What Works Centre for Children and Families

This is a Competition Notice for 10 years of Grant Funding for a What Works Centre for Children and Families to start in April 2027. This funding will be provided under Section 14 Grant of the Education Act 2003 Terms and Conditions. This competition is not in scope of the Procurement Act 2023.

There is also a Find a Grant notice relating to this competition which can be found here: find-government-grants.service.gov.uk/grants/what-works-ce… ↗

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The Department for Education (the Department) are looking for an organisation to act as a What Works Centre for Children and Families (WWCCF) from April 2027. This grant funding will be issued for a maximum of 10 years, with a maximum available funding of £8.5m per year.

Reforming children’s social care to keep children safe and give them the best start in life is an important part of the Governments opportunity mission. Improving the evidence base on interventions that work is vital to the success of the reform programme. The Department anticipate this grant to be used to generate and champion robust actionable evidence (i.e. deliver research, programmes and evaluations) that will help shape decision making in policy and practice, and enable the sector to improve services and outcomes to protect and support vulnerable and disadvantaged children.

This should include:

• becoming a What Works Network member, operating independently and setting a strategy alongside the Department
• having access to a range of expertise in conducting high-quality evaluations, translating and disseminating evidence
• establishing relationships with policy makers and local leaders to establish and support delivery of interventions that work based on high quality evidence
• detailed knowledge and understanding of the children’s social care and early intervention sector

We are looking for an organisation to build a strategy which would deliver the following objectives:

• collating existing evidence on the effectiveness of programmes and practices
• collaborating with and engaging the sector to help the development of materials and reports
• producing high-quality synthesis reports and systematic reviews in areas where they do not currently exist
• assessing the effectiveness of policies and practices against an agreed set of outcomes
• Identifying and filling gaps in the evidence base by commissioning new trials and evaluations
• proactively sharing findings in an accessible way (that is free to access)
• supporting practitioners, commissioners and policymakers to use these findings to inform their decisions
• undertaking research and evaluation projects that meet Government Social Research standards

We would expect that Cabinet Office's requirement of What Works Centre membership to be met in full: www.gov.uk/government/publicati… ↗.

An online competition launch engagement session will be held 14:00 – 15:00 pm, 26th February 2026 via teams to allow the Department to explain relevant competition documentation to potential bidders and allow an opportunity for Q&A.

If you would like an invite to this session, please use the messaging function on Jaggaer to request an invite, including the roles and email addresses of all those who would like to attend.

Any slides and Q&A from this session will be uploaded and shared with all potential bidders for future reference.