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

3 Understanding how CSPPs continued to use their WFWF allocation

This section explores CSPPs’ continued use of their WFWF allocation, if/how they have begun to align local policies and funding, and the views of staff involved in WFWF on the use and value of support provided by Scottish Government. It draws on data from qualitative interviews with strategic leads, managers and frontline practitioners, and the secondary data analysis.

Key findings

• Most CSPPs continued to implement their Element 1 initial funding plans, with greater focus in Year 2 on delivery following exploration and set-up activity in Year 1. Where changes to planned WFWF activities did occur, this was predominately refining or increasing capacity within existing activities, or funding new activities that focussed on specific groups where local needs were identified.
• Some CSPPs underspent their Element 1 allocation in Year 1. The funding’s flexible conditions enabled some CSPPs to carry over funds from Year 1 to Year 2 where they determined that this was required based on the local situation and plans. Some CSPPs experienced barriers to spend, including recruiting new staff and finding appropriate locations to deliver support.
• In Year 2, Element 3 projects were in the early stages of delivery, focussing on design and set-up such as establishing governance and monitoring processes, recruiting and training staff, and finding locations for delivering support.
• There was early evidence of CSPPs aligning existing local policies and funding with their WFWF allocation to improve sustainability of services, deliver national priorities (such as the Promise) and improve efficiency. This included local authority, competitive grants, and uncompetitive national funds. Key factors enabling this included collaborative working and effective leadership across the CSPP.
• CSPPs welcomed Scottish Government support to develop and deliver their WFWF activities. Support that was particularly valued included the newsletters, networking groups and having a dedicated and responsive contact at Scottish Government. Feedback on the Learning into Action Network was also positive, with CSPPs reporting having used the network to develop their WFWF activity and share good practice with others. However, staff capacity and mixed awareness of the support available to CSPPs limited their ability to fully benefit from it.

Use of WFWF allocation

In Year 2, most CSPPs focussed to a greater extent on delivery following exploration and set-up activity in Year 1. Most CSPPs continued to deliver on their Element 1 initial funding plans set out in 2022. Case study strategic leads described limiting changes to initial plans, choosing to monitor whether the activities delivered in Year 2 were achieving the expected outcomes before making any adjustments. Where changes to the use of WFWF funding did occur, they focussed on:

• Refining existing activities: many CSPPs focussed on refining WFWF activity in Year 2 following feedback and monitoring data in Year 1. Examples included refining referral criteria to reduce duplication of work (both in terms of repeated referrals and the provision of similar services to families) and ensuring children, young people and families were signposted to the most relevant support to address their needs. One CSPP introduced a new locality-based holistic family support model in partnership with a local voluntary sector organisation following analysis of referral data in Year 1.
• Increasing capacity within current provision: for example, one CSPP had increased staffing capacity within a programme that had showed early promise during Year 1.
• Funding additional activities that target specific groups: some CSPPs implemented additional activity to provide dedicated support for priority groups of families as identified locally. This included families with children with additional support needs (for example, disability and/or neurodiversity), families with children under five, and families with children at risk of exclusion and/or in conflict with the law.

Two factors influenced decisions about WFWF Element 1 spending plans: underspend and performance of WFWF activities in Year 1. Some CSPPs underspent in Year 1 and used the flexibility to carry over funds from Year 1 to Year 2, where they determined that this was required based on the local situation and plans. One CSPP, for example, wanted to take more time to establish local groups, including co-production with children, young people and families, to decide how best to use their WFWF allocation. Some CSPPs were also mindful about planning beyond the end of WFWF. This resulted in them taking more time to thoroughly explore and plan activities to ensure sustainability was built-in to delivery plans:

“It would have been easy to put in place support services with the [WFWF] money, but that's a real disservice to communities around creating expectations and we didn't want to do that. So, we took our time to think through what we could achieve long-term.”

Strategic Lead

Other CSPPs experienced barriers which resulted in an underspend. The main barrier was recruiting staff with specific capabilities to deliver their planned WFWF activity. These challenges were evident in both the Year 1 and 2 evaluations and impacted CSPPs’ ability to progress delivery at the pace envisioned by them and Scottish Government. To mitigate against this barrier, several CSPPs used this underspend to extend contracts for staff recruited for WFWF activities beyond the existing funding period to improve staff retention. More on recruitment and retention can be found in Section 7 of report.

A small number of CSPPs mentioned barriers with sourcing appropriate venues to deliver support. For example, one CSPP had to delay the start of delivery of a project whilst they sourced an appropriate location in the community (for example, which was easily accessible and located centrally) to provide support.

Most CSPPs described using evidence and data about WFWF activity performance to make decisions about any spending changes. This included monitoring and outcomes data provided by managers across the CSPP partners (including the third sector) about their WFWF funded activity. For example, quantitative administration data was used, as well as qualitative feedback from practitioners and children, young people and families. In most case study CSPPs, this evidence and data was discussed at a dedicated WFWF working group, with representation at a senior level from across the CSPP.

“We’re just looking at the data and the practice examples and we adapt and learn as we go…it’s good to have the [WFWF working] group to discuss as a collaboration.”

Strategic Lead

Element 3

Element 3 projects were in the early stages of delivery, focussing on design and set-up. According to submitted Element 3 project reports, a range of activity had been undertaken to date including scoping activity (to help design and plan projects), establishing governance and monitoring processes (for example, young people co-design panels and senior manager steering groups), recruitment and training of staff, and finding locations for delivering support. As a result of the early stage of Element 3 projects, it was not possible to assess the extent of alignment between the projects and the long-term WFWF outcomes of the logic model.

Element 3 support largely prioritised similar groups to Element 1, including a focus on families with children with additional support needs (for example, speech and language difficulties), and families with children under five.

Factors that supported Element 3 project delivery included effective information sharing between partners through regular communication and establishing forums (for example, working groups and newsletters) to build relationships. Some Element 3 projects provided training for staff to equip them to deliver the activity. In some cases, training was aligned across Element 1 and 3, with practitioners learning together (for example, the Peep Families Learning Together programme^[10]).

Secondary data showed many of the barriers to Element 3 delivery echoed CSPPs’ Element 1 experiences. This included challenges with recruitment and finding locations to deliver support. Concerns were also raised about the sustainability of projects beyond the end of the funding period, with some organisations exploring potential other sources of funding to continue Element 3 projects (for example, within existing local budgets or though national framework agreements, such as the Scotland Excel Residential Rehabilitation Framework^[11]). Other barriers to Element 3 project delivery included one project experiencing internal delays in agreeing the grant terms with the voluntary sector delivery partner, meaning project delivery could not start as planned.

Aligning local policies and funding

There was early evidence of CSPPs aligning existing local policies and funding. CSPP strategic leads and managers felt this was important to increase the funding available to develop their support offer, hopefully lead to stronger outcomes, and to promote the sustainability of services. However, there was no data on how these were specifically aligned with WFWF. Interviewees explained that local policies and funding included:

• Local authority funding: for example, using existing money to guarantee permanent staff contracts beyond the end of WFWF;
• Competitive grants: for example, from The Promise Partnership, Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund, Child Poverty Accelerator Fund and the UN Convention on Rights of a Child (UNCRC) Innovation Fund. See the Edinburgh Spotlight below (Figure 2) for more information; and
• Uncompetitive national funds: for example, Scottish Government Covid-19 funding, and the Scottish Attainment Challenge (Scottish Government, nd).

Many CSPPs reported that their WFWF work was aligned with the Promise. For example, East Ayrshire reported a specific consultation carried out by the Promise Team, with children and young people that had been in trouble with the law, which fed into their WFWF activity design. Similarly, Dundee reported having regular communication with the Promise lead in the region, who received frequent updates on the implementation of the WFWF.

CSPPs noted this overall alignment was achieved through collaborative working between practitioners, support services, and organisations working with similar target groups of children, young people and families. Supportive, knowledgeable and decisive leadership, with leaders who had oversight across the different local policies and funding, was also important.

Figure 2 CSPP Spotlight: Edinburgh

Developing a single point of access for mental health support, supporting by aligning WFWF allocation with a Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund. A priority for Edinburgh’s WFWF allocation was to develop a single point of access for mental health support, to ensure children and young people’s mental health needs are identified and responded to as early as possible. To improve joined up commissioning of mental health support for children and young people, Edinburgh aligned its WFWF allocation with its Community Mental Health and Wellbeing Fund. It has aligned these funds by establishing a working group responsible for the alignment, and by producing Terms of Reference and a flow chart for using these two funding sources for partnership. A result of this work, a single point of access was created for referrals to mental health support, including for accessing systemic therapy, Family Group Decision Making (FGDM, see Figure 7 in Section 4 below for further information about FGDM) and support from Children and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) (see Glossary in Annex 3).

Many CSPPs identified monitoring capacity and capabilities as a barrier to closer service integration. CSPP strategic leads highlighted the importance of service providers being able to explicitly and robustly evidence that their activity was contributing to the aims of WFWF. It was sometimes challenging for providers to gather data to evidence the impact of their delivery and often monitoring systems did not easily align across CSPPs. This was mentioned as a particular challenge in relation to third sector services and particularly small organisations; though there was no evidence gathered from the third sector specifically about this challenge.

Maturity of CSPPs’ journey to delivering transformative support

The IFF Research evaluation team developed a ‘maturity model’ to show CSPPs progress in delivering transformative support (see Glossary in Annex 3) in March 2023 and updated it in October 2024. The model grouped CSPPs into categories based on the stage of their journey to delivering transformative whole family support. The maturity model is presented in

Figure 3 below (see Annex 7 for detailed explanation of the model). The three categories of maturity are:

• Early, have either not begun their transformational journey, with no delivery or scoping work conducted to date, or have engaged only in preliminary scoping or research.
• Moderate, have a good understanding of existing need or delivery from scoping work already completed, or have begun some early delivery, in a few instances in the form of small pilot programmes.
• Advanced, are well into their journey, already delivering a substantial amount of holistic whole family support. This may be because they have good local evidence on which their WFWF plans are based on.

The activity types CSPPs included in their initial plans and had implemented (as evidenced by their CSP annual report) fell into the three categories below. It is worth noting that many CSPPs outlined some combination of the three different kinds of activity, and so this categorisation looked at their primary focus for the WFWF.

• Exploratory, focusing efforts on research and scoping work, to understand the extent of existing delivery and need across the area.
• Transforming delivery, primarily focussed on delivering new support to families in a way that differs from existing support in the area.
• Scaling up existing delivery, CSPPs were already delivering to varying extents, some aspects of the activity outlined in their initial WFWF plan. They intend to use the funding to develop and grow this existing activity.

By the end of Year 2, more CSPPs have reached moderate (17 CSPPs, up from 13) or advanced maturity (11 CSPPs, up from nine) compared to Year 1. The biggest shift was in transforming delivery activity type, where three CSPPs moved from early to moderate stage, and one from moderate to advanced stage. Three CSPPs progressed from early to moderate stage in exploratory delivery. Only one CSPP changed its main focus, moving from exploratory to transforming delivery.

There was no evidence to suggest that CSPPs also involved in Element 2 had progressed differently with scaling up existing provision or undertaking transformative delivery of family support services.

Use of Scottish Government support

The Scottish Government allocated named WFWF leads to provide support to CSPPs throughout the funding period. The WFWF leads worked in the Scottish Government policy team and were a dedicated point of contact for CSPPs if they had any questions about the WFWF or wanted to seek advice (e.g. on their monitoring and evaluation plans). Each CSPP was allocated a Scottish Government WFWF lead to be their direct point of contact.

CSPPs welcomed this support as CSPP strategic leads and managers valued having a direct, named link within the government and praised their timely responses to any queries they had about the programme. Interviewees (and especially third sector staff) also found the Scottish Government newsletters useful in providing them an easily digestible overview of WFWF activity across Scotland, without it being too time-consuming.

"The newsletters I found really helpful because I just didn't have the time to be actively involved in the discussions, so that was good."

Manager

Feedback on the Learning into Action Network was positive, with CSPPs reporting having used the network to develop their WFWF activity and share good practice with others.

"[Without support] it would be less transformational because you've only got the minds in the room, whereas [the Learning into Action Network] really opened up the opportunities to share good practice, new ideas and innovation and things that have worked well."

Strategic Lead

Some case study CSPPs felt that they lacked the capacity to engage with the full range of support from Scottish Government limited their ability to fully benefit from it. This included managers and practitioners not having time to attend workshops and training available from Scottish Government. However, where staff had accessed this support, it was felt to be useful and a valuable use of time.

“When I did [access the collective leadership session^[12]], it was good and I didn’t come away thinking it was a waste of time, but it is so hard to put aside the time to do these things.”

Strategic Lead

Along with lack of capacity, some staff also mentioned having limited knowledge of the breadth of support available, with fewer being aware of the KHub^[13] and the collective leadership series (see Glossary in Annex 3).

Case study CSPPs outlined two ways the Scottish Government could improve their support offer:

• Facilitate more opportunities for CSPPs to understand what others were doing in relation to delivery of holistic whole family support. This could include examples of good practice and opportunities for learning from overcoming common challenges and achieving transformational change. CSPPs noted that sharing of good practice should be timely, without having to wait for key milestones or reports to be published.
• Consider innovative ways to minimise the burden of staff engaging with Scottish Government support. For example, shorter, more regular workshops and networking groups, or providing one-page visual summaries of key learnings.

Element 2

Case study CSPPs that accessed Element 2 collaborative partnership support from the National Support Team valued the opportunity to work closely with the Scottish Government (see Section 1 for details on partnerships). They found this helpful to define the aims and vision for their collaborative partnership activity and put in place strong foundations for future delivery (for example, supporting with developing proposals for additional posts).

"I think it has been transformative [in our] ways of doing things and using innovation to achieve the outcomes."

Strategic Lead

However, CSPPs found balancing Element 2 collaborative partnership support alongside their core roles and integrating this with Element 1 activities limited progress with some of the Element 2 partnership activities. This resulted in some staff feeling overwhelmed and not having the capacity to engage fully with these activities. Strategic leads in one CSPP noted the importance of having engaged senior leadership to ensure sufficient staff capacity was available for the collaborative partnership.