A Participatory approach to the parallel evaluation of public and private well-being services

The objective of this paper is to describe a participatory approach for evaluating public and private well-being services in parallel in order to support the adoption of multiple supplier models. The study was carried out as a case study, based on multiple data-collection methods such as thematic personnel interviews, customer surveys and activity-based cost analysis. The study produced two main findings. Firstly, it provided concrete and contextual results for case representatives in intensive residential services for the elderly and in primary health care. Secondly, an integrative evaluation framework was created, along with a participatory process with methods for benchmarking and facilitating multiple suppliers in well-being services. Thus the study provides new insights, from practice to theoretical discussion, as well as multi-voiced knowledge, participatory evaluation methods and benchmarking possibilities for case organisations, municipalities and political decision-makers and, ultimately, for all interest groups in well-being services.