacies and banks nationwide that can be accessed by people experiencing domestic abuse or violence who need a safe space to think, find information, or reach out for support. Due to the time-critical nature of the launch, impact measurement was not considered in the design of the scheme. Hestia therefore sought support from NPC to build a theory of change, which could form the basis for a future impact measurement framework. NPC was also asked to analyse whether existing data could provide any indication of the programme’s impact. 

The approach 

NPC invited a team of Hestia’s core staff to its office in London for an interactive theory of change workshop. Over the course of three hours, the participants were guided through the most important elements of NPC’s theory of change in ten steps methodology. As the programme had already been running for a while, we harnessed theory of change as a tool to describe the current programme, rather than as a tool to develop new programmes. The first hour of the workshop was spent on situation analysis, creating a good understanding of the key issues, and the role of Hestia in contributing to a solution. After conducting a situation analysis, the different theory of change elements were generated through interactive collaboration methods. The final 30 minutes were spent on assumptions, which involved anticipating and considering possible criticisms of the new theory of change. This provided a clear sense of where the theory of change was strong, and where it would need further thinking. The results of the workshop were written up into a narrative document by NPC, and reviewed by Hestia. 

In parallel, NPC evaluated the readily available data, to try and assess the impact of the programme. Due to the anonymous nature of the service, there was very little data to analyse. Luckily, Hestia was able to provide anonymous data from its Refuge’s Referral Line, which provided some insights into the users of Safe Spaces. Moreover, NPC was able to identify reliable estimates of the economic and social cost of domestic abuse (from a 2019 Home Office study), which allowed for a cost-benefit analysis based on (conservative) assumptions. 

The result 

NPC produced a programme-level theory of change for Hestia’s Safe Spaces programme, consisting of a diagram and narrative. The theory of change is used by Hestia to communicate on the programme with partners and can serve as the basis for a future measurement framework. Moreover, NPC delivered analysis of the available data, which resulted in an estimated break-even point. This showed that the project’s societal value was already outweighing the programme’s costs. Hestia will be able to further refine the results in the future as better-quality data becomes available.