The sustainability of organisations delivering NSPCC services

Key finding

NSPCC services can be successfully sustained when adopted by other organisations

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.

Other findings

Good infrastructure is crucial for sustainability

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 can experience benefits beyond the service

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 NSPCC has an ongoing part to play

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.