Building shared thinking around outcomes
9th July 2025
A joint blog with the Common Outcomes for Children and Young People Collaborative.
What does it take for every child in every town, city and village across the UK to thrive? From our decades of experience, we know it’s not just about fixing one service, funding one programme or coming up with short-term solutions. Systemic change for all children and young people is about shifting the structures, relational dynamics and mindsets that can hold us back from creating the conditions for babies, children and young people to thrive.
At Dartington, we’re focused on creating the conditions that enable that kind of long-term visioning, and we care about equipping individuals, communities and organisations with the tools to develop solutions that will shift the systems they’re operating in for good.
We can’t consider outcomes in silos
When it comes to systems change work, sometimes the outcomes emerge from the process of doing the work, while some efforts take one or more specific outcome as their starting point.
Where outcomes are intentionally open and non-prescribed, the changes to structures, relational dynamics and mindsets are the goal, with a wide range of potential benefits being the emergent outcome of the work. For example, the focus of What Matters to You in Scotland, is led and shaped by the communities and families they work with, the primary goal being around shifting who holds the power and decision-making capabilities within those communities.
Alternatively, in some systemic change efforts one or more specific outcomes are identified as the end goal, with changes to structures, relational dynamics and mindsets being the mechanisms through which these goals are achieved. For example, our work with Kailo has improvements in young people’s mental health and wellbeing as the target outcome. For Thrive at Five the goal is to achieve a good level of development in the early years.
Yet the contradiction for systemic change should seem obvious. Outcomes are inherently interconnected and children and young people’s lives are not experienced in silos. Systems change demands that we work across artificial outcome or service boundaries. You can’t meaningfully consider educational attainment without considering young people’s mental health, just like you can’t disentangle mental health from physical health or safety in the community.
Why the sector needs a Common Outcomes Framework
As we outline in our Thriving Futures strategy, whilst specific outcome areas and indicators may be a useful entry point for change, we must consider them in relation to others. Looking at outcomes in this way makes it easier to collaborate, align resources and learn from what works.
This is why Dartington is proud to be supporting and incubating the Common Outcomes for Children and Young People Collaborative, led by Elaine Fulton. We are providing organisational infrastructure support to the Collaborative as they advocate for a shared approach to outcomes at all levels, across all systems, using their key tool - the Common Outcomes Framework. This work supports the Government’s recently shared draft Local Government Outcomes Framework – providing a further layer of inter-related outcomes to the top-level mission area outcomes (that will be important, for example, when local authorities create contextually specific ‘Best Start Plans’).
The Common Outcomes Framework has been developed over the last few years. It isn’t designed as a rigid, top-down measurement tool but as a space for exploration and collaboration, a starting point to help people come together to:
Assess progress and needs, connect and agree priorities and shape shared strategic plans across services, partnerships and systems.
Support joined-up commissioning and provide a focus for reform, transformation and integrated service design.
Inform effective funding decisions in the public and philanthropic sectors.
Enable collaboration between organisations and sectors involved in improving outcomes for babies, children, young people and families.
Along with the Framework, the Collaborative offers a common language and tailored advice and input to help focus on what matters most.
Already, the Framework is being applied in diverse ways. The West Essex Children and Young People’s Partnership is using it as a tool to evaluate and enhance their collective impact, and to transform how members interact and collaborate. The KPMG Foundation is framing the impact of their charity partners around the five outcomes domains – safe, healthy, happy, learning, and engaged – and modelling collaboration in their relationships with other funders. And across London boroughs, the Framework is being used as a starting point to move beyond capturing outputs and process metrics, and to develop a shared approach to outcomes achieved in localities around Family Hubs and more broadly across local services, partnerships, and systems.
“We hear time and again how the Common Outcomes Framework has been used to bring people together around a genuine focus on outcomes, invigorating collective action and igniting a shared determination to make the cross-sector change needed to deliver lasting impact for babies, children and young people. We’re encouraged to see the Government take steps towards a more integrated and inclusive system through recent policy announcements and are determined to make the most of these opportunities to build on and boost our collective efforts towards a consistent, clear view of the change we’re seeking to deliver for children and families.”
How Dartington is using the framework to support systemic change
At Dartington, this consideration of inter-connected outcomes is central to our work on systemic change for babies, children and young people. The Common Outcomes Framework helps ground us and our partners in considering how outcomes relate to one another.
This is why we are integrating the Common Outcomes Framework into the ongoing development of our Systemic Change Playbook, helping ensure a holistic view of children’s health, development and wellbeing stays at the heart of our systemic change work.
What next for the Common Outcomes for Children and Young People Collaborative?
The Collaborative will continue to advocate for a common approach to outcomes and a shared language – wherever and whenever there is potential to drive better and improved outcomes for all babies, children and young people. They will inform and support system-wide policy development and implementation, contributing to the new Local Government Outcomes Framework and influencing the way success is defined and performance is measured across the system to a focus on what matters most.
The Collaborative will continue to back up their case for change by encouraging and supporting more people to work together, using the Common Outcomes Framework (alongside their developing toolkit and Dartington’s Systemic Change Playbook), to shape their collective efforts, share their learning and build more case studies and evidence of the difference we can make together.
Get involved
If you’re working to improve outcomes for babies, children and young people, we invite you to explore the Common Outcomes Framework and consider how it can be used in your own work. You can email info@commonoutcomes.org.uk to explore with the Collaborative how you could get involved.