contractSCOTLAND: Review of the service extension pilot

2. Methodology

The review of contactSCOTLAND covers the period from the expansion of the service across the public sector on 2 March 2015 to end October 2015. The scope of the review was to gather information on awareness and uptake of the service, and experiences of using it, based on a combination of management information and stakeholder feedback. The work was undertaken jointly by the Scottish Government and the Deaf Sector Partnership (DSP), with the DSP undertaking the stakeholder engagement work and designing the approach.

The review provides high level insights and experiences from a range of stakeholders. The original intention was to use a combination of surveys and focus groups to provide both high level and in-depth insights. However, due to challenges in recruiting and facilitating focus groups, (the timing of the work following soon after the consultation work on the BSL Scotland Bill and resource challenges for the DSP in coordinating and delivering focus groups) it was not possible to capture more in-depth views. Nevertheless, the review still provides some important insights into the nature, awareness, scope and impact of the service from the perspective of those using the service as well as those with little experience of the service. The methods used are summarised in the Table 2 below, with full details provided in Annex 2.

2.1 Summary of methods

Table 2: Summary of review methods