Since 2016, the NSPCC has worked with organisations to adopt and deliver some of its evidence-based services locally to reach more children and families through our ‘test, learn and scale’ model. The process involves developing, delivering and evaluating a service before ‘scaling it up’ to other organisations to deliver.
Domestic Abuse, Recovering Together (DART), Graded Care Profile 2 (GCP2) and Baby Steps were the first three evidence-based services to be ‘scaled up’. We revisited 21 sites that had adopted the three NSPCC services, two to four years after their initial implementation to find out:
Authors: Robyn Johnson, Emma Smith and Emma Belton
Published: 2021
A number of organisations who had adopted these NSPCC services were still running them successfully two to four years after initial implementation. They had strategies and resources in place which made them confident the services would be sustained, such as train the trainer models. However, some organisations struggled with challenges such as restructures, practical difficulties with running the service and ongoing issues with funding.
Strategies used by sites to make the services sustainable focused on building a good infrastructure. These included having protected, dedicated time for the service, lead champions in place, strategic buy-in and good partnership working.
Organisations that adopted the services experienced wider benefits, including more effective joint working and learning from the services being embedded into wider practice. Some practitioners used skills learnt from NSPCC services in their separate work.
The role of the NSPCC in its adopter sites evolves over time and should be responsive to sites’ needs. What each site wants from the NSPCC depends on a number of factors, such as whether they have train the trainer models in place, and service leads’ prior experience.
Identifying sites’ needs and tailoring support is important. For some sites, this generally involved more proactive support in the early stages, followed by less support after adopting the train the trainer model.
Please cite as: Johnson., R et al (2021) The sustainability of NSPCC services in adopting organisations: a review of progress across DART, GCP2 and Baby Steps. London: NSPCC.
We've taken findings from our roundtable in Wales and a range of other evidence to develop best practice for you to use when undertaking child protection work virtually, including some of the benefits and challenges you need to consider.
The NSPCC’s local services for children and families were adapted in 2020 to comply with COVID-19 restrictions. Find out more about what our research highlighted and the learning you can take from it.
