The REACH Plan: A five-year plan to find out what works to prevent domestic abuse & support child victims

• Around 1 in 5 children are affected by domestic abuse in the UK. The social and economic cost stands at £74 billion a year
• Our strategy sets out an ambitious five-year plan to become the first country in the world to identify proven approaches to preventing domestic abuse and supporting child victims
• We urgently need to establish what works to prevent domestic abuse, and to support the recovery of children who do fall victim. This needs significant and sustained investment into high-quality impact evaluation
• The Researching Effective Approaches for Children (REACH) Plan is tightly focused on the end goal of finding proven programmes through robust impact evaluation and sets out the four stages that will get us there
• At Foundations we have already begun initial work to deliver this plan but this work needs rapid expansion and acceleration with investment and collaboration from a range of partners.

Summary

The impact of domestic abuse on children is devastating and long-lasting, affecting every aspect of their lives, from their mental and physical health to their ability to form positive and healthy relationships in the future.

Alarmingly, we can’t yet say with confidence what works to support children affected by domestic abuse, or what works to prevent domestic abuse in the first place. This needs to change. Service providers are working hard to support children and families, and are focusing on securing year-to-year funding and fighting to ensure their services can continue. They often don’t have the resources they need to evaluate what they do.

Our strategy sets out an ambitious five-year plan to identify proven approaches to preventing domestic abuse and supporting child victims through robust impact evaluation.

About the REACH Plan

We urgently need to establish what works to prevent domestic abuse, and to support the recovery of children who are victims of domestic abuse. Right now, there are very few programmes that are ready to be evaluated in the domestic abuse sector.

The principles of the REACH Plan

Our plan to identify proven approaches to prevent domestic abuse and support child victims is guided by four principles:

• Principle 1: We will work alongside services to prepare for impact evaluation and will not evaluate services before they are ready.
• Principle 2: Rigorous impact evaluation is the only way to prove that something works to improve outcomes for children.
• Principle 3: We will have the most impact if we test approaches across the spectrum, from prevention through to helping children recover.
• Principle 4: It is crucial to ensure that victims and survivors are fully engaged in REACH.

The stages of the REACH Plan

Our four-stage plan is tightly focused on the end goal of finding proven programmes through robust impact evaluation and sets out the four stages that will get us there. We will take around 20 programmes through to full-scale impact evaluation, and we expect that between 3 and 5 of these will find a positive effect.

Foundations is committed to championing the expansion of approaches found to have a positive impact to all eligible children and families.

Taking the REACH Plan forward

The REACH Plan will require investment and collaboration from a range of partners. We are proposing that £50 million over five years should come from government investment via the next Spending Review. As Foundations, we will commit £10 million of funding over the next five years. We believe the remaining £15 million can be found through investment from research funders and trusts and foundations.

Implementing this plan will need an overall investment of £75 million over five years. This is around 0.1% of the estimated £74 billion annual social and economic cost of domestic abuse. Over £45 million of this will be for service delivery.

At Foundations, we have already begun initial work to deliver this plan. We are investing £2.6 million in 2023-25 and are conducting initial testing (pilot RCTs) of For Baby’s Sake, WeMatter and Bounce Back 4 Kids. We are also laying the groundwork for impact evaluation of Restart and Breaking the Cycle. In addition, we are considering ways to transport Fathers for Change, a programme with promising evidence currently being delivered in the US, and tailor it for the UK context. We are continuously searching for other best bets but we need to go much further. This work needs rapid expansion and acceleration.

At Foundations, as the What Works Centre for Children & Families, we want to play our part by investing our own funding, brokering sustained investment in the sector to enable impact evaluation, and assembling the collaborations needed to prevent domestic abuse and support child victims. With the backing of politicians, civil servants, research funders and, critically, those delivering services, we can achieve this.

Watch: Foundations’ CEO Dr Jo Casebourne talks about the REACH Plan: