Evaluate a project or programme
Independent social research and evaluation to understand delivery, outcomes, impact and opportunities for improvement.
An independent consultancy · North East England
Small is beautiful*
Barefoot Research and Evaluation is a Disabled-led consultancy helping charities, public services and community organisations evaluate impact, understand people’s experiences, review complex services and put evidence into practice.
More than two decades of applied research experienceBased in the North East. Built around your brief.
How we can help
What do you need to do?
Start with the question or decision facing your organisation. We will help shape the right approach.
Reach a fair judgement about a service
Reviews combining service-user experience, stakeholder perspectives, costs, performance data and existing evidence.
Understand and remove barriers
Inclusive reviews of physical environments, digital information, communication, policies and experiences.
Improve organisational practice
Practical training that helps teams turn evidence into changes in workplaces and services.
Climate & environment
Measure emissions.
Fund practical action.
We help organisations calculate carbon emissions, identify reductions and explore responsible offsetting, biodiversity and tree-planting solutions.
Our approach can also turn environmental commitments into realistic climate and environmental budget lines, supporting an evidence-based pathway towards carbon-neutral or carbon-positive operation.
More than 20 years of applied work
Research grounded in experience.
We have worked with charities, public bodies, foundations and communities across North East England and beyond. We are often asked to investigate complicated subjects where conventional data tells only part of the story.
Disability, access and employment
Research, consultation, accessibility reviews and practical resources developed with disabled people and the organisations that employ or support them.
Safety, abuse and exploitation
Needs assessments and evaluations involving domestic abuse, sexual exploitation, consent, community safety and services responding to harm.
Justice, families and communities
Research with prisoners, families, young people and communities affected by the criminal justice system and wider public policy.
Why Barefoot Research and Evaluation
Disabled-led.
Broad in our outlook.
Disabled leadership shapes how we think about access, power and barriers created by services, systems and environments. It does not restrict us to disability-only commissions.
We combine lived and professional perspectives with qualitative and quantitative evidence, producing work grounded in people’s experiences and useful to real decisions.
A note on our approach
Small is beautiful
The phrase comes from E. F. Schumacher’s Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics as if People Mattered. Drawing on “Buddhist economics”, Schumacher argued that economic activity should support human wellbeing, meaningful work, strong communities and responsible use of the natural world—not simply maximise growth and consumption.
This thinking shapes how we work. We look for the small, nuanced effects that conventional measures can miss: how a service feels to the people using it, where apparently minor barriers affect access, and what decisions mean for communities and the environment. Our carbon-offset calculations are one example of looking beyond headline figures to understand the real implications of organisational choices.
Start a conversation
Let’s talk about your project.
You do not need a fully developed brief. Tell us what you want to understand, the decisions ahead and your timescale.