London Lighthouse Project

The Lighthouse was a high profile centre for those affected by HIV and AIDS. Tavistock conducted an evaluation of the centre's workings, conductive evaluative research to assess how far the Lighthouse was achieving its own service targets in ways consistent with its own philosophy, to develop methods that adequately measure the quality of care and services achieved by the Lighthouse, to examine how the way the Lighthouse was organised and managed supports and was consistent with its service objectives, to identify possible improvements in services and related organisation and how these might be implemented. The evaluation also specified the impact of Lighthouse services on other service providers, the contribution of internal service practice to changing external attitudes, the impacts of the Lighthouse on social networks that include partners, carers and families, the interdependencies between different Lighthouse services and how they are co-ordinated, the nature of management practice and the extent to which services depend on management rather than the extraordinary efforts of individuals, the effectiveness of quality assurance mechanisms, the often highly qualitative criteria for assessing Lighthouse services.

Tavistock used several methods to evaluate lighthouse including observation of meetings and facilities, assessing and analysing the Lighthouse records, structured and semi-structured interviews, self-administered questions, diaries and logs, documentary analysis, feedback and validation.