ASP learning and improvement programme

Getting involved

What is the Programme?

How do partnerships know their adult support and protection work is making a difference, and how do they build on what they learn? Those are the questions this programme will explore.

The ASP Learning and Improvement Programme will support partnerships across all 32 local areas to better understand how they can carry out robust self-evaluation. The aim is for that learning to inform improvement, both locally and nationally.

The programme is delivered by Iriss in partnership with the Scottish Government. It builds on work already underway across Scotland, rather than starting from scratch. We already know a lot about the components of good self-evaluation, what’s less clear is how those components are experienced and used in practice across different areas, that will be the focus of this programme.

What are we trying to do?

  • Build a shared understanding of what is already working, what is missing, and what is needed to support effective self-evaluation across different contexts and levels of development
  • Support areas to develop approaches to capturing, organising and using data for self-evaluation that fit their own context, drawing on knowledge sharing and evidence of what already works
  • Understand how partnerships build and sustain the core components of self-evaluation, including a community of practice, a learning culture, the ASP pathway and methodology, at different levels of maturity
  • Identify what can be applied consistently across all areas and what needs to be adapted locally, so there is room for both a shared approach and local flexibility

How will the Programme work?

A timeline of the programme's four phases: Explore, Imagine, Shape and Realise, moving left to right, with Explore marked as the current phase

We are using the Iriss innovation model of Explore, Imagine, Shape and Realise to guide the work.

Explore: We bring together existing evidence to understand the current self-evaluation landscape, and we listen to how areas are doing this work day to day.

Imagine: We build a shared asset map of what is already out there, including examples of effective practice, areas of innovation, gaps and opportunities. The map is a living resource that grows as the programme develops.

Shape: We run learning sessions with partners to explore what is working, what is missing and what is needed at different levels of maturity.

Realise: We pull local learning into a shared national picture, so that what is learned in one place can strengthen practice elsewhere.

Who is involved?

Iriss leads the programme in partnership with the Scottish Government. We are working with ASP partnerships and leads across all 32 areas, alongside existing ASP networks, learning partners and communities of practice. A Programme Advisory Group (PAG) provides guidance and support as the programme develops.

What will engagement look like?

Engagement will centre on facilitated online conversations, bringing groups of practitioners together to look at self-evaluation practice in more depth. We aim to capture practice in every area over the course of the programme, in a way to meet folk where they are - and is proportionate to local capacity. Some areas will take part through deeper engagement, contributing local examples and helping to sensemake the asset map and learning sessions.

What we’re building on

Our programme has grown out of work that’s already happened across Scotland, identifying key needs. It follows the joint inspection of adult support and protection in 2023, which tested a supported way of doing self-evaluation (‘workstream four’) with self-selected partnerships. We evaluated that work back in 2025, and what we learned has helped to develop this new programme.

We are also building on workshops through 2025, where partnerships and partners came together to work out what good local self-evaluation really takes. That work set out the core parts of the programme. Our approach also responds to the broader ASP pathway development as part of the Scottish Learning and Improvement Framework (SLIF), asking: “In the absence of the SLIF ASP pathway, what are teams using to gather and engage with data to inform self-evaluation?”