The Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme was launched by the Department for Education (DfE) to test innovative ways of supporting vulnerable children and young people, with investment of up to £200m (2014 - 2020). Funding rounds are now closed, but there is much learning and evidence about what works emerging from the 98 projects suported by the Programme.

Information about the individual projects, as well as insights gained from the Programme as a whole, are available on the Projects and Insights page. The focus of the Programme now is to share insights from projects, encouraging and enabling leaders and practitioners to draw on best practice and use properly evidenced innovations with confidence.

Programme objectives

Improve life chances for children receiving help from the social care system
Create stronger incentives and mechanisms for innovation, experimentation and replication of successful new approaches
Drive better value for money across children's social care

Find out more about the programme evaluation approach

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How it works

The Programme supports individual pilots and change programmes which test or spread effective ways of supporting vulnerable children
The Programme changes conditions in the system so it is better able to innovate in future by providing the licence to test new approaches as well as by building an evidence base and sharing what works to improve outcomes for childre

Explore our project summaries or view projects by map

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Round One

Round One of the Programme (2014-16) invited applications across two focus areas where there were particular challenges in prevailing practice, and clear scope for radical innovation and change. These were:

Rethinking children’s social work – improving the quality and impact of children’s social work

Rethinking support for adolescents in, or on the edge of, care – improving the quality and impact of services aiming to provide a stable effective launch pad for adolescents to transition successfully into adulthood.

The DfE published two papers on the above focus areas (click the areas above to view), drawing together and analysing key research evidence and practice developments.

Round Two & Three

Round Two of the Programme (2016-20) also invited applications to scale and spread successful innovations from Round One.

Round Three - the Targeted Funding Opportunity (2017-20) invited applications in four policy areas where there is a need to quickly develop and test new approaches. The four policy areas were set out in the DfE’s policy paper ‘Putting Children First‘ and are:

The recommendations of Sir Martin Narey’s report on residential care, particularly piloting ‘Staying Close’, and regional commissioning of residential care

The use of social investment to improve support for care leavers

Alternative delivery models for children’s social care

Targeted support to prevent children entering child protection system

There are currently 45 live Round Two and Three projects. Find them on the Projects and Insights page.