Case study: Theory of Change

• The Money, Cancer and Me pilot delivered tailored financial education to 13-19‑year‑olds with a cancer diagnosis or recently completed treatment.
• It aimed to strengthen financial understanding, informed decision‑making confidence and awareness of reliable support sources.
• The evaluation used a Theory of Change (ToC), which clarified expected activities and outcomes, and shaped the evaluation and learning plan.
• The ToC structured the evaluation by outlining short‑, medium‑ and long‑term outcomes, guiding survey design, focusing analysis on realistic short‑term changes, and supporting reflective reporting. 
• It also helped evaluators assess delivery outputs, explore mechanisms of change, and identify gaps such as challenges in measuring longer‑term outcomes.
• The pilot showed a clear need for tailored financial education. Participants gained financial understanding, confidence and support‑giving skills. Co‑designed materials and flexible delivery were essential for young people managing long‑term health conditions.

Money, Cancer and Me provided financial education to young people aged 13 to 19 with a cancer diagnosis or who had recently finished treatment. It was delivered by Teenage Cancer Trust and The Money Charity.

The programme aimed to help young people:

• better understand their finances
• become confident to make informed decisions
• know where to find reliable information and support.

Activities included:

• developing a financial education module
• piloting a workshop with young people
• running training workshops with youth support co‑ordinators
• delivering interactive sessions for 13-17 and 18-19‑year‑olds
• producing a resource pack with factsheets, videos and signposting materials.

• Assess the design, development and delivery of the programme to inform improvement.
• Understand what difference the programme made for young people, youth support co‑ordinators, The Money Charity and Teenage Cancer Trust.

• Develop a ToC to set out expected activities, outputs and outcomes.
• Use mixed methods of data collection: 
  • pre‑ and post‑workshop surveys with young people
  • a feedback survey with youth support coordinators
  • interviews with delivery staff, co‑ordinators and young people
  • analysis of project documentation.

• The pilot delivered tailored financial education and training, confirming a clear need for both.
• Participation was lower than planned, but those involved showed gains in understanding, confidence and support skills.
• Co‑designed materials and flexible, rolling delivery were key to success for young people with long‑term health conditions.

The ToC formed part of the overall development, process and outcomes evaluation. It was created during the evaluation scoping period, in consultation with the project team and through a stakeholder workshop.

The evaluators reported that the ToC directly shaped their evaluation and learning plan – specifically its aims, methodology and timescales.

The goals set out in the ToC provided a clear overview of the programme’s aims. Because all parts of a ToC lead to its goals, it helped distinguish between aims relating to outcome evaluation and those relating to process evaluation.

Our Guide to Financial Wellbeing Evaluation outlines what we consider the essential components of a ToC and how they work together. Although the ToC in this evaluation used slightly different terminology, we have aligned its components with our framework below to show how they supported the evaluation.

Outcome aims

The ToC identified the aims relevant to outcome evaluation – specifically, the difference the programme intended to make for young people.

A ToC is central to outcome evaluation because it offers a simple, shared understanding of how programme activities are expected to improve financial wellbeing. It helps stakeholders focus on what is both important and realistic to achieve, and it sets out the outcomes that matter and how they should be measured.

Short-term, medium-term and long-term outcomes

We recommend separating outcomes into short‑term, medium‑term, and long‑term levels, which this evaluation did clearly. They identified multiple meaningful and realistic outcomes at each level. We have selected and rephrased one example from each level to illustrate how they connect across the outcome pathway.

Process aims

Alongside outcomes, the ToC highlighted elements relevant to process evaluation, such as understanding how the programme was implemented and how it could be improved.

Within the outputs, the ToC set out delivery and participation measures, as well as the role of enjoyment and social interaction within workshops. These indicators helped evaluators understand key aspects of implementation and explore how and why the programme worked as it did.

The outcomes and outputs in the ToC directly shaped the evaluation methods. The evaluation used mixed methods:

• Quantitative: Pre‑ and post‑workshop surveys to measure outcomes with survey questions informed directly by the ToC, and management information to assess reach and delivery.
• Qualitative: Interviews to explore young people’s engagement, experiences and the mechanisms behind observed changes.

This combination allowed evaluators to assess both outcomes and implementation processes.

By setting out short‑, medium‑, and long‑term outcomes, the ToC helped evaluators consider what was realistic to capture within the project timeframe. Only short‑term outcomes were in scope. The final report reflects this clearly, and the ToC informed decisions about resourcing the evaluation.

A ToC also supports decisions about resourcing and delivery, and promotes shared understanding across stakeholders.

This evaluation was complex and involved three target groups. Here, we focus on the pathway for the primary beneficiaries (young people) to show how the evaluation addressed the remaining components of our ToC framework:

• Inputs: staff time, youth support coordinator time, young people’s time, existing workshop content and programme funding.
• Activities: 12 one‑hour workshops co‑developed with young people and youth support coordinators, grounded in lived experience.
• Theories and evidence: the importance of tailored support for young people with cancer diagnoses to strengthen future financial wellbeing, informed by evidence from the Money Advice Service’s What Works Fund. Our Evidence Hub provides a wide range of relevant research for evaluators.
• Contexts: workshops delivered between March and July 2021 to two age groups (13–17 and 18+).
• Goals: empowering young people to understand their finances, feel confident making informed financial decisions and know where to seek information on money management.

Unusually, the ToC also included risks and enablers associated with achieving the programme’s goals. This helped manage expectations about what the evaluation might find, given potential delivery challenges.

This evaluation highlights how using a Theory of Change:

• built relevance and credibility, as it was co‑created with the project team and stakeholders, promoting shared understanding
• provided a clear structure, setting out activities, mechanisms and expected changes across beneficiary groups in an organised framework
• clarified expectations and targets, such as expected reach, satisfaction and delivery outputs, enabling evaluators to assess progress and report where targets were exceeded
• shaped evaluation design and tools by informing the evaluation and learning plan, highlighting the need for process and outcome evaluation, and guiding survey question development.
• enabled aligned reporting and reflective learning, such as structured findings around the ToC, cautious attribution of short‑term outcomes, and highlighting gaps such as challenges measuring longer‑term change.

You can download the full report: Interventions for children and young people in vulnerable circumstances: Evaluation of Teenage Cancer Trust and The Money Charity's 'Money, Cancer and Me' pilot (PDF, 1.3MB)Opens in a new window.

You can also view summaries:

• The Children and Young People Financial Education Innovation and Evaluation Programme. 
• Evaluation of Teenage Cancer Trust and The Money Charity’s ‘Money, Cancer and Me’ pilot.