Using a community participatory approach, we are working with a team of community researchers from Lambeth to undertake a mixed method developmental and summative evaluation of LEAP which is A Better Start Project in Lambeth.

Connected Futures is a £16m programme that seeks to change the journey from education to employment for young people facing exclusion and disadvantage. It aims to support the development of local approaches to youth employment that put young people at the heart of the system, from schools and employers to housing, health and care. Blackpool is one of several areas funded by the Youth Futures Foundation to embark on systemic changes to reduce the numbers of young people not in education, employment or training (NEET).

Dartington Service Design Lab are the lead partner in the #iwill Fund Impact Evaluation and Learning Contract.

The #iwill Fund is a collaboration between The National Lottery Community Fund and the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS), working with match funders to support young people to access high quality social action. Social action involves activities such as campaigning, fundraising, and volunteering, all of which enable young people to make a positive difference in their communities as well as develop their own skills and knowledge.

We are working in partnership with leading cancer charities, Young Lives vs Cancer, Children’s Cancer and Leukaemia Group (CCLG), Ellen MacArthur Cancer Trust and Teenage Cancer Trust to build a new evidence base looking at the needs of young cancer patients and how the current system supports them. The research will identify gaps and what needs to happen in order to build a better future for children and young people diagnosed with cancer.

This five-year project, with core funding from Impact on Urban Health to the  Old Kent Road Family Zone (OKRFZ), aims to strengthen governance arrangements and understanding of local needs to tackle drivers of inequalities and help children thrive. Our developmental evaluation on this aims to bolster learning and support equitable approaches to decision-making to affect change.

Reimagining Secure Care is a systemic change programme in Scotland to transform children and young people’s experiences of settings where their liberty is deprived and to find alternatives to being removed from their families and communities to access the additional support they need.

The Youth Endowment Fund’s ‘Neighbourhood Fund’ is a partnership with select local communities where young people are more vulnerable to experiencing crime and violence across England and Wales. In each locality, the Neighbourhood Fund partners with community members and organisations to understand the problems that their communities are facing, and co-design solutions that are responsive to local needs. The aim of this work is to better understand how empowering people to design solutions for their local neighbourhood needs can build resilience amongst young people who are vulnerable to experiencing crime and violence.

Catalyst and The National Lottery Community Fund COVID-19 Digital Response are supporting organisations actively tackling challenges across four sectors; early years; financial wellbeing; mental health and wellbeing; and sexual abuse and domestic violence. For this project, the focus of our partnership is on the early years, developing and testing different ways of supporting early years services to reach digitally excluded families.

We have worked with Save the Children UK and partners to create an evidence-informed Toolkit to support local system change activities aimed at improving children’s early learning outcomes. This is underpinned by an evidence review and extensive co-design with local partners. 

We have been selected to support MEAP, a programme dedicated to effect system change so that children, young people and young adults are able to get timely and appropriate mental health support.

Dartington Service Design Lab, alongside the University of Bristol, has been working with two Locality Partnerships in the Bristol, North Somerset, and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care System (BNSSG ICS) to develop a theory of change and evaluation framework for their contribution to population health outcomes.

Chance UK is solution-focused mentoring and support charity which works with children and families to reduce the impact of trauma on their lives. The charity works to support children aged 8-14 experiencing behavioural and emotional difficulties in a needs-led and strengths-based way to develop skills which can protect them from risks in the future. Chance UK collaborates with others (e.g. education, health, social work) to support children in realising a brighter future. Chance UK work directly with young people with a 1-2-1 mentoring programme at the centre of its delivery model, with other curriculum and skills-based activities to support positive change. The charity also conducts direct work with parents and carers in developing their skills and knowledge to gain a holistic view of the young people they are working with, and to ensure their work is meaningful for families.