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.
We are part of a small team of project managers for 20 London local authorities working in clusters - together with the courts, CAFCASS, lawyers and providers of assessments - to reduce unnecessary delay for children who are the subject of care proceedings.
Commissioned by Capital Ambition
We co-ordinated the work of the 8 children’s charities reviewing the evidence about what is effective in securing a sense of permanence for children who cannot live with their parents. The final report describes the activities of the Inquiry, including sessions involving over 200 adult participants and a national consultation exercise with 100 children and young people.
Commissioned by Adoption UK, British Association for Adoption and Fostering (BAAF), Family Rights Group, the Fostering Network, Research in Practice, TACT, the Together Trust, and the Who Cares? Trust.
A project that uses the analytical framework to underpin the authority’s improvement programme for staff at all levels in and across the organisation.
Commissioned by Sandwell Council
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 http:s//www.chimat.org.uk/yj/hwbna
Commissioned by Department of Health
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
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
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
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
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
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
“Your report is excellent. We couldn’t have imagined you would discover so much, so quickly. You spoke to everyone who was relevant, you analysed what they said, and you have given us some important recommendations to implement.” CAMHS commissioner
