The Working Denbighshire Strategy set out a logic of change model where inputs, outputs, outcomes and community level impacts are considered.
Any blog post categorised as ‘impacts’ is about our ambition in relation to the community as a whole. This is the impact we hope to make at a population level. Our goals are:
- Reduce the number of young people Not in Employment, Education or Training (NEETs)
- Reduce the number of Low Skilled Adults
- Reduce Economic Inactivity
- Reduce the Unemployed Claimant Count
- Increased Incomes
- Reduce Poverty
These are influenced by many outside factors where our activity is only a small element of a larger whole. In such cases the bucket analogy is useful. Suppose our goal was to ensure our bucket is topped up with water. We might have the ability to top up the bucket by pouring in new water from a jug, but a hole in the bucket might see some water drain away. If we are not in control of the hole, our ability to keep the bucket topped up will be limited.
In our case we are acting to improve the labour supply, helping people to be more attractive to the labour market. But we are not in control of the wider economy and demand for labour will have at least as big an impact on our ultimate success as our own actions to improve supply.
We have identified three rules to our target setting:
- We wish to see improvement from our baseline position and this means seeing either an increase or reduction in the factor concerned.
- We wish to see an improvement in our relative performance compared with the Wales and UK (or GB) national performance levels.
- We wish to see an improvement in the performance of our least well performing neighbourhoods compared to our better performing neighbourhoods.