Frequently Asked Questions about the Practice Guides

The Practice Guides have been commissioned by the Department for Education (DfE) to support delivery of the Children’s Social Care National Framework. The Framework aims to support the sector to strengthen services for children, young people and families through explaining the principles behind, and the purpose of children’s social care. The Practice Guides bring together the strongest evidence on how to achieve the outcomes outlined in the Framework. The Key Principles and Recommendations in the Practice Guides are designed to inform service development and design by providing local decision-makers with easy-to-access, clear and concise information about the kinds of support shown by rigorous evidence to be most effective.

Each of the Practice Guides is underpinned by findings from a systematic review which asks questions about interventions and/or programmes to find out what works, for whom, how and why. The systematic review also pulls together evidence on child, family and practitioner perspectives on interventions and how beneficial they think they are, as well as evidence on barriers and enablers to successful implementation of interventions.

The Practice Guides are produced using scientific frameworks and methods common to guidance production among What Works Centres. In their development, we also take consider related national guidance and recommendations. For example, we work closely with the National Practice Group, the Department for Education, and the sector to ensure our guides do not conflict with statutory guidance. Over time, Practice Guides will be embedded within and used to enhance national guidance and policy. So far this has included Working Together, the Families First Partnership Programme and Ofsted’s Inspecting Local Authority Children’s Services (ILACS) guidance.

Our systematic reviews make a conscious effort to include evidence related specifically to children and families from minoritised ethnic backgrounds. We do this by expanding our search for evidence to capture interventions that have been found to be effective for specific population groups. We use the PRISMA-equity checklist, which is an equality, diversity and inclusion tool designed to help researchers identify, extract, and pull together evidence on equity in systematic reviews.

To capture the experiences and perspectives of diverse groups of users /beneficiaries, our systematic review suppliers are also encouraged to consult with those with lived experience when making decisions about population scope for the systematic review, literature search terms, and the use of appropriate terminologies. The development of each Guide is also supported by the Practice Guides Guidance Writing Advisory Group, alongside our Experts by Experience Panel and subject matter experts on each specific topic. In combination, this brings a wide and diverse range of voices from different backgrounds with lived experience, sector and academic expertiseto support the development of the Guides.

Local authorities are facing complex and significant resource pressures that make it more imperative than ever that decisions about service design are informed by robust and impartial evidence about what has been shown to improve outcomes. Evidence about what has been shown to work should be considered alongside knowledge of the local context, needs of children and families locally and cost to make decisions. See our Evidence Pie for further information about the full range of evidence that should inform the commissioning, design and delivery of services.

We acknowledge that local areas may already be committed to support programmes that are not featured in our Guides. However, the recommendations should still inform ongoing local planning and decision-making processes. The key principles can be implemented immediately to support meaningful culture and practice change. In time, local areas may choose to decommission interventions and programmes shown not to positively impact outcomes for children and families.

Each Practice Guide is underpinned by a systematic review conducted in line with published protocols on the Foundations website. As a What Works Centre, we base Practice Guide recommendations on robust evidence of impact on child and family outcomes, drawing on at least one rigorous impact evaluation (further information on our evidence standards).

Our reviews bring together a range of high-quality evidence, including quantitative impact studies, mixed‑methods and qualitative research. This allows us to consider not only whether an intervention is effective, but also how it is implemented, its acceptability, and the experiences of children, families and practitioners.

Additionally, from our experience with local areas, we know how valuable local best practice and learning is for professionals and families, and we hold this in mind. Where practitioner‑level evidence is available, it is included to support local consideration and application.

Research produced by our legacy organisations (What Works for Children’s Social Care and the Early Intervention Foundation) will be included where it meets systematic review criteria. We continue to strengthen the evidence base and, where appropriate, this evidence will inform future Practice Guides.

Our systematic reviews include searches for evidence from studies conducted in the UK as well as other high-income countries with comparable children’s social care systems. We include studies from outside the UK because they can shed light on how to better support families by applying learning from countries where more robust research into certain topics has taken place. We check to make sure that studies included involve children, young people and parents/carers with similar characteristics to those in the UK. In doing this, we are confident that our key principles and recommendations are appropriate and applicable to the UK context.

The Practice Guide topics are agreed between the Department for Education (DfE) and Foundations in consultation with the National Practice Group. Decisions are made by:

• weighing the strength of evidence that exists on topics
• assessing the extent to which a topic is a policy priority, and
• estimating demand for guidance on an issue from local authorities.

See our published protocols and open calls for systematic reviewers for information on further commissioned topics.

We are convening expert advisory groups to support each Practice Guide. These advisory groups include senior leaders from local areas and individuals with expertise in particular practice areas. We are keen to hear from senior local leaders and subject matter experts who would like to be involved in developing and/or improving future Practice Guides. If you are interested, please include an overview of your experience in an email to our Practice Guides Team.

Practice Guides can only go as far as the available impact evidence. Right now, unfortunately, this is often far stronger overseas than it is in the UK where many services have not yet been evaluated for outcomes. This means that the Practice Guides are not always able to make recommendations about UK services even where they resemble features of effective interventions that are highlighted in the Guides.

This is no reflection on those working tirelessly to provide services for children and families, many of whom are keen to evaluate their services. Instead, it reflects the historic lack of priority given to evaluation. We want to change this. After each Practice Guide we consider how Foundations and other research organisations can strengthen the UK evidence. In time, this will enable us to update the recommendations in future iterations of the Practice Guides.