Evidence and outcomes resources: Parents and families
Home » Resource hub »
We have sourced some helpful links for organisations working with parents and families. You may find these useful in planning and carrying out your outcomes data collection, or in understanding the evidence base for your model. The advice includes:
- Existing research and evidence in your sector to help you establish what evidence already exists. This will help you understand the extent to which you need to collect outcomes data yourself, or how rigorous your methodology needs to be.
- Guidance to help you design suitable outcomes or indicators to evaluate your service or programme.
- Existing outcomes frameworks and data collection tools developed by academics or leading charities in the field. The benefit of using an existing framework or measure is that you don’t have to spend time and money developing your own, and you can be more confident in the quality. The downside is that it is not tailored to your organisation, so some outcomes or data collection tools may not be suitable for your context or the people you work with.
Please note that these resources were not identified through an exhaustive review.
Research and evidence
Resource |
Description |
| Teaching and learning toolkit | Summaries of research for teaching and learning. They assess impact, cost and existing evidence across topics such as digital technology, extending school time, reducing class size, etc. This includes resources related to parental engagement in learning (Education Endowment Foundation).
|
| EIF Guidebook | Information about early intervention programmes that have been evaluated and shown to improve outcomes for children and young people. This includes parenting and family programmes (EIF).
|
| National evaluation of the Troubled Families programme, 2015-2021 | National administrative data, locally-collected data, survey data and findings from qualitative research show the characteristics of troubled families, the problems they face and complexity of these problems, as well as how services are being delivered locally (Department for Communities and Local Government, 2017). The first troubled families programme evaluation (2012 to 2015) can be found here.
|
Guidance
Resource |
Description |
| Reducing parental conflict: A practical evaluation guide for local areas | A practical tool to support your local area to evaluate activities aimed at reducing the impact of conflict between parents on children (EIF, 2021).
|
Frameworks and data collection tools
Resource |
Description |
| EIF Maturity Matrix: Maternity and early years | A self-assessment tool for early intervention partnerships and agencies. It was developed to support local areas to take a system-wide approach to improving outcomes for children and families. There is also an EIF Maturity Matrix for Speech, language and communication in the early years (Early Intervention Foundation).
|
| Measuring parental conflict and its impact on child outcomes | A guide to measurement tools related to child outcomes (internalising behaviour and externalising behaviours) and interparental (couple) relationship outcomes (relationship quality, parental conflict, and co-parenting practices). (EIF, 2020).
|
Further resources can be found on our Evidence and outcomes resources: Children (ages 0-11) page.
This webpage has been adapted from the Inspiring Impact programme, which ran from 2011 until early 2022 and supported voluntary organisations to improve their impact practice. More information about the Inspiring Impact programme.
