Supporting Families Programme evaluation 2015 to 2020 (HTML)
Published 31 January 2022
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1. Supporting Families programme 2015 to 2020:
£920 million targeted at 400,000 families at risk:
- Crime or anti-social behaviour
- Not attending school regularly
- Financial exclusion
- Children needing help or with Child Protection Plan
- Domestic violence and abuse
- Health problems
2. Methodology
- Quasi-experimental design, to assess programme impact on a range of metrics.
- Families identified for support were assigned to the programme using a waiting-list design; this allowed for comparison between families on the programme and those on the waiting list.
- Largest data linking exercise undertaken in HMG to date - sharing administrative data from MoJ, DWP and DfE for over one million individuals. ONS undertook the linking.
- Propensity score matching (PSM) was conducted to control for differences between the programme and comparison group, and to isolate the impact of the programme. PSM models were developed for a range of outcomes of interest, including child social care (child in need and looked after child status), criminal justice (sentencing outcomes), employment and benefits status.
Findings from the impact analysis fed into a Cost Benefit Analysis (CBA). The CBA applied unit costs to the outcomes of interest and multiplied these by the number of individuals or families calculated to have experienced each benefit (or disbenefit), as a result of the programme.
A process evaluation was conducted to understand how the programme was implemented and adapted. Longitudinal research was conducted with key workers and families to understand their experience of the programme.
3. Findings
The programme delivered positive outcomes against key metrics two years after joining the programme, including:
- 32% reduction in likelihood of children being looked after;
- 35% reduction in likelihood of juvenile custodial sentences;
- 15% reduction in likelihood of juvenile convictions;
- 25% reduction of adult custodial sentences;
- 10% reduction in proportion of adults claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance by 10%.
Feeding these results into the CBA, we concluded the programme represents good value for money. For every £1 spent, the programme returned:
- £2.28 of economic benefits
- £1.51 of financial benefits
4. Impacts
Findings from the evaluation fed into the successful 2020 Spending Review bid where the programme funding for the next three years has been increased to enable more families to be supported.
The evaluation has broken ground - unlocking large administrative datasets, innovative data linking, robust analysis to estimate the impact of the programme.
The Evaluation was awarded the Civil Service Award for Science and innovation in 2019.
5. Next steps
Variations in effectiveness of the different delivery models used for the programme remain unknown. DLUHC are proposing a series of trials to explore which practices and interventions drive the best outcomes for families, in order to optimise programme delivery.