Our role as a funder

We want all children and young people to have the foundational family relationships they need to thrive. To make this happen, we fund activities that contribute to our mission to generate and champion actionable evidence that improves services for children and families.

As a What Works Centre, our approach to funding is distinctive. We don’t just fund research in isolation – we fund strategically, as a catalyst for change, investing where evidence can make the greatest difference to outcomes for children.

What we fund

• Evidence generation – research and evaluation that answers whether interventions, programmes or approaches work, how, for whom, in what context and at what cost.
• Programme delivery – funding promising programmes so they can be robustly evaluated.
• Evaluation infrastructure – early-stage evaluation activities and data improvements that build the foundations for stronger evidence over time.
• Evidence into practice – work with local areas and evidence leaders to embed What Works evidence in decision-making and service delivery.

How we work

Four principles guide how we fund and partner with others.

A focus on impact – Everything we fund must be relevant to policy and practice, with a clear route to action. We only invest in activities that help answer the question: how can we better support children and their families?

Partnership – We work closely with partners in research, policy and practice to shape our agenda for change. We develop relationships based on shared goals, working alongside delivery partners not just as funders but as active collaborators – providing capacity building and evaluation readiness support beyond the grant itself.

Expertise – We bring together in-house expertise in research, policy and practice to identify promising programmes, evidence gaps and opportunities for impact. We also draw on the knowledge of external partners, stakeholders and those with lived experience to inform the decisions we make.

Transparent and fair processes – We run open and robust processes that ensure public funds are well used. We embed equality, diversity, inclusion and equity principles across all our funding activity, publish our evidence and ethical standards, and share all our findings – whatever the results tell us.

How our funding achieves our mission

We generate actionable evidence that matters – We fund work that increases the quantity and quality of What Works evidence available to those making decisions about children and families. By investing in evaluation infrastructure, we are also building broader capacity for evaluation across the sector. We shape the research agenda by funding evidence generation that breaks new ground and highlights critical gaps in knowledge.

We champion evidence so that children and families benefit – We disseminate our findings widely and fund activities – including events, roundtables and partnerships – to extend our reach. Through our Evidence into Practice programme, all local authorities in England can access our findings and receive support to embed evidence in local decision-making. Our nine Partner Places receive dedicated funding to appoint a Local Evidence Lead who champions evidence-based practice within children’s services. We also work with other funders to catalyse further investment and embed evidence across the system.