Help for Heroes: Development and Learning Partnership
Background & Context
Help for Heroes commissioned M·E·L Research as a learning partner to support the development of a practical learning and evaluation framework for its Community Development approach. This was not a traditional evaluation focused primarily on assessing programme performance or impact. Instead, the central purpose was to work collaboratively with Help for Heroes to understand what meaningful change looked like within communities, how that change happened, and how the organisation could capture, reflect on and learn from it on an ongoing basis.
Help for Heroes’ Community Development model represented a significant change in how it worked with the Armed Forces Community (AFC). Informed by Asset Based Community Development (ABCD), the approach sought to move away from doing things to or for veterans and their families towards doing things by and with them. This placed community members more firmly in the driving seat, recognising and building on their existing strengths, relationships, knowledge and assets.
The Community Development approach incorporated Community Building, Community Sport, Volunteering and Community Cafés. Help for Heroes wanted to understand how these activities contributed to change for individuals and communities, while also developing a sustainable way of capturing the wider, systemic changes associated with an ABCD approach.
This presented an important learning and measurement challenge. Community development did not necessarily produce straightforward or linear outcomes. Changes could emerge gradually through new relationships, increased participation, stronger community networks, greater confidence and people moving from participating in activities to supporting or leading activity themselves. Help for Heroes therefore needed a framework that could recognise these different journeys and capture both the breadth of activity and the deeper stories of how community change occurred.
The primary focus of M·E·L Research’s commission was consequently the development of this learning framework, rather than undertaking large-scale data collection. M·E·L Research worked alongside Help for Heroes to develop and refine its thinking about how change happened, identify meaningful indicators of progress and translate these into practical tools that could become part of everyday Community Development practice.
A smaller element of primary data collection was incorporated to provide an initial baseline and, importantly, to test the emerging framework in practice. This enabled the developing measures and approaches to be explored using real evidence, with learning fed back into the framework so that it could be refined before being embedded within the final toolkit.
The commission was also designed to build Help for Heroes’ own evaluation and learning capability. Rather than creating a system dependent on external evaluators, M·E·L Research’s role as a learning partner was to provide specialist support, facilitate reflection and co-design, and help develop an approach that Community Development staff and communities could continue to use themselves.
Approach
M·E·L Research adopted an iterative, participatory and learning-focused approach, with framework development, testing and refinement taking place collaboratively rather than M·E·L Research designing an evaluation system independently and handing it over at the end.
The work was underpinned by an empowerment-focused approach and drew on Outcome Mapping and participatory evaluation principles. This reflected the ABCD philosophy of the Community Development programme itself: the evaluation and learning process needed to involve the people delivering and experiencing community development, recognise existing strengths and knowledge, and provide space for reflection and learning.
Key elements included:
Understanding the programme and developing the learning framework: M·E·L Research familiarised itself with Help for Heroes’ existing evidence, strategy, Theory of Change and Community Development model. The work focused on exploring and refining the assumptions about how Community Development was expected to create change and identifying what meaningful progression might look like. This provided the foundations for a framework that could connect programme activity with changes for the Armed Forces Community and the development of stronger, more sustainable communities.
Collaborative framework development: An Evaluation Working Group brought together Community Builders and Managers, central Help for Heroes colleagues and M·E·L Research’s evaluation and learning specialists. This created an ongoing mechanism for co-designing and refining the approach, ensuring the framework reflected the realities of Community Development delivery rather than imposing a conventional evaluation model onto it. The process combined evaluation expertise with the practical experience and knowledge held by Help for Heroes staff.
Developing a journey-of-change model: The work established four Community Development stages – Discover, Connect, Thrive and Mobilise – to describe progression in community participation and leadership. These were supported by eight ‘Living Well’ parameters covering areas including knowledge of opportunities, readiness to engage, recognition of personal strengths, participation, meaningful connections, reciprocal social networks, formally supporting others and leading community activities. Together, these provided a shared language through which Help for Heroes could understand how individuals and communities were developing.
Baseline data collection and testing the emerging framework: Primary data collection formed a smaller, developmental element of the overall commission. It was used to provide initial baseline evidence while also allowing M·E·L Research and Help for Heroes to explore whether the emerging framework and measures worked in practice. The learning generated through this process informed subsequent refinement of the framework and its associated tools. This meant that evidence collection supported framework development rather than being treated simply as an end-point assessment of the programme.
Designing a mixed-method evidence framework: The final approach deliberately combined quantitative and qualitative evidence so Help for Heroes could understand both the scale of engagement and the processes through which change occurred. The framework incorporated the Living Well questions, which provided a consistent way of exploring progression across eight parameters; Stories of Change, which captured richer accounts of what had changed and what had contributed to that change; and routine monitoring information, which provided an ongoing picture of community activity and engagement.
Ripple Effect Mapping (REM): REM was incorporated as a participatory tool to observe the changes and ripples that had occurred for community mentors since the start of their work. The Community mentors collectively identified changes they had experienced or observed, the actions and relationships that enabled them, and the wider ‘ripples’ generated through community activity. This enabled Help for Heroes to capture outcomes that might not have been anticipated in advance and to explore connections between activities, relationships, community strengths and wider change.
Designing proportionate and accessible methods: A central requirement was that evidence collection should fit naturally within Community Development rather than become a burdensome evaluation exercise. The Living Well questions were therefore designed for flexible administration, including digital completion using QR codes, URLs or WhatsApp, assisted completion, visual approaches and use as a conversation starter. Stories could similarly be captured through one-to-one conversations, written cards, group exercises, post-it notes, WhatsApp messages or voice notes. This flexibility was particularly important for a community-led model where engagement took place in different settings and with people at different stages of participation.
Building reflection and learning into delivery: The framework was designed not simply to generate information for reporting, but to help Community Development teams use evidence themselves. Quantitative information could provide breadth and identify patterns, while qualitative evidence helped explain why those patterns were occurring. Structured opportunities for shared reflection enabled teams to bring these sources together, discuss what they were learning and consider implications for future delivery.
Embedding ethical and consistent practice: M·E·L Research developed guidance to support proportionate and non-intrusive evidence collection, including approaches to informed consent and the handling of potentially sensitive information. The framework balanced flexibility with the need for consistency, providing common definitions and measures while allowing Community Builders to select appropriate ways of gathering evidence in different community contexts.
Analysis & Outputs
The principal output from the commission was an embedded learning and evaluation system rather than a traditional stand-alone evaluation report.
M·E·L Research drew together different forms of evidence through a mixed-method approach. Qualitative material could be explored using thematic and content analysis, alongside narrative approaches to understanding stories of change. Quantitative measures provided a structured way of tracking engagement and progression. Bringing these sources together enabled Help for Heroes to consider both what was changing and how or why that change was happening.
The Living Well framework translated the eight parameters into a structured scoring approach. Responses across the measures could be combined to understand the overall position of a community within the Discover, Connect, Thrive and Mobilise journey. Importantly, the framework focused on understanding the community as the unit of change, rather than creating an individual performance-tracking system.
M·E·L Research translated the learning and framework into a practical Community Development Research Toolkit for use by Help for Heroes staff. This was accompanied by more detailed technical guidance explaining the rationale behind the framework, definitions, measures and methods.
The toolkit provided practical guidance on:
The Discover, Connect, Thrive and Mobilise journey;
The eight Living Well parameters;
Collecting and interpreting Living Well information;
Capturing direct and indirect Stories of Change;
Using monitoring information alongside qualitative evidence;
Conducting Ripple Effect Mapping;
Reflecting on evidence within teams; and
Applying appropriate consent and evidence-gathering principles.
The materials were deliberately designed to be usable by Community Builders and other Help for Heroes colleagues rather than requiring specialist evaluation expertise. This supported the wider objective of transferring knowledge and capability into the organisation so that learning could continue beyond M·E·L Research’s direct involvement.
The resulting framework gave Help for Heroes a more consistent way to understand Community Development while retaining the flexibility required by an ABCD approach. It created a common language around community journeys and established a practical combination of quantitative measures, stories, monitoring data and participatory learning methods.
Crucially, the commission left Help for Heroes with a framework for ongoing learning rather than simply a snapshot of findings. Initial evidence had helped provide a baseline and test the emerging approach, while the iterative development process allowed the framework to be refined into practical resources that could be embedded within Community Development activity. This enabled Help for Heroes to continue generating evidence, reflecting on what was happening within communities and using that learning to inform delivery, organisational learning and future evidence requirements.
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