As the InCARE project nears its end, the evaluation and monitoring activities of the team are still ongoing as discussed in the panel at the InCARE Final Conference. Since the inception stage of the interventions in three pilot country cases, InCARE developed an innovative approach to evaluation through the adoption of the Theory of Change. The Theory of Change’s successful application in the project has allowed its team members and external stakeholders to have a transparent view of project activities, opening the black box of processes that go from project activities to expected impact goals.

The social innovation pilot projects of InCARE cover a wide range of critical issues facing long-term care in Europe, which concentrate on networking and information, training and support for caregivers, and adopting new digital technologies in a new context. Each of these intervention domains has been carefully mapped on clearly defined long-term and short-term outcomes to achieve linked to specific activities via Theory of Change workshops. The pilot implementation teams worked in a participatory manner to develop their theory of aimed change, and the mechanisms of such planned actions are defined in a traceable, adaptable, and measurable way.

Measurable indicators embedded at the core of each action justified within the theory are a key added value of the built-in Theory of Change in InCARE. Since the pilot implementations started, the teams have continuously gathered data on precise ways to measure success and could also identify intervention limitations and how to capture the desired outcomes by adapting some activities.

As a result, each pilot team and the project will be able to deliver reports detailing their activities linked to what has been achieved. In such a way, InCARE’s evaluation forms a strong evidence base for future interventions and develops ways of improving current interventions. Participatory and in-built evaluation with ongoing feedback loops with stakeholders strengthened the project’s links with practitioners and policymakers alike, ensuring stronger sustainability as well as the scalability of the project’s broader long-term impact.