Socially Significant Outcomes
Socially significant outcomes are the real life changes that reflect whether an innovation is making a meaningful difference. Crucially, these outcomes should occur at scale, experienced by everyone the work is intended to benefit, not only a small group or in a few settings where implementation happened to go well.
The ANEW programme was originally established to reduce levels of child neglect and enhance the wellbeing of Dundee’s children. Through understanding the theory of change and the development of a logic model that visually represents this, these ambitions remain but they are understood to be long-term outcomes that need time to realise – particularly at the Dundee city level as this would require implementation of the ANEW programme across all Dundee’s health visitors, nurseries and schools.
Using the logic model, the data work focused on the early indicators of change that signal that the ANEW programme was being delivered as planned, contributing to positive changes for children, families and practitioners. Indicators of implementation and change included:
- The number of health visiting teams, nurseries and schools (including the number of practitioners within these) implementing the ANEW programme, as these evidenced the scale of implementation.
- The data from early concerns mapping exercises within the health visiting teams, nurseries and schools to understand whether the number and profile of children’s wellbeing concerns were changing over time, as well as understanding how practitioners were responding to and recording these concerns.
- The data from the observation tools and parental feedback questionnaires, to evidence whether consistent, high-quality practice was being delivered.
- The outcomes of individual children supported through the ANEW programme to understand whether their needs were being met and reducing over time.
Outcomes of ANEW have included:
- Strengthened voice and participation of children and young people, by providing support before, during and after Team Around the Child meetings.
- Shifting the balance of power within Team Around the Child meetings to place children and families at the centre of decision-making processes about their lives.
- Improved multi-agency working between Health Visiting and Early Years practitioners.
- Positive improvements in identifying early concerns suggested by feedback from staff and parents.
See also Additional reading #3 which includes a summary of what changed in practice and what the impact was.
Examples:
[Child] annotating the previous Child’s Plan with ‘post-it’ notes, with these then used as a structure for the next meeting, and another child baking biscuits so that they could contribute to the meeting, despite not feeling confident enough to attend in person. After the meeting, a Meeting Buddy came back to give the child’s words on the plan.
[Father] commented that the 1-page Child’s Plan was the first plan that actually made sense to him.
Reflecting on her experiences of Team around the Child Meetings before and after being supported by a Meeting Buddy, [Mother] said: “My efforts were praised, mostly by [the Meeting Buddy]. I felt judged without [the Meeting Buddy].”
Examples were also recorded of professionals who reflected that the ANEW practice approach has helped achieve a much calmer Team around the Child Meeting in some cases where the parents had previously been perceived as ‘difficult’.
Professionals with Named Person function said:
“Always being solution focused and getting agreement from people in the process increases feelings of accountability”;
“It’s brilliant to leave with the action plan and everyone to know their tasks”;
“Parents are now bringing their plans back to follow up meetings, this has never happened before. Others have even made notes on the plans.”
