Ailsa Cook (Co-Founder and Director, Matter of Focus), Haylis Smith (National Delivery Lead for Suicide Prevention Scotland), Neil Mathers (Executive Director, Samaritans Scotland) and Heather Williams (Organisational Lead, Public Health Scotland) discuss how Suicide Prevention Scotland has taken an embedded, outcome focused approach to evaluating their whole system response to suicide prevention – underpinned by contribution analysis and OutNav.

About Suicide Prevention Scotland

Suicide Prevention Scotland is a collective of more than 40 delivery partners who are working together at a local and national level to deliver on Creating Hope Together, Scotland’s Suicide Prevention Strategy and Action Plan.

The work of Suicide Prevention Scotland is widely regarded as world leading and focuses national efforts to prevent suicide around four outcomes:

  1. The environment we live in promotes conditions which protect against suicide risk.
  2. Communities understand suicide, risk factors and its prevention – so that people and organisations are able to respond in helpful and informed ways when they, or others, need support.
  3. Everyone affected by suicide is able to access high quality, compassionate, appropriate and timely support – which promotes wellbeing and recovery.
  4. Our approach to suicide prevention is well planned and delivered through close collaboration, co-design, evidence informed, and continually improving.

Matter of Focus and Suicide Prevention Scotland’s work together

Evaluating the impact of preventative programmes that take action collaboratively across the whole system is complex. Suicide Prevention Scotland knew from previous experience that simple measures wouldn’t be enough to understand how the programme was making a difference.

They needed an approach that could support meaningful evaluation while helping the delivery partners to reflect, share learning and improve as they went.

In 2023, we began working together to co-produce a theory of change for the programme with the delivery partners and to support all partners to track progress towards shared outcomes using OutNav. The delivery partners’ work in OutNav now underpins continuous learning, improvement, monitoring and annual impact reporting.

About this webinar

Join Ailsa Cook (Co-Founder and Director, Matter of Focus), Haylis Smith (National Delivery Lead for Suicide Prevention Scotland), Neil Mathers (Executive Director, Samaritans Scotland) and Heather Williams (Organisational Lead, Public Health Scotland) to hear about how the programme:

  • Co-produced a strategic outcome map and evaluation framework to align diverse activities and clarify how each contributes to shared outcomes.
  • Uses OutNav to work with both qualitative and quantitative data, including lived experience –enabling real-time learning and improvement.
  • Created a collaborative information ecosystem that supports ongoing monitoring, impact reporting, and relational change across the system.
  • Strengthened governance and accountability while fostering a culture of learning, reflection, and evidence-informed decision making.
  • Provides civil servants with access to emerging insight.

Who this webinar is for

Please join us if you are interested in:

  • Evaluating preventative or whole system change programmes.
  • Supporting ongoing learning and improvement across large scale programmes.
  • Using a collaborative, embedded approach to evaluation.
  • Learning from an example of using contribution analysis in action.