The Guidebook provides information only about what we describe as interventions. Interventions are manualised (written down), well defined, repeatable activities with a beginning and an end. Currently, we do not include system-level programmes or models, which may include multiple interventions.
We know that support for children and families takes other forms too – from a teacher, social worker or other frontline professional spotting the first signs of risk in a child or family, through to wholesale system changes across the agencies and services at work in a local area.
The Guidebook includes studies – which evaluate the impact of the different interventions – in the United Kingdom and internationally in countries with similar child and family welfare systems to the UK. Most studies in the Guidebook are based on research conducted in the US, Australia and the UK.
All the interventions on the Guidebook are feasible to implement in the UK and have evidence that is relevant to the UK context. However, the Guidebook does include interventions that have not been implemented in the UK. One of the Guidebook’s goals is to identify promising interventions that could be potentially adapted to the UK context, even if they are not currently available here.
The Guidebook aims to present information about race and ethnicity transparently and sensitively. It reflects how these characteristics are reported in the studies that underpin the evidence ratings and aligns with best practice on reporting and language.
Our approach aims to help Guidebook users to understand which children and families interventions have worked for, and where evidence may, or may not, be available for specific populations. It’s important to note that interventions may have been delivered and evaluated successfully with populations other than those listed; only those populations involved in the studies which underpin the Guidebook evidence rating are mentioned. Unless specified, the intervention may have been designed to be implemented with a wide variety of different communities.
The current information about race and ethnicity on the Guidebook is a starting point. We will continuously adapt our approach in the light of new evidence, feedback and best practice.
Interventions with the potential to improve outcomes for children are selected for assessment and consideration for inclusion on the Guidebook through open calls to intervention providers, themed assessment rounds designed to support national and local priorities, and research by the Foundations team.
Our methods may evolve over time to reflect emerging priorities and feedback from Guidebook users.
Guidebook assessments focus on impact evaluations, studies that help us understand whether an intervention has had a measurable, positive effect on child outcomes.
The Guidebook provides information only about interventions that have at least preliminary evidence of achieving positive outcomes for children, such as improving mental health, school attainment, or behaviour.
We do not include qualitative evidence in our assessments, because this type of evidence does not allow us to draw strong conclusions about whether an intervention has caused changes in outcomes. Qualitative evidence is useful for other purposes and is used to inform the recommendations made in Practice Guides that, alongside the Guidebook, make up our Toolkit.
The Guidebook retains the evidence standards that were developed by the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF) with other What Works Centres to assess the impacts of interventions. They are broadly similar to the Maryland Scale and other relevant critical appraisal systems and were formally approved by a panel of external experts in the field of prevention science and child development.
The Guidebook has evidence and cost ratings. You can find out more about how we rate interventions in the Technical Guide.
Evidence rating: The evidence rating tells you how much confidence we have that an intervention is the reason there has been an improvement in a child’s outcome/s.
To score interventions we use levels that range from 2 to 4+. The score indicates the strength of an intervention’s best evidence.
Sometimes, the studies that underpin an intervention’s evidence rating have mixed findings. These are indicated by an asterisk after the rating score (e.g. 3*).
Cost rating: The cost rating indicates an intervention’s relative cost compared to other interventions in the Guidebook.
It estimates how costly an intervention is per person receiving the intervention, based on the resources needed to set up and deliver it. For example, the time it takes, how many families it aims to reach, and any staff training required.
The estimated cost for each child, parent or family is rated on a scale from 1 to 5, where 1 indicates the least resource-intensive interventions, and 5 the most resource-intensive. The rating helps you to compare the likely costs of different interventions.
The cost rating does not represent what it will actually cost to buy or commission the service, which is negotiated between the provider and commissioner and can vary in practice.
Impact describes the size of the improvements that an intervention has produced. In other words, has it had a big impact or a small one? Impact is not the same as strength of evidence, which helps us to understand how confident we can be that the change is caused by the intervention.
The impact of interventions is captured in two ways:
- An improvement index is shown for some interventions with a rating of 3 or more, which captures the difference an intervention has made using a standardised measure. This enables you to compare improvements across interventions.
- The full evidence description for each intervention tells you the effect size of the improvement that an intervention has made to a child’s outcomes, drawn from the underpinning studies. This is available on each intervention page in the summary section, as a downloadable PDF.
The Guidebook groups the strength of the evidence for interventions across seven major outcomes that we know improve the chances that a child can thrive:
- Supporting children’s mental health and wellbeing
- Preventing child maltreatment
- Enhancing school achievement and employment
- Preventing crime, violence and antisocial behaviour
- Preventing substance abuse
- Preventing risky sexual behaviour
- Preventing obesity and promoting physical healthy development.
These outcome groups help you compare evidence across different interventions using a consistent framework.
Underneath each major outcome, you can drill down to find lists of more specific outcomes. For example, under Enhancing School Achievement you can find the strength of evidence for improved early literacy, and under Supporting Children’s Mental Health and Wellbeing, you can see the strength of the evidence about children’s social and emotional development. This allows you to identify targeted interventions that match the needs of local children and families.
Most Guidebook entries are the same as they were on the EIF Guidebook. They have evidence and cost ratings, studies that underpin the evidence rating, and most of the implementation information. We have added new or improved features including:
- A full evidence description available as a downloadable PDF with more detail about the studies underpinning the evidence rating
- Information on the ethnicity and race of children and families as reflected in the underpinning studies
- More consistent reporting of parent outcomes that are in the studies that contribute to the evidence rating
- More accessible and consistent language across interventions about [evidenced] outcomes
- A new, more transparent format for the theory of change for each intervention.
