This briefing is based on Guidance: Families First Partnership Programme (Department for Education), which was updated on 26 March 2026.
The Children’s Social Care National Framework highlights the importance of promoting evidence-based approaches to improve outcomes for children, young people and families. In practice, this requires local leaders to use evidence to inform and improve how services are commissioned and delivered in their area.
Local Authority Children’s Services bring together a diverse network of partners to support children, young people, and families. These partners not only deliver vital services, but also help shape and co-ordinate broader systems, fostering collaboration across education, health, safeguarding, community services, and the voluntary sector. To ensure the best possible outcomes, the effective use and implementation of evidence should be at the heart of this work.
In order to enable local partnerships to access information on the best available evidence, the Department for Education have commissioned a series of Practice Guides from Foundations – the What Works Centre for Children & Families. The Practice Guides contain high quality evidence about how best to achieve the outcomes set out in the Children’s Social Care National Framework and translate this into key principles and actionable recommendations to support the strengthening of family services. Local partnerships should see the Practice Guides as a key resource for guidance on the latest evidence of ‘what works’ in Children’s Social Care.
Foundations will be publishing more Practice Guides to support local leaders to deliver the responsibilities outlined in the National Framework. Further expert advice and toolkits capturing the best evidenced approaches to prevent children and young people becoming involved in violence are available from the Youth Endowment Fund.
There are a range of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) that have been proven to be effective through rigorous impact evaluation. These EBIs provide the most reliable way to improve child and family outcomes and strengthen the consistency and quality of Family Help services. EBIs focus on increasing practitioners’ knowledge of proven theories of change and provide effective methods for engaging families experiencing vulnerabilities. Leaders should consider embedding EBIs in their approach, commissioning and delivery of system transformation. A list of parenting support programmes known to have impact on parent and child outcomes can be found at Foundations – Parenting Interventions.
Foundations – What Works Centre for Children & Families will shortly publish a first draft of an ‘An implementation framework for services working with children and families’. This framework introduces a structured way of supporting the implementation of evidence-based approaches and wider service transformations into local systems that support children and families. It will be further updated in 2027.
Local leaders should also look to accompanying resources published alongside Practice Guides such as Reflective Tools and summaries for elected members to support implementation of evidence-based approaches and interventions (Practice Guides – Foundations).
To support local authorities to strengthen their use of evidence, the Foundations Evidence Pie highlights the full range of evidence that should inform the commissioning, design and delivery of services. Alongside What Works evidence outlined in Practice Guides, effective local decision-making also depends on drawing on a broader set of evidence.
