Our Work

We work with children’s services - social care, youth justice, education and health - in England and Wales, with central government departments, and with a wide range of voluntary organisations.

Although our current work reflects the changing themes and concerns in children’s services, our approach and our aims stay the same – to make a real and lasting difference to the lives of vulnerable children.

Health and well-being in the youth justice system

We developed materials to help health and social care commissioners draw on national data, collect local evidence of need, and understand the legal and policy levers for providing high-quality care to vulnerable young people. The templates and toolkit are on the youth justice pages of the ChiMat website https://www.chimat.org.uk/yj/hwbna

Commissioned by Department of Health

Evaluating the family drug and alcohol court - second stage

Acting as consultant research fellows to the second stage of the evaluation of the Family Drug and Alcohol Court, we are exploring whether the findings from the first stage are sustained across a larger sample of cases and looking at the longer-term outcomes for children who returned home.

Commissioned by Nuffield Foundation and Brunel University

Understanding increases in the numbers of children subject to child protection planning and looked after services

The analytical framework methodology was applied to an audit of need to understand the reasons for rises in the number of children looked after by the local authority and in those supported by child protection plans.

Commissioned by Herefordshire Safeguarding Children Board

FDAC Development Project

A partnership with Ernst & Young, to develop a blueprint for the wider roll-out of FDAC, set out the business case for the FDAC model, and suggest different funding options.

Commissioned by London Borough of Camden on behalf of the Department for Education

Commissioning for Early Intervention – a Research in Practice Change Project

A one-year project to provide relevant research evidence and examples of promising practice to eight local authorities as they tested out different approaches to commissioning for early intervention.

Commissioned by Research in Practice

Establishing a culture of quality practice across children’s social care and health

A series of learning sets – organised on a locality basis for first-line managers in education, health and social care – to help embed a move to service delivery under the auspices of the ‘Right First Time’ programme.

Commissioned by: Gloucestershire County Council

London Councils Early Help Project

Researching information about current provision in 12 London Boroughs and making recommendations for the scope, activities and methodology for a project to establish the sufficiency of Early Help provision across London.

Commissioned by London Safeguarding Children Board

Research briefing - the cost benefits of Early Intervention

A research briefing for local authority councillors summarising the key research findings, good practice and policy developments in relation to early intervention and its potential cost benefits.

Research in Practice

Change Project: Analysis and Critical Thinking in Assessment

Working alongside managers and practitioners, we developed and piloted a set of evidence-informed resources and approaches to promote analysis and critical thinking in assessment.

Commissioned by Research in Practice

Case Study workshops - for practitioners, supervisors and first-line managers

We offer popular case study workshops where practitioners across children’s services develop clear needs-led, outcome-focused plans for children and families they are currently working with. Strategic managers have found the approach valuable in developing their Ofsted and Munro Implementation Plans.

Commissioned by various local authorities