Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 7
7
Acknowledged
The Department concedes there is further to go to embed the culture of evaluation it...
Conclusion
The Department concedes there is further to go to embed the culture of evaluation it wants to see in children’s social care. The Department and the sector have learned that quality evaluation is expensive and can take a long time to do.19 However one evaluation provider told us that robust and rigorous evaluations are not yet routine in children’s social care, with many practitioners opposing the more robust techniques such as randomisation on principle.20 Following the recommendations of the Independent Review of Children’s 9 C&AG’s Report para 3.1 10 C&AG’s Report paras 18, 20 11 C&AG’s Report Figure 2 12 C&AG’s Report para 2.4 13 Qq 15, 53 14 Q 15 15 Q 42 16 Q 31 17 Q 42 18 EPC0004 p.3 19 Qq 31, 43 20 EPC0001 p.2 10 Evaluating innovation projects in children’s social care Social Care (the Care Review), What Works for Children’s Social Care and the Early Intervention Foundation have announced they will merge. The Department sees this as an opportunity to strengthen methodologies and evidence standards, and its ability to embed evaluation more effectively across children’s social care.21 Understanding impact
Government Response Summary
The government agrees that it should continue to promote and nurture a culture of evaluation and will continue to fund the newly merged WWEICSC as well as assess the development and delivery of proposals through a programme of rigorous evaluation where appropriate.
Government Response
Acknowledged
HM Government
Acknowledged
1.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: December 2023 1.2 The Department for Education (the department) agrees that it should continue to promote and nurture a culture of evaluation. It will do so through two main mechanisms: firstly, a commitment to evaluate new proposals in the Care Review implementation strategy; and secondly, funding and support for a children’s services What Works Centre. 2 1.3 The department published Children's social care: Stable Homes, Built on Love on 2 February 2023 which is an implementation strategy responding to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care. It includes new initiatives looking at areas such as Family Help services, and children looked after placements. The department will assess the development and delivery of these proposals through a programme of rigorous evaluation where appropriate. Departmental analysts are working with their policy counterparts, the Evaluation Task Force, HM Treasury and local authority (LA) practice leaders to ensure evaluation and the associated insight and learning is at the heart of the reforms. 1.4 The Early Intervention Foundation and What Works for Children's Social Care recently merged. The new merged organisation is operating initially under the working name of What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care (WWEICSC). The department is continuing to fund the newly merged WWEICSC. The new centre will use its expertise and knowledge to promote both the generation and use of evidence to deliver more effective universal, targeted and specialist services for families. To date: • WWEICSC maintains an evidence store with at-a-glance ratings for overall programme effectiveness: it receives more than 3,000 unique downloads a month; and • WWEICSC has had 80% of local authorities involved in evaluations to date and its interventions have reached over 1,100 schools. 1.5 Work is also ongoing to nurture and support the culture of evaluation within the department following the publication of the department’s evaluation strategy in June 2022.