Practice
We work with children’s services professionals at all levels and across all agencies, helping them to change and improve the way they respond to vulnerable children and their families.
We work with children’s services professionals at all levels and across all agencies, helping them to change and improve the way they respond to vulnerable children and their families.
We work at local and national level, developing strategies for new ways of working and project managing initiatives that translate policies into practice.
We conduct small-scale service reviews, work with university partners on quantitative and qualitative research studies, and advise agencies conducting their own audits and evaluations.
Working together as RyanTunnardBrown for over 20 years, we bring to our work a unique combination of skills and experience in social work, law, education, policy and research.
Our aim is to help organisations make a tangible difference to children’s lives and life chances, drawing on what we have learnt over the years about the essential ingredients of work with children and families.
Scroll through the website pages to read about us and our work and publications.
Working as partners with CJI to support existing FDAC sites, promote the expansion of FDAC generally, and to support set up in new FDAC sites receiving funding under the DfE and What Works Centre’s Supporting Families, Investing in Practice Programme and the set-up of the first pilot FDAC in Wales under funding from the Welsh Government. The work has included developing a three day induction training programme for new FDAC sites.
Working with local authorities in England and Wales to analyse tracked data and electronic social care records for children. To increase understanding of the circumstances of children 10 and older in proceedings; identify the reasons for care, including extra-familial harm and exploitation; and learn more about the overlap between family justice, youth justice and deprivation of liberty. A project arising out of six years of tracking cases in four local authorities by the South London Care Proceedings Project (SLCPP).
In collaboration with Celia Parker, and commissioned by Research in Practice as part of the Nuffield FJO programme looking at young people in the Family Justice system.
See full report here.
Commissioned by Research in Practice, as part of the NFJO work programme that seeks to understand what is working well and what changes are needed for the current systems and services to respond well to the strengths and needs of older children and their families.
The report describes the work with English and Welsh authorities to analyse the circumstances before, during and after care proceedings of 73 children aged 10 to 17 in 49 families. With detailed case studies to illustrate the broad range of child and family experiences, and with recommendations for a renewed focus on early attention to parental needs, better support when children return home on a supervision order, ways of reducing the risk of exclusion from school, and earlier connections between children’s services and the youth justice system.
See summary report here
Parker, C. and Tunnard, J. (2021) Why are older children in care proceedings? A themed audit in four local authorities. London: Nuffield Family Justice Observatory
