OUR PUBLICATIONS AND RESOURCES
We’re committed to sharing what we learn. On this page you’ll find our Lab reports, work we’ve published with our partners, and practice tools that can support you.
10 Years On: An Evaluation of Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP)
Publication
In 2015, the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (LEAP) became one of five local partnerships forming part of A Better Start—a ten-year national programme funded by the National Lottery Community Fund. Now, a decade on, Dartington Service Design Lab is proud to present the findings from a comprehensive programme evaluation.
This report explores how place-based systems change can improve outcomes for children and families. Using a theory-driven approach, we’ve uncovered not just what outcomes were achieved, but how and why they happened in such a dynamic context. These insights are invaluable for funders, policy-makers, and others looking to create more effective early years services and community programmes.
State of the system: Understanding the needs and wellbeing of children and young people with cancer and their families
Publication
In 2023, Dartington Service Design Lab joined forces with the four UK leading children and young people’s cancer charities to create a shared, evidence-based understanding of what was needed to build a better future for children and young people with cancer.
We used our integrated approach to develop a rich understanding of the evidence, gathering the lived experiences of more than 1,500 young people and families in the UK’s largest-ever survey into the psychosocial needs of young people living with cancer. This report shared evidence of what was learnt and how it will go onto form the sector’s next steps as a system-wide effort to support children and young people with cancer.
What methods and conditions help, and hinder systems change?
NATIONAL LOTTERY COMMUNITY FUND
Report
This insight summary seeks to deepen our understanding of how to progress transformational change programmes. It builds upon decades of experience trying to achieve systemic change in children's services. It focuses on the lessons learned from one system change initiative delivered as part of the National Lottery Community Fund's Early Action System Change Fund in Renfrewshire, Scotland.
This insight summary is for funders interested in designing investments and packages of support to progress systems change, as well as local partnerships interested in progressing transformational change in children's services.
An integrated approach to evidence for those working to improve outcomes for children and families
Publication
At Dartington Service Design Lab, we think about evidence as data or information – ideally from multiple sources – that is synthesised and critically appraised to inform better decision-making.
In this paper we describe an ‘integrated’ approach to the generation and use of evidence which combines elements from three different schools of thought: as a shorthand, we’ve called them the ‘What Works’, ‘Co-Production’ and ‘Complexity’. We are asking people reading this paper to think about their organisation and the role they could play in this new integrated approach.
Our anti-racist research approach: A position paper
Resource
This paper is the result of this organisation-wide reflection and starts by outlining how racism manifests at various stages of a typical research or design initiative. In some cases, this is a result of our own actions, decisions or omissions. At other times it may reflect racism within related institutions and wider structures. This overview is informed both by our own experiences, and by the work of others on this topic.
We have also developed and are embedding an Equality Impact Assessment Framework (EIAF) as a routine part of all our research and design activities. The EIAF will help our team systematically and collaboratively consider at an early stage, the ways in which racism and bias could manifest in our work and actively take steps to eradicate racism and other forms of bias from our work.
Rapid-cycle design and testing method
Resource
We have developed a method that attempts to take the best from a variety of perspectives, to create something that incorporates user-centred and science-based design, improvement methods and systems thinking.
This report provides an accessible introduction to rapid-cycle design and testing, using case studies of projects we have worked on over the past three years. We hope this report will be useful for large and small delivery organisations, and those that fund them.
Evaluation in times of uncertainty: Applying learning from COVID-19
YOUTH ENDOWMENT FUND LEARNING PARTNER
Resource
The Youth Endowment Fund Learning Partner has written this Insights Brief to support organisations adapting their work with young people during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly those living in difficult circumstances and who might be at risk of becoming involved in crime and violence.
This third Brief is focused on evaluation, with a particular focus on evaluating youth services in times of uncertainty. We explore ‘readiness’ for evaluation and the preparation required by both youth services, commissioners and funders to build in and act upon learning. We also examine the barriers to being ready for evaluation activities, using case studies from across the Learning Partnership to articulate these issues. It also offers recommendations to youth services both in and outside of the grant, as well as evaluators and commissioners of services.
Learning and adapting to support young people using a core components approach
YOUTH ENDOWMENT FUND LEARNING PARTNER
Resource
The Youth Endowment Fund Learning Partner has written this Insights Brief to support organisations adapting their work with young people during the COVID-19 pandemic, particularly those living in difficult circumstances and who might be at risk of becoming involved in crime and violence.
It sets out a ‘core components’ approach to work with young people, which may be particularly relevant in the rapidly changing context of the pandemic. Core components can help youth organisations think through meaningfully describing their provision, adapting when flexibility is required, considering evidence about different aspects of provision, and assess how well are different parts of their provision may be working and what they can learn from others doing similar work to support young people at risk of violence.
‘My Future’ Final Report: Rapid-cycle design and testing with Chance UK
Publication
Using rapid-cycle design and testing, we partnered with Chance UK to improve the design, implementation and continuous monitoring of the My Future programme: a 9-month mentoring programme delivered to children aged 5-11 years who live in Camden and Southwark.
Over two years, we collaborated with Chance UK's staff and mentors to understand the needs of the children served and the context of the programme; rapidly develop and adapt programme strategies and materials based on evidence and learning; and build staff capacity for data and evidence generation and usage, continuous learning and improvement, and supporting the embedding of innovations. .
Engaging with young people during the COVID-19 pandemic
YOUTH ENDOWMENT FUND LEARNING PARTNER
Resource
Developed by the Youth Endowment Fund Learning Partner, this Insights Brief covers the changes your organisation can make and the ways you can work with others to support young people at risk of becoming involved in crime and violence through this crisis.
It provides clear, practical advice to help when face-to-face support and group activities can’t go ahead safely, even at a time of social distancing.
Youth Endowment Fund, Centre for Youth Impact, Research in Practice and University of Plymouth.
Preventing coercive control within adolescent relationships and improve emotional wellbeing
Project report
This insight brief contains reflections shared by young people, families and practitioners, gathered to help co-design service responses grounded in the realities of communities and informed by evidence.
Renfrewshire Council, Renfrewshire Health and Social Care Partnership and Engage Renfrewshire.
Reimagining Help: an evidence-based approach to helping people reach their goals
Toolkit
This Nesta-led partnership worked to analyse and simplify behaviour change research and practice. We also worked with a group of 30 practitioners and people with lived experience to iterate and cross-check the behavioural evidence against real life experiences. Collectively, we developed a universal model of ‘help’, which can be applied to any interaction, and understood and accessed by anyone in a ‘helping’ role or organisation.
Early Learning Communities Toolkit
EARLY LEARNING COMMUNITIES TOOLKIT
Tool
The Toolkit is a resource to support local communities to develop an evidence-informed, co-designed strategy to improve children’s early learning outcomes.
Rapid Evidence Review
EARLY LEARNING COMMUNITIES TOOLKIT
Tool
A review of the national and international evidence about ‘what matters’ in promoting children’s early learning, as well as what the evidence says about ‘what works’.
Using System Dynamics in Children’s Social Care
Resource
The numbers of children and young people in care are rising across the country – placing pressure on local authorities, without necessarily improving outcomes for children. We’re sharing some of our early learning from this work in a new Insight Brief: Using System Dynamics in Children’s Social Care.
Our system dynamics work is supported by our collaborators at the Social Systems Design Lab at the Brown School of Social Work in St Louis.
Family Relationship Services Australia
FRSA
Video
Dr Tim Hobbs' Keynote address on "Matching needs and services: advances in data and analytics” at the FRSA National Conference 2019 in the Hunter Valley on Wednesday 20 November 2019. In this talk, Tim explored a deceptively simple question: are we meeting the needs of children? Drawing on three decades of research and new data from over 38,000 children and families linked to public service records, he will explore the profiles of need within communities, the services provided to children and families and how well aligned these are.
Matching Children’s Needs and Services
Resource
Are services meeting the needs of children? Our new report: Matching Children’s Needs and Services: A Case of Three Circles draws on a decade of data from 38,000 children and families to answer two fundamental questions: How much need is there in the population? Are services adequate to meet those needs?
FNP ADAPT Final Report
Project report
Five years after beginning the FNP ADAPT project – an ambitious pilot attempting to adapt the way FNP is delivered in the UK - we are pleased to share the final report with all our many learnings and recommendations. The report showcases the many stages of our rapid-cycle and testing methodology, with particular attention being paid to the clinical and
programme adaptations, as well as the evaluation stage.
FNP ADAPT Interim Report
Project report
The findings so far from FNP ADAPT– an ambitious pilot project attempting to adapt the way FNP is delivered in the UK through co-designed clinical and programme adaptations, evaluated using rapid cycle adaptation and testing methodology.
Emotional wellbeing and mental health services for children and young people in Surrey
DESIGNING THE RIGHT CARE TOGETHER
Video
This video outlines the engagement work carried out in January 2019.
Surrey County Council and Clinical Commissioning Groups (CCGs).
ChildrenCount Scotland
Data Portal
This online portal contains data gathered from areas across Scotland who have implemented the ChildrenCount Wellbeing Survey capturing the needs of children and young people via self-report and parent-report.
Emotional wellbeing and mental health services for children and young people in Surrey
DESIGNING THE RIGHT CARE TOGETHER
Project report
This report outlines the insights from the engagement work with over 300 professionals, children/young people and their parents/carers from Surrey. Based on the learnings, the report provides recommendations for the redesign of the emotional wellbeing and mental health services for children and young people in Surrey.
A different approach to preventative CSE education
MAKING SAFESKILLS EVALUATION READY
Project Report
SafeSkills, by Ariel Trust, is a skills-based child sexual exploitation prevention programme run in schools. This report focuses on Ariel Trust’s learning and evaluation programme for SafeSkills and presents initial findings from the first round of implementation.
Investment in Children’s Services
Project Report
This report provides an overview of the results from the financial mapping exercises of Renfrewshire’s children’s services. It forms part of the Early Action System Change Initiative, which seeks to redirect public expenditure towards co-designed activities with children and young people.
Renfrewshire Council, Renfrewshire Health and Social Care Partnership and Engage Renfrewshire.
Edinburgh Skylight Crisis evaluation
Project Report
This evaluation report contains data, findings and lessons emerging from the three-year Progressing Towards Employment project, delivered by the Crisis Skylight Edinburgh team and funded by the Big Lottery Fund.
This report, and others currently in progress, are part of the wider work the Lab is doing with Crisis, as part of the Hothouses for Innovation project.
Employment Pathways at Crisis Skylight Coventry & Warwickshire
Project Report
In 2018, the Lab conducted an independent evaluation of the Employment Pathways project at Crisis Skylight Coventry & Warwickshire. We took a mixed methods approach drawing on Crisis’ monitoring data as well as in-depth qualitative interviews with staff and service users.
Crisis Skylight South Yorkshire and South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority partnership
Project Report
In 2017, the Lab conducted an independent evaluation of the partnership between Crisis Skylight South Yorkshire and South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Authority. We took a mixed methods approach drawing on Crisis’ monitoring data as well as in-depth qualitative interviews with staff and service users.
Oxford Challenge Brief
Project Report
The Lab brought Crisis’ service users, staff and partners together to collectively define a priority challenge for the Hothouses for Innovation initiative. This briefing note captures the rich discussion and exercises that took places on the day.
South Yorkshire Challenge Brief
Project Report
The Lab brought Crisis’ service users, staff and partners together to collectively define a priority challenge for the Hothouses for Innovation initiative. This briefing note captures the rich discussion and exercises that took places on the day.
Edinburgh Challenge Brief
Project Report
The Lab brought Crisis’ service users, staff and partners together to collectively define a priority challenge for the Hothouses for Innovation initiative. This briefing note captures the rich discussion and exercises that took places on the day.