Who we are

Foundations is the national What Works Centre for Children & Families, established in 2022 with a clear vision: that vulnerable children have the foundational relationships they need to thrive.

To deliver this vision, children need effective support that is shown to make a difference to their outcomes – and that’s why our mission is to generate and champion actionable evidence improves services to support family relationships.

We focus on children who need targeted support to address family-level risks, children experiencing harm or abuse in the home and children in care and care leavers.

Children deserve support that genuinely improves their lives. Robust evidence helps ensure decisions in children’s services are shaped by what is proven to work – not by chance, habit or access to resources.

When evidence is put into practice effectively, it has the power to transform children’s lives: helping more children grow up safely, stay connected to family, and experience the strong, stable relationships they need to thrive. That is why we generate and synthesise high-quality evidence, turn it into practical tools, and work with partners to put it into action.

Our work spans some of the most urgent challenges facing children and families. Our priorities are to:

• Support parenting
• Strengthen wider family networks
• Prevent domestic abuse and support children who have experienced it to recover
• Ensure children in care have stable, close relationships.

We sit at the junction of evidence, policy and practice, translating complex findings into clear, actionable insights for children’s services.

Our toolkit brings together two powerful evidence resources to help ensure that national policy and local practice offer effective support to children and families: Foundations’ Guidebook and the Practice Guides.

Evidence changes lives only when it’s used well. We work closely with local authorities, national policymakers, practitioners, researchers and, crucially, children, young people and families themselves.

For example, in our Evidence into Practice programme, we work closely with nine partner places across England; and with our Experts by Experience Panel, we bring the voices of children and families into our organisational decision making.

Collectively, our partnerships strengthen our research, challenge our assumptions, and guide the choices we make.

We know the children’s services don’t work fairly for everyone.

That’s why we embed equality, diversity, inclusion and equity in everything we do – from the research questions we ask, to the evidence we generate, to the guidance we produce. We are committed to supporting services that reduce disparities and drive a more equitable system for children and families.