The Integrated Sustainable Rural Development Programme (ISRDP) was launched in 2001 to focus attention on 13 rural nodes identified as areas facing extreme poverty. These nodes were selected because of the deep poverty in which many of their citizens live. In 2006 the Department of Social Development (DSD) commissioned quantitative and qualitative studies to evaluate the department’s performance in the URP nodes and in the eight related Urban Renewal Programme (URP) nodes. An evaluation of DSD services and projects in the nodes was carried out in 2006. This report provides a synthesis of findings from a follow-up evaluation held in early 2008. The objectives of the second evaluation was to update information on the functioning of DSD-supported projects, and to identify whether and how issues that were raised during the first baseline research were dealt with. The evaluation also sought to identify changes to DSD services in the nodes since the first evaluation. Despite being the whole point of the ISRDP, lack of co-ordination and integration was top of the list of key issues from the first evaluation carried out in 2006. Lack of staff and resources, problems with business plans and the need for an expansion of DSD interventions also featured strongly. All these issues reappeared strongly in the second evaluation in 2008.