Praise for DfE’s evaluation of social care innovation fund
Fiona Simpson
Friday, June 24, 2022
The Department for Education’s approach to evaluation of social care innovation projects should be used as an example of good practice by other government departments, a report by the National Audit Office (NAO) has found.
It praises the DfE’s evaluation of its £333m Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme which funded 94 projects, including an integrated mental health, education and families service to support children in or on the edge of care, targeted support for young people to secure more stable placements and a positive transition to adulthood and relationship-based support for women who have experienced removal of their children into care.
The report states that from the outset of the project, which ran between 2014 and 2020, “the department made evaluation and dissemination of learning a central part of the innovation programme”.
“It made evaluation a condition of receiving funding and appointed research teams to carry out evaluations of projects. The department strengthened its approach as time went on, including developing a new strategy to assess the robustness of evaluation plans,” the report states.
It notes that of evaluations carried out by individual projects between 2014 and 2016, 42 of 56 projects reported improvements in the quality of services, and 21 reported cost savings.
However, the report also praises DfE’s work in commissioning and publishing independent evaluations of these assessments “which have highlighted a number of challenges and limitations of the evaluations carried out on individual projects”.
“The department subsequently used learning from the innovation programme to design more sophisticated evaluations of projects in successor schemes,” the report states.
Authors describe the evaluation of the programme as “transparent” and as “following best practice”.
The DfE published evaluation projects representing 90 per cent of initiatives funded by the programme compared with just 36 per cent of programmes in the Government Major Projects Portfolio.
This approach “provides an example of using evaluation which will be of value to other departments”, according to the NAO which added that “the DfE should aim to clearly demonstrate how its funding of innovation in local authorities will lead to better use of public money, wider dissemination of good practice across the sector, and improved outcomes for children in and around the care system.”
Gareth Davies, head of the NAO, said: “Putting evaluation at the heart of the innovation programme allowed the DfE to identify and promote the projects that have the greatest potential to make a difference for children and their families. The department’s approach provides an example for other public bodies to follow, and we would encourage it to share its learning to support evidence-based decision-making and efficient spending of public money.”
Meg Hillier MP, chair of the Committee of Public Accounts, added: “The NAO highlights some encouraging work by the in evaluating new ways of working in children’s social care. “The department was committed to improving evaluation, and put money behind its commitment to do better.
“Unfortunately, examples of proper evaluation across Whitehall are few and far between. Other departments would do well to take proper note of this positive approach.”