Unit helping Big Lottery Realise its Ambition

The Social Research Unit is part of consortium chosen by Big Lottery to support a £25m investment in the scale-up of effective interventions for children.

Alongside partners Catch22, the Young Foundation, Substance and Rathbone, the Unit will apply rigorous standards of evidence to identify evidence-based interventions to prevent problems developing and avert children from entering the criminal justice system. The consortium will also support promising interventions to build-up their own evidence-base if lacking in order to sponsor innovation.
 
The standards of evidence developed by the research unit and international partners will underpin the first stage of the work around identifying projects and interventions. This project identification phase will take place during the remainder of 2011. In the following years it is intended that research unit and consortium partners will then provide organisational and technical assistance to support between 20 and 30 projects to tighten-up service delivery, and if effective at improving child outcomes, to replicate, take to scale, and support financial sustainability through innovative financial mechanisms.