Our Interim Report is Here!
- Abi Yardimci
- Sep 22
- 5 min read
What's working well and where are the areas for development at Hearts & Minds in 2025?
The Hearts and Minds Partnership, supported by The National Lottery Community Fund, is continuously shaped by feedback from the broader perinatal mental health community.
As part of our ongoing evaluation, which runs in parallel to our programme of work, we’d like to share the findings from our Interim Evaluation Report. In the spirit of the Partnership, this means recognising successes, but also bringing honesty and integrity by identifying areas for development.
Having also had an earlier grant from TNLF which ran from mid 2020 - 2023, we are now in Phase 2 of the Partnership's existence.
Phase 2 started in the summer of 2024 and runs until the summer of 2026, so this report explores how this new phase is going, as well as giving us recommendations as we move into its final months.
The findings have been informed by:
Interviews with the Hearts and Minds team
Focus groups with our team of EDEI workers, 'Root Makers' and other VCSE organisations too
Interviews with lots of VCSE services who have engaged with the Partnership
A key survey and other evaluation techniques at our national meet-up, Strengthening the Roots in May
Lively, conscious and self-aware liaison with the amazing grassroots perinatal mental health community across all of our workstreams
This report is helping us to monitor and improve our offer to the sector as we go, so we’re hugely grateful to our co-productive Evaluation Partners who are the team behind this work: Ang Broadbridge, Sharon Coaker, Laura Richmond and Dave Salisbury.
In this blog post, we'd like to share six key findings with you. However, if you'd like to read the Executive Summary for yourself, please do just drop us an email at: hello@heartsandmindspartnership.org . . .
Depth & Reach
There is a challenge matching authentic, meaningful engagement with broad, sustainable reach across the sector.
Our findings tell us that, “Those who engage with Hearts & Minds - whether through events, training or network spaces - report clear personal and organisational benefits, including connection, inspiration, and practical learning.”
BUT …
There appear to be barriers around engagement and regular returns – a smaller core group are repeat participants but many only engage sporadically rather than consistently.
Limited capacity and the day-to-day demands of running services were the most frequently cited reasons for non-participation – which we completely understand!
This seems less to do with the content or quality of the offer and more to do with the context VCSEs are working in: mission-led, under-resourced, and constantly stretched.
Inclusive Ethos
The Partnership is met with warmth, gratitude and respect and this inclusive ethos could continue with even better representation.
We have a commitment to the merging of ‘hearts’ and ‘minds' - the balance between heart-led warmth, connection and authenticity with the rigour of professionalism. This mirrors what we know our sector provides to families.
According to the report, Hearts and Minds provides inclusive, accessible spaces where it is "safe to share and explore new ideas".
“People value the space it creates - for connection, belonging and learning. Words like “compassionate” and “warm” came up often.”
To support our commitment to EDEI, we’ve been working with a team of incredible people, our ‘Root Makers’, who have helped to diversify our voice and have challenged us on how to make our spaces more inclusive.
There is still work to be done. We continue to work hard to increase and diversify our reach, ensuring that Hearts & Minds truly represents all VCSEs and the families they support.
Strong Community
Relationships within the Hearts & Minds community continue to grow with a highly valued chance to connect, share and learn from others.
As demonstrated by our Trusted Spaces, building and celebrating a strong community is a core aim for us. It can be quite isolating running your own VCSE and it is our honour to provide space and time for people to come together and remember they’re not alone.
We’re always blown away by how generous and authentic people are in these spaces. What we can learn from each other is endless so we’re always thinking about new ways to bring you together and keep building those community-driven learning opportunities.
The report showed that:
New and strengthened relationships were a key benefit, with VCSEs valuing the chance to connect, share and learn from others
A strong sense of community and solidarity was evident, with participants feeling supported, less isolated, and reassured by the Partnership’s presence
Frequency & Flow
Encouraging frequency of engagement in a sector-sensitive way whilst embracing creativity, inclusivity and high value.
As you might have noticed in the first insight about depth and reach, frequency of engagement in our workstreams is often a challenge.
At Hearts & Minds, we have all worked on the frontline and within VCSE operations (some of us still are) so we completely understand that the juggle is real. It’s never easy to prioritise self-care, learning and networking opportunities over the responsibilities your service carries with it.
For that reason, we’re working hard on adapting our offers to you, so that they are more bite-sized, streamlined, accessible and designed with different learning styles in mind. If you’re a Smart Space user (our FREE online learning platform for the PMH community) you might see some new and exciting things popping up over the next few months. And you’ll also be excited to learn that we’re staging an online national event in May 2026 – watch this space for news on that!
EDEI & Courage
The Partnership can keep embedding Equity, Diversity, Equality & Inclusion with courageous steps to explore more challenging conversations that enable change.
Working with our Root Makers (team of people from across the grassroots sector with personal and professional experience of marginalisation) has brought rich perspectives and strengthened equity work within the Partnership.
This collaborative approach has helped us embrace EDEI with all its rich complexities, opportunities and challenges and commit to it, not as any kind of tick box exercise, but as an embedded ethos that ultimately benefits the VCSE community and the families they are supporting.
Because this is a commitment, there is always more work to do. EDEI is about people and their evolving lived experience and because we truly believe EVERY family deserves compassionate, equitable care, this work is never finished. Our Root Makers have shown us that we need to be courageous and venture into more uncomfortable ground in terms of conversations, learning spaces and change-making opportunities.
We hope you’ll do that with us!
Comms Evolution
There is an opportunity to grow online visibility without compromising values - strengthening marketing and communications.
Our interim report identified that Hearts & Minds has some excellent routes of communication with the community, which have been built up over a number of years. However, there is an invitation to think about how these channels could be differently adapted to ultimately reach more people – especially those who don’t yet know about the Partnership.
There was also some interesting reflection on how / if a more conscious effort could be made to reach parents to increase awareness of the digital map of national PMH grassroots services. As a result, there may be some future work on identifying comms avenues where parents are most likely to be looking for wellbeing support.
Thank you!
While it’s not an official finding of the Interim Evaluation Report, we’re keen to express our thanks and recognise the reciprocal nature of our work. We are so grateful for all the engagement, participation, interest and support for The Hearts and Minds Partnership as it is the essence of our work and we thrive on the connections which make our sector stronger!
If you’d like to read the Executive Summary of findings, or you have any questions about the Partnership in general, please don’t hesitate to get in touch via hello@heartsandmindspartnership.org
