Building better outcomes for children through evidence based practice. An evaluation of the Evidence2Success project in Perth & Kinross

Children’s service providers are under increased pressure to provide families with cost-effective support. The international Evidence2Success (E2S) project, piloted by a cross-agency partnership in Perth & Kinross, seeks to improve children’s outcomes by moving resources towards evidence-based services.

The researchers found that:

• Bespoke E2S survey tools enabled the partnership to assess the developmental needs of local children and young people and identify priorities.
• A survey of over 8,500 school pupils aged 9 to 15 and over 800 parents of younger children yielded rich information. When linked to council records, this provided striking evidence of unmet needs and the scope for preventive services.
• Innovative financial mapping tools helped the local authority and its partners to produce ‘high-level’ estimates of overall spending on services.
• Local leaders welcomed a culture-shift towards evidence-based service planning and were confident the E2S model could be replicated.