Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF): year 1 - process evaluation - interim report

Background and approach

Policy background

The Scottish Government wants to ensure that families are able to access the help they need, where and when they need it. The ambition is to create a Scotland where more children will only know care, compassion and love, and not a 'care system.'^[6] Within this, holistic family support should address the needs of children and adults in a family at the time of need rather than at crisis point.

About the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding

The Scottish Government is investing at least £500m through the WFWF over the life of this Parliament (2022-2026) to support whole system transformational change with the aim of reducing the need for crisis intervention in families, and to shift investment towards prevention and early intervention. The WFWF is split into three elements:

• Element 1: Funding provided to all CSPPs to support the scale up and delivery of holistic whole family support in local areas. This funding can also be used to build local capacity for achieving transformational change needed in how families are supported, for example, by recruiting a small team to support the CSPP plan for this funding or buying in additional transformational expertise to support leadership discussions.
• Element 2: Support to build local capacity for transformational system change in how families are supported. This includes:

a) collaborative partnerships between a Scottish Government-led transformation team and three CSPPs (East Ayrshire, Glasgow City and East Lothian) to drive whole system change in family support at the local and national level. The partnerships work through a structured process to accelerate 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.

• Element 3: Supporting national level policy delivery, which drives and supports those outcomes sought from the WFWF.

Year 1 is also about the exploration and understanding of children services as a "complex system." This recognises that it is made up of diverse, interacting actors and parts that learn from one another, and one which can have outcomes that are challenging to assess. As such, it is vital that holistic family support and this evaluation are alert and responsive to this dynamic nature of the policy and practice context.

Provision of holistic family support is fundamental to the development and delivery of each area's three year Children's Services Plan, as reflected in statutory review criteria within Part 3 of the statutory guidance (Appendix A pgs. 79-80). Holistic family support focusses on joining up provision for families across a range of services provided by different organisations (e.g. agencies, professionals, the third sector, trusted partners). This aims to avoid a multitude of services addressing specific, isolated and individual issues within families. The likelihood of success is not based on the specific individual support, but on a relationship of trust between families and workers.

Year 1 evaluation objectives and approach

In September 2022, the Scottish Government commissioned IFF Research to undertake an evaluation of the implementation of Year 1 of Elements 1 and 2 of WFWF (a 'process evaluation'^[7]) to ensure that lessons are learned to inform future policy and practice in the CSPPs. Parallel research of Element 2's specific approach is currently being undertaken by Rocket Science and Blake Stevenson^[8], and evidence from Element 3 activity will be integrated into the evaluation from 2024.

The overarching aims of this Year 1 evaluation are to:

• Provide an overview of types of activity the Element 1 and 2 funding is being used for.
• Understand local delivery partners' views on how Element 1 and 2 funding has been used.
• Understand children, young people, and families' experiences of family support services that have received Element 1 and 2 funding, and the extent to which this has achieved short-term outcomes (as far as possible).
• Provide evidence for policy and practice to inform future improvement of the WFWF and whole system transformational change.

Figure 1 outlines the activities that will deliver the evaluation aims set out above.

Reading this report

This report presents the findings of the mid-term independent evaluation of Elements 1 and 2 of the WFWF in Year 1. It covers WFWF set-up activities from September 2022 to February 2023. The next (and final) evaluation report from Year 1 will cover all evaluation activity to June 2023.

Findings in this report are based on interim data and the final evaluation report may present a different view of the findings, conclusions and recommendations. The full, final evaluation report will be available in early 2024. The findings in this report are based on:

• Qualitative interviews capturing the views of 25 strategic leads and managers of WFWF funded activities in six case study CSPPs (see Annex 3 for detail on case study selection). Strategic leads were typically directors/chief officers or senior managers within children, families and justice services. Managers interviewed were typically within the social work team or service managers with some responsibility for WFWF (or an element of funded activity) in their CSPP. The interviews explored the needs and existing activities of CSPPs, their plans for using the WFWF, any early experiences of implementation, and expectations of implementation going forward. Two of the six case study CSPPs are involved in both Element 1 and 2, the remaining four are only involved in Element 1.
• Analysis of 30 CSPP^[9] WFWF initial plans for Element 1 funding to support the Scottish Government and the IFF team's understanding of how CSPPs intended to use their initial funding allocation, and to help inform the design of other evaluation activities, including how to best monitor progress over time, to inform annual report guidance and inform the case study research materials. Findings from this analysis were shared with the Scottish Government and CSPPs in January 2023 and are included within this report.

This report has been structured around the evaluation research questions that can be reported on at this interim stage. Table 1, overleaf, shows the section name and the research questions covered within that section. Please see the 'evaluation next steps' section at the end of this report for details on remaining evaluation activity.