• Service delivery packages and models

Service delivery packages and models

This document, prepared for the Department for International Development (DFID), examines the relationship between community-based approaches and service delivery, drawing together lessons from international experience with relevance to Sudan, and focussing particularly on health, water and sanitation. The report argues that community-based approaches have the potential to be more responsive to the needs and priorities of beneficiaries than other approaches. They are also relevant across many sectors and can be applied to both individual community-level projects and as a component of wider national programmes. However, communities may not be well-equipped for identifying solutions, which generally requires additional technical support.

The report suggests that community-based approaches can contribute to broader service delivery objectives, but that for the impact of such approaches to be optimised, there needs to be greater clarity about the precise objectives and more realism about what is achievable. It is important that community-level interventions are complemented and guided by a larger system of norms and standards to ensure quality and equity in services provided. An additional challenge in post-conflict settings is to strike an appropriate balance between the need to rebuild institutions quickly and the desire to reform them to ensure longer-term sustainability in service provision.

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