Southwark Works Service User Evaluation

Sedulous was commissioned by Southwark Council to deliver a lived-experience-led evaluation of Southwark Works, the borough’s long-standing employment support programme designed to help residents access and progress into meaningful work.

Operating through a network of providers, the service supports residents facing complex and often multiple barriers to employment, including health, housing, financial and personal circumstances. As part of a wider recommissioning process, the Council sought to move beyond traditional performance metrics and develop a deeper understanding of how the service is actually experienced by those using it, and how this shapes engagement, progression and outcomes in practice.

This was particularly important given the nature of the delivery model. Southwark Works operates across multiple providers, delivery contexts and interaction points, meaning that while the service is designed as a coherent offer, it is experienced differently depending on how and where individuals engage with it. Understanding this variation, and how it emerges across the service journey, was critical to informing future design and ensuring consistency and equity of experience.

At the same time, the service sits within a wider ecosystem of employment support, where residents often navigate multiple services, expectations and pathways simultaneously. This creates a more complex reality than a single service model can fully capture, making it essential to understand not just isolated interactions, but how experiences accumulate and influence one another over time. Without this perspective, key drivers of engagement and outcomes risk remaining invisible.

Crucially, the evaluation also recognised that outcomes extend beyond employment alone. While progression into work remains a core objective, participants often experience a range of intermediate outcomes, including increased confidence, improved wellbeing, skills development and greater stability. Understanding how these outcomes are supported, and how they contribute to longer-term progression, was central to developing a more complete picture of service effectiveness.

This required an approach that could move beyond static evaluation and capture the dynamic nature of service delivery. In particular, it meant understanding how different elements of the service interact in practice, where variation is introduced and how early experiences shape downstream engagement and progression.

To achieve this, Sedulous designed and delivered a mixed-methods evaluation combining survey data, focus groups and a multi-stakeholder sense-making process. This approach enabled not only the identification of patterns in service user experience, but also a deeper understanding of why experiences and outcomes vary across the system.

The evaluation examined the full service journey, from initial access through to employment outcomes, using the Sedulous 4A Framework (Access, Approach, Alignment and Achievement) to generate system-level insight into how different elements of the service interact in practice.

Rather than focusing solely on whether support was delivered, the project centred on how support is encountered, understood and translated into real-world progression. This provided Southwark Council with a robust evidence base to inform future service design, highlighting both the strengths of the existing model and the underlying mechanisms driving variation in experience and outcomes.