Creating better lives? An Evaluation of the Life Changes Trust

This project will evaluate the activities of the Life Changes Trust (LCT), a Scottish trust established with the aim of creating better lives for the following groups: young people with care experience, people with dementia, and unpaid carers of people with dementia. The Trust provides funding for a large number of innovative practice projects taking place across Scotland. The Trust was set up in 2013 to run for ten years and this project will evaluate past, present and future activities of the LCT. This evaluative project adopts a narrative, storytelling approach, utilising life story methods such as those often used with young people with care experience, people with dementia and their carers; and turns these methods back onto the LCT, its establishment, progress, achievements and challenges over time. Three cross cutting themes frame the project: life stories, participation and creativity. Engaging with stories about the impact of LCT projects on individuals and communities will enable participants to reflect on and recognise change. By encouraging the different stakeholders of the LCT to tell their stories, the project will build an organic, dynamic and evolving picture of the LCT, its work and its beneficiaries that illustrates its past, present, future and legacy. Based upon principles from appreciative inquiry and narrative evaluation, a strengths-based approach will illustrate the impact of the LCT in creating positive change for beneficiaries and to support further transformation.