Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) Programme - year 2: process and impact evaluation - full report

1 Introduction

Please find the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) Programme - Year 2 Process and Impact Evaluation Summary Report here.

In September 2023, the Scottish Government commissioned IFF Research (an independent research and evaluation agency) to undertake a process and impact evaluation of the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF) during its second year (2023-2024). See Annex 3 for a glossary of terms.

Policy and legislative background and context

The Scottish Government wants to ensure that all children, young people and families have access to the help they need to grow, develop, and reach their full potential. The ‘Getting it right for every child’ (GIRFEC) National Practice Model (see Glossary in Annex 3) sets out a holistic whole family approach to providing support for children and young people, and their families, with the principle that wellbeing is about all areas of life, including family, community and society. This includes universal provision to support development and build resilience, and specialist and intensive help to address additional support needs. Holistic whole family provision focuses on joining up preventative and early intervention support (see Glossary in Annex 3) for families across a range of community and national services provided by different organisations such as local agencies, individual practitioners and third sector partners.

Children’s Services Planning is Scotland’s legislative approach to collaborative local strategic planning and delivery of services and support to improve outcomes for children, young people and families living in each area. Duties and key tasks over a 3-year cycle are set out in Part 3 of the Children and Young People (Scotland) Act 2014 and supporting statutory guidance (Children and Young People (Scotland) Act, 2014; Scottish Government, 2020). These aim to ensure a whole systems approach is in place across public and third sector partners to: safeguard, support and promote wellbeing; shift resources to early intervention and, where possible, prevention; and to make best use of local assets, workforce and budgets across partners, with support to families at the core of this.

In 2020, a review of Scotland’s ‘care system’ for children and young people was completed by the Independent Care Review (The Care Review, 2020a). A central part of the review involved listening to the views of care experienced children and young people, and their families, to put together evidence to underpin the legislation, practices, culture and ethos of the care system, as well as to explore how Scotland could improve the support available.

The review’s findings indicated that a significant upscale of family support was required. The Scottish Government accepted the 80 recommendations set out in the Independent Care Review in full, and made a promise to Scotland's children and young people that they would grow up loved, safe and respected. The commitment to the Promise was set out alongside the Plan 21-24 (The Care Review, 2020b; The Promise Scotland, 2021), which outlined how change must happen, and made whole family support a priority. Part of the response to the Plan, set out in the Scottish Government’s Programme for Government 2021-2022, included the commitment to invest in the WFWF (Scottish Government, 2021a).

WFWF supports the Scottish Government’s commitment to respect, protect and fulfil children’s human rights across Scotland. By providing holistic rights-based support that delivers the help children, and their families need, when they need it, WFWF intends to support families to flourish and reduce the chances of family breakdown and children entering the care system.

During Year 2 of the WFWF, the Promise Scotland published the Plan 24-30 (The Promise Scotland, 2024) which updated the previous Plan 21-24 and outlined how the Promise will be kept in full by 2030. Subsequently, the Scottish Government provided an update on progress to date on delivering the Promise, which included a section specific to the WFWF and plans to extend the programme beyond the current end point of 2025-26 (Scottish Government, 2024a).

The ambitions of The Promise and the WFWF are situated within the context of ongoing recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, which greatly impacted the health, education, and income of families, and worsened systemic inequalities in these areas. Among other aims, the 2021 Covid Recovery Strategy (Scottish Government, 2021b) set out the vision for Scotland to improve the wellbeing of children and young people through development and delivery of activities to increase holistic whole family support, also drawing on findings from the analysis and review of Children’s Services Plans (Scottish Government, 2022a). These included: changes to commissioning and procurement of family support, supporting Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs^[1]) to scale up and develop new family support, and establishing consistent standards and evaluation tools (see Glossary in Annex 3).

About Whole Family Wellbeing Funding

The Scottish Government’s Programme for Government 2021-22 committed to investing £500 million in the WFWF over the course of the parliament (2022-2026). The aim was to transform the way family support was delivered, so that families could access the help they needed, where and when they needed it. This aim of WFWF was part of a wider goal to reduce the need for crisis intervention in families, and to shift investment towards prevention and early intervention (see Glossary in Annex 3 for definitions of both crisis intervention and early intervention and prevention). The funding emphasised support for child mental health, poverty, alcohol and drug misuse and educational attainment.

Through the delivery of holistic family support (see Glossary in Annex 3), the Programme's long-term aims are:

1. Improved family wellbeing, in line with the Children, Young People and Families Outcomes Framework and Core Wellbeing Indicators (Scottish Government, 2023).

2. Reduced inequalities in family wellbeing between those from the most and least disadvantaged communities.

3. Reduction in families requiring crisis intervention through a shift in investment towards prevention and early intervention.

4. Reduction in the number of children and young people living away from their families, by strengthening and supporting families to stay together where children are safe and feel loved.

5. Increase in families taking up wider supports, such as employability support, contributing to a reduction in children living in poverty or entering poverty across the six priority family types as identified in the in the first and second Tackling Child Poverty Delivery Plans and in the second publication (Scottish Government, 2018; 2022b) (see Glossary in Annex 3).

To achieve its ambition, the WFWF was comprised of three elements (see Glossary in Annex 3):

• Element 1: Funding provided to CSPPs to support the scale up and delivery of holistic whole family support in local areas. This funding could also be used to build local capacity for achieving transformational change in how families are supported. For example, this could include recruiting a small team to support the CSPP plan for how to use this funding or buying in additional transformational expertise to support the delivery of relevant strategic objectives.
• Element 2^[2]: Support to build local capacity for transformational system change in how families are supported. This included:

a) collaborative partnerships between a Scottish Government-led transformation team and a small number of CSPPs (East Ayrshire, Glasgow City and East Lothian) to drive a whole systems approaching family support at the local and national level. The partnerships worked through the application of a systematic approach (the QI Journey) to support local activities to deliver WFWF outcomes and capture practical learning about the national and local systemic change required to deliver holistic family support.

b) a Learning into Action Network to facilitate collaboration, sharing of learning and approaches, discussions on key implementation issues and peer support across CSPPs. The Learning into Action Network supports CSPPs to collaborate, access peer support, share learning and approaches from across the country, and develop solution-focused discussions around the barriers to a whole systems approach. CSPPs have utilised this network to share good practices, stories of change, approaches to engaging with the third sector and families, and the implications of the findings of the WFWF Year 1 Process Evaluation report for their family support activities (see Glossary in Annex 3).

• Element 3: Providing funding to support a cross-portfolio approach to system change through Scottish Government-led national policy delivery that will help transform how families are supported. The 12 projects in receipt of funding will contribute to the ambitions and outcomes of WFWF, in line with the National Principles of Holistic Whole Family Support (Scottish Government, 2022c). Annex 2 contains the full list of Element 3 projects.

The WFWF also operated with the recognition that family support in Scotland is part of what is known as a ‘complex system’ (HM Treasury, 2020). A ‘complex system’ is made up of diverse, interacting factors. Parts of the system learn from one another and the outcomes resulting from an intervention or programme, such as WFWF, can be challenging to assess. As such, it is vital that holistic family support and, in turn, this evaluation, are able to account for this type of dynamic policy and practice context.

Year 1 of the WFWF focused on Element 1 and Element 2, as well as focussing on the exploration and understanding of children’s services as a ‘complex system’. Year 2 of the WFWF focused on all three elements, with Element 3 projects starting implementation during Year 2. Activity across all three elements in Year 2 aimed to strengthen collaboration within CSPPs by improving integrated work across sectors and expanding access to and availability of family support services, creating a comprehensive workforce strategy and integrating national principles for whole-family support.

In September 2024, the Scottish Government published a WFWF Investment Approach as part of The Promise Progress Update (Scottish Government, 2024a). The update announced the extension of the WFWF beyond 2026, without setting a new end date. The aim of this extension was to enable CSPPs to make evidence-based decisions about continuing to enhance early intervention and preventative care, support long-term sustainability and maintain flexibility in funding within a changing delivery context. The Scottish Government will also consider whether new funding streams are required to address the immediate systems issue of an increase of families in crisis. This includes whether additional funding should be provided to some individual CSPP areas to support their next phase of transformational change over time. This and future evaluations will contribute to developing an evidence base for CSPPs, The Scottish Government and other stakeholders to further progress and adapt their work within the remaining (and newly extended) period of the WFWF Programme.

Whole Family Wellbeing Funding logic model

At the start of the programme, a logic model was developed by Scottish Government, in consultation with stakeholders including CSPP leaders, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA), and other Scottish Government policy areas, to underpin the planning and delivery of funding and the evaluation (see Glossary in Annex 3). At the start of the Year 1 evaluation, IFF reviewed and recommended refinements to strengthen its usefulness for informing the Year 1 evaluation. Another review (and stakeholder workshop) was conducted at the start of the Year 2 evaluation with IFF making further recommendations to enhance its utility. Scottish Government subsequently updated the model. The full and updated model, including how the WFWF elements relate to the four core components of holistic family support (set out by Scottish Government in the Routemap and National Principles, Scottish Government, 2022c), is presented in Annex 4.

The WFWF logic model is a visual representation of how the funding is intended to impact its beneficiaries (children, young people, and families, and CSPP staff). It captures the ultimate impacts WFWF intends to have, as well as the sequence of events expected to lead to short-term outcomes that together, if achieved, are expected to lead to the impacts. It summarises the rationale for providing the funding and shows some of the mechanisms by which change might come about.

The logic model is divided into sections (assumptions, inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes) and broadly describes what kinds of changes are expected. The logic model acknowledges, in the underlying assumptions, that each CSPP will have different priorities for the funding and will be at a different stage in their planning and delivery journeys. Likewise, activities, outputs, and early outcomes and the extent of achievement of these by the end of Year 2 will differ between CSPPs. A brief description of the activities, outputs and outcomes of the model within scope of the Year 2 evaluation are reported below.

Activities

Activities at the local level include activities planned under Elements 1, 2 and 3 delivered through CSPPs and partners. Some activities proposed in the logic model are expected of all CSPPs, and some are related to CSPPs with specific aims for their activity (exploratory, transforming, or scaling). Activities relevant to all CSPPs are to:

• Engage with a wide range of children, young people, and families on service design;
• Identify support for needs assessment, system analysis and change planning;
• Plan for and procure support/recruiting staff to scale up and/or deliver plans; and
• Deliver training and upskilling of new or existing workforce.

Outputs

The outputs specified in the model include:

• Planning for and developing mechanisms to enhance participation of children, young people, and families in service design based on engagements.
• Beginning to test new system approaches to family support (as per strategic plans).
• Establishing processes to gather regular feedback on services from children, young people, and families. Data and views are then made available at CSPP strategic level to inform change.
• Expanding the use of locally based multi-agency services co-ordinating support.
• Identifying what good practice is and it being used by other CSPPs and partners, including via self-evaluation.
• Reporting mechanisms are streamlined, accessible and less bureaucratic.
• Delivering work to support staff skill development and wellbeing.

Outcomes

The logic model proposed 34 outcomes for the WFWF where some evidence of early progress was expected to be available between the end of Year 2 and 4 of the Programme. These outcomes can be broadly aligned to the four core components of holistic family support, though some outcomes relate to more than one core component. The core components and associated outcomes are:

• Children and families at the centre of design: A children’s rights-based approach to improved Family Wellbeing, with services designed with children, young people and their families’ needs at the centre, supporting all families to flourish and thrive. Outcomes include family support managers and practitioners building skills in engagement; feedback collection and co-design; as well as children, young people and families being actively engaged with service design and feeling that these meet their specific needs.
• Availability and access: All families know how to, and can, access multi-sectoral, holistic, whole family support. Outcomes include family support services being redesigned to remove access barriers, leading to increased awareness and trust among children, young people and families; more referrals and better service uptake; as well as children, young people and families receiving timely, needs-based support.
• Whole systems approach: A collaborative, multi-agency and multi-disciplinary approach to the funding, commissioning and delivery of family support. Outcomes include strategic leads, family support managers and practitioners collecting and analysing data from children, young people and families to inform multi-agency and partnership planning and service delivery; as well as transforming commissioning and procurement in CSPPs to align with the evidence and local needs.
• Leadership, workforce, and culture: Cross-sectoral commitment to collaboration and innovation which empowers and supports the workforce to provide holistic whole family support. Outcomes include strategic leads, family services managers and practitioners collaborating more effectively across sectors; developing a holistic workforce approach; implementing best practices; and expanding service capacity.

Proposed longer term outcomes are included in the full logic model which covers the whole period of the WFWF implementation, however these were beyond the scope of this evaluation.