The Scottish Government commissioned us to conduct the Year 2 evaluation of the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding (WFWF). The WFWF aims to provide children, young people and their families with the support they need, where and when they need it.
We evaluated how the funding continued to be used, how family services were delivered with a focus on prevention, early intervention and holistic support, and explored the effects of WFWF on children, young people and families.
To assess impacts, we used a theory-based evaluation approach called Contribution Analysis. This approach is useful for understanding activities contributing to desired outcomes, especially in complex, dynamic contexts, such as a national family support transformation programme.
To test and validate research tools used with young people, and emerging findings, we also hosted a Young Person Panel. Panel members created a poster to share research findings with other young people
Previously, our Year 1 evaluation focused on WFWF set-up and implementation. You can read the Year 1 evaluation findings here.
About the Whole Family Wellbeing Funding Programme
Support from WFWF can take many forms. For example, helping children, young people and families with their mental wellbeing, helping children whose parents are in prison, helping pupils to stay engaged in school, and helping families who are affected by poverty.
WFWF exists within the context of ongoing national recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic, which impacted family needs and contributed to systemic inequalities (in terms of health, education, income and other wider inequalities).
Key findings from our research
We were able to understand how funding was being used and identify learnings that can be built on for future funding years, as summarised below.
How Children’s Services Planning Partnerships (CSPPs) continued to use their WFWF allocation
- Existing family support services continued to implement their initial funding plans from Year 1, with greater focus on delivery of services in Year 2.
- Main changes to planned WFWF activities included refining or increasing capacity within existing activities or funding new activities focussed on specific groups based on local needs.
Availability and access to family support
- Families usually knew how to access relevant family support when they had already accessed or been referred to children’s services, but awareness was lower when they had not previously accessed family support.
- Families interviewed who had received WFWF support expressed satisfaction with the support they accessed.
Children, young people and families at the centre of service design
- Local areas continued to work collaboratively to deliver holistic family support.
- Local areas and services engaged with a range of children, young people and parents to ensure the design and delivery of family support is accessible, timely and relevant.
- Family services need to do more to continuously engage a range of children, young people and parents to inform broader service design, beyond individual services, ensuring families see how their input shapes available support.
Monitoring the impact of WFWF support
- Services continue to improve the way they collect information from children, young people and families.
- Similar to Year 1, not all local areas were confident using collected data for strategic decision making. However, by Year 2, more areas had begun making progress toward improving their data use.
You can read the Year 2 evaluation findings here.
If you want to learn more about WFWF, you can visit the Scottish Government website at Whole Family Wellbeing Funding or contact hello@iffresearch.com for more information.