Improving Futures Evaluation: Summary Report
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The Improving Futures programme, funded by the Big Lottery Fund, aimed to enhance life chances for children in families with complex needs through tailored early intervention support across 26 pilot projects. Core principles identified included relationship-based support and active family participation, resulting in notable improvements in children's wellbeing and family strengths. However, challenges remained regarding scaling, adult outcomes, and gaps in local support services, highlighting the need for stronger integration between schools and family services.
Improving Futures Evaluation: Summary Report
- 1. Improving Futures Evaluation: Summary James Ronicle and Laurie Day, Ecorys UK March 2017 For more information about the programme and evaluation, visit: www.improvingfutures.org
- 2. The Programme Improving Futures •Big Lottery Fund, UK-wide programme •Grants of up to £1.08m over 3 to 5 years for 26 pilot projects •Improving life chances for children in families with multiple and complex needs •Early intervention support •New local delivery models •Public sector and VCS collaboration and learning
- 3. The Support
- 5. Improving Futures Principles Despite the variation in support, a number of common factors were consistently reported as being most important when supporting families at an early intervention stage. Principles of Best Practice 1. Relationship-based: Having a single key worker building relationships and trust over time 2. Respectful: An accessible, personable and respectful approach to working with families 3. Participative: Active participation by families in assessment and service planning 4. Whole family: Working with the whole family to identify and address needs 5. Working at the families’ pace: Flexible and variable support, working alongside the family and responding to their changing circumstances 6. Strength-based: Building families’self-belief, resilience and capabilities to manage their own lives 7. Supported referrals: Supporting families to engage with other services 8. Support networks: Building links with other peers and the community Central to the approach was the relationship between a single practitioner and the family. Word cloud showing adjectives used by family members to describe their key worker during qualitative interviews
- 6. The Outcomes
- 8. Conclusions Programme successes •The programme achieved its first goal of developing tailored and joined-up support for families with multiple and complex needs: the programme showcased the capabilities of VCSEs leading multi-agency partnerships, and produced a range of effective practice models. It also highlighted a set of principles effective for early intervention support. •The programme broadly achieved its second goal of improving outcomes for families: There was considerable success in building family strengths and in improving children’s wellbeing, behaviour, and engagement with school and out of school activities
- 9. Lessons learnt and challenges •Despite ongoing collaboration between VCSEs and statutory services during the programme, comparatively few projects were able to secure funding to scale-up, replicate, or ensure their continuation as a commissioned service. It is difficult to explain why this happened, though it is likely that the funding cuts to early intervention services during the programme delivery inhibited partnership working and statutory services’ ability to absorb learning from the programme. •The projects focused predominantly on achieving child-related outcomes, and there could have been a stronger focus on adult-related outcomes, particularly employment and engaging fathers. This child focus could explain why adult outcomes were sustained to a lesser degree than child outcomes. •Projects reported that progress against some outcomes was limited by gaps in local support: namely mental health support (particularly for adults) and affordable childcare. The projects struggled to fill these gaps; it is possible that providing an area- based element in the grants, distributing them across a broader range of services, would have helped plug these gaps. •Applying a strict age criteria (5-10) was found to be too inflexible and risked excluding families in need of support; in particular it prevented support during the crucial transition from primary to secondary schools. The age criteria was relaxed in the later years of the programme. •Due to the varying nature of the projects the evaluation struggled to draw robust comparisons between the different delivery models. A two-tiered programme, beginning with an ‘innovation’ round and then creating a more structured programme with the most promising models could have alleviated this. Main conclusion Overall, the evaluation strengthened the evidence base for early intervention support with families, highlighting that many of the outcomes can be sustained, where support is provided for a sufficient duration and intensity, and that VSCEs should be at the forefront of service design. Conclusions
- 10. Recommendations Planning and funding family support: 1. Build bridges between schools and family services: The evaluation supports the case for intervening early for families with complex needs, and where the oldest child is aged 5-10. Opportunities should be identified for schools and family services to work closely together. The potential use of Pupil Premium funding might be considered. 2. Create space for innovation and reflective practice: Funds should consider how best to balance ‘innovation’ with structured programmes that allow rigorous testing and evaluation. Organisational delivery: 3. Invest in early intervention workforce: Central to the projects’ successes were the relationship between a single practitioner and the family. Early intervention services should prioritise the recruitment and training of practitioners. 4. Track and compare outcomes to understand change for families: This would help understand the ‘optimum’ length and scaling for different interventions; services should be mindful that the evaluation found a correlation between the duration of support and positive outcomes. 5. Develop a stronger role for adult services: The evaluation found there was a need to strengthen the involvement of adult services; developing a stronger labour market dimension through closer links with appropriate partners such as Jobcentre Plus, and prioritising work with fathers would be beneficial.
- 11. About this report This PowerPoint report summarises the findings from an independent evaluation of the Improving Futures programme, which was carried out by Ecorys UK in partnership with Ipsos MORI, Family Lives and Professor Kate Morris. James Ronicle (Ecorys Associate Director) managed the evaluation and led on preparing the final report, with contributions from Anja Meierkord and Laura Kirchner-Sala. Laurie Day (Ecorys Technical Director) was overall project director. For more information, including the full set of evaluation reports, visit: www.improvingfutures.org, or contact James at: James.Ronicle@ecorys.com This PowerPoint report is also available in Welsh.