Taking Strategy Development, Evidence-Based Programmes and Science-Based Innovation to Scale: A £215m Investment to Improve Outcomes and Give Children ‘a Better Start'

Background

In 2013/14 the Big Lottery Fund – the in England committed to investing £215m across five areas in England over a 10 year period in order to support the design and implementation of strategies and services to improve child outcomes in the early years. This investment is called ‘A Better Start’. The Social Research Unit at Dartington were responsible for working with 15 short-listed areas that were competing for this resource to help them develop robust strategies, informed by the best available evidence.

Method

We used and adapted an ‘operating system’ called Evidence2Success that we developed in partnership with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the Social Development Research Group (SDRG) and a range of other international partner organisations. The approach included: (a) strong governance and financing arrangements, including strong public system leadership and authentic community engagement and joint accountability for strategy development and spending; (b) new local data on outcomes, risk and protective factors of children 0-8 years (surveys were administered to over 11,500 parents of young children); (c) a ‘fund-map’ of existing spend on services for children and families, and opportunities for leverage and re-direction of resources; (d) a synthesis of the best available evidence about the development of children in the early years (developed in partnership with the Harvard Centre on the Developing Child); (e) a synthesis of evidence about ‘what works’ to improve outcomes in the early years; and (f) development of a real-time implementation dashboard to monitor subsequent delivery of the strategy and services.  

The application of this approach and tools were undertaken concurrently in 15 sites across England within a six month time-frame. 15 strategies were produced, give of which were selected by the funder for investment of £215m over 10 years.

 Implications

This work demonstrates the application of rigorous evidence-informed and data driven strategy development approach undertaken concurrently in multiple sites. Adaptations were made to the original approach to ensure that it could be delivered efficiently and in multiple sites concurrently with scale in mind. Key catalysts and barriers to successful strategy development will be discussed.