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What Works Centre for Children and Families
AI Summary
The Department for Education is procuring services to continue its What Works Centre for Children and Families, a research and evaluation entity dedicated to strengthening children's social care. The centre will act as a national hub for evidence synthesis, translating academic findings into clear guidance that informs practitioners, commissioners and local policymakers. Its mandate is to generate, champion and disseminate actionable evidence that improves services to support family relationships, thereby advancing the Government’s reform agenda for children’s welfare.
The required services encompass establishing the centre as a fully compliant member of the What Works Network, building an independent strategy in partnership with the department, and assembling a team of experts in high‑quality evaluation, systematic review and evidence translation. Responsibilities include collating existing evidence on programmes and practices, producing synthesis reports and systematic reviews where gaps exist, commissioning new trials and evaluations to fill evidence gaps, assessing policy effectiveness against agreed outcomes, sharing findings in accessible formats, and facilitating the uptake of evidence by frontline practitioners and decision makers.
All activities must meet the Cabinet Office’s What Works Centre membership criteria for independent operation.
Description
All information in this notice will be subject to ministerial agreement and internal approval including the estimated funding amount.
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 actionable evidence that improves services to support family relationships. This should include:
• Becoming a What Works Network member, operating independently and setting a strategy alongside DfE
• Having a team of experts 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.
We are looking to share our high level requirements and strategy which would deliver this objective:
• collating existing evidence on the effectiveness of programmes and practices
• 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
• filling gaps in the evidence base by commissioning new trials and evaluations
• sharing findings in an accessible way
• supporting practitioners, commissioners and policymakers to use these findings to inform their decisions
We would expect that Cabinet Office's requirement of What Works Centre membership to be met in full: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/what-works-network-membership-requirements
Estimated date of publication of contract notice: 2026-01-19T23:59:59+00:00
Contract location: UK
Engagement process description
The purpose of this Preliminary market engagement notice is to inform the market on the progress towards the competition for the continuation of the What Works Centre for Children and Families. It is not being used as a call for competition.
The Preliminary market engagement notice is intended to:
1. Raise awareness with the market of a potential future competition process, share provisional timelines and to enable organisations to begin early discussions with the Department and each other as to how they may be able to deliver any future grant.
2. To share with the market early drafts of the grant Statement of Outcomes and invite suppliers to discuss with DfE any thoughts on the grant, set up costs, hand over period or any other aspects relevant to the grant period.
3. A set of focused questions will be shared during the session and we would encourage suppliers to respond to feedback their thoughts either during, or shortly after the session is completed.
Market engagement will consist of a virtual event via MS Teams. This session will give an opportunity to discuss, clarify and highlight what aspects of the competition may be most attractive as well as anything that might be a barrier to bidding.
An MS Teams event will take place Thursday 8th January 2026, 13:00 – 14:00pm. If you are interested in attending, please contact emilie.wilkinson@education.gov.uk and james.drew@education.gov.uk to arrange an invitation to the event.
Lot: 1
Languages in which tenders or requests to participate may be submitted: En