29th October 2025

Communications Lead, Megan Gordon, reflects on how our work in systemic change can transform relationships of power.

24th October 2025

Senior Researcher, Ediane Santana de Lima, shares her insights on what it takes to create meaningful spaces for participation that shift power.

30th September 2025

Systemic Change Lead, Megan Keenan, shares some reflections on approaches to making sense of complexity.

12th September 2025

We think that a recipe for a Best Start in Life strategy that is meaningful, responsive to the diverse needs of local communities and sustainable has four key ingredients. In this article our Chief Executive, Tim Hobbs, reflects on those four components.

31st July 2025

Announcing a new and unique offer from Dartington Service Design Lab, Ideas Alliance CIC and Collaborate CIC to support local partnerships to develop and deliver Best Start in Life Strategies and Best Start Family Hubs.

9th July 2025 - Reflections on what it takes to build shared thinking around outcomes, with our friends at the Common Outcomes for Children and Young People Collaborative.

7th July 2025 - The end of last week saw three major policy announcements with big ambitions. Each are rich in rhetoric about prevention, localism, and improving outcomes for children and families. We’re reflecting on what this all really means for babies, children and young people and where the risks and opportunities lie. 

In June 2021, we made an organisational commitment to embed anti-racist approaches to our work and our organisation. Whilst a lot has changed since 2021, our commitment to anti-racism remains strong. Our new strategy is grounded in advancing systemic change with and for children and young people by shifting the underlying conditions that hold them back from thriving. We know we can’t do this if we don’t continue taking anti-racism seriously.  

This blog provides a brief update on our progress against the commitments we made back in 2021. It surfaces some learning about our experiences, and outlines our priorities going forward.

Today marks an exciting milestone as we share our ambitious new strategy Thriving Futures: Driving systemic change with and for children and young people. Building on over sixty years of innovative work, this forward-thinking strategy outlines how we will focus our expertise over the next five years to create lasting, positive change for children and young people across the UK.

This blog, focused on young people’s involvement in evaluating the impact of Youth Social Action (YSA), is part of a learning series produced as part of the #iwill Fund Impact Evaluation and Learning Contract (IELC). It is hoped that by reading this it will raise awareness of how to best support young people to be involved in evaluating YSA, set out some benefits of involving young people in evaluating YSA, and share key learning from our process so far from the perspective of young people themselves.