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13 - Scaling up: taking ‘what works’ to the next level
- Edited by Michael Sanders, King's College London, Jonathan Breckon, King's College London
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- Book:
- The What Works Centres
- Published by:
- Bristol University Press
- Published online:
- 20 January 2024
- Print publication:
- 28 April 2023, pp 166-183
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- Chapter
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Summary
Introduction
This chapter sets out a call for What Works Centres to devote more attention and resources to supporting the scaling up of effective approaches – policies, services, practices, programmes and so on – to extend their reach and impact. We pick up the story of interventions at the point where an approach has been shown to have enough evidence behind it to justify its wider use – it has been shown to be effective, usable and implementable. Scaling up is then about expanding the reach and impact of an innovation to foster the greatest possible positive change for diverse groups, including the most marginalised and those with the greatest support needs. (We use the term ‘innovation’ throughout this chapter, recognising that what is being scaled up might be a policy, programme, service or practice but that it is by definition new to the scale-up setting.)
Of course, not everything should be scaled, even if it has been shown to be effective. McLean and Gargani introduce the concept of ‘judicious scaling’ and make the point that ‘scaling is a choice that must be justified’ (2019, p 34) and that involves trade-offs. Scaling up an innovation involves opportunity costs and compromises (List, 2022), for example between overall reach, focus on more marginalised groups, quality and cost. It would be very ambitious to scale up very widely, without losing touch with the needs of more marginalised groups, and to sustain quality of delivery, and to keep costs sufficiently low that demand is not reduced – and in practice choices and compromise are needed. But scaling up is clearly central to the ambitions of What Works Centres: there seems little point in identifying ‘what works’ without paying at least as much attention to how to achieve levels of reach and impact that are socially significant.
It is, however, a particularly challenging area of work, and in practice few effective innovations reach populations at scale (Fagan et al, 2019; Milat et al, 2020). It is easy to assume that a programme proven to be effective will be taken up by organisations and embraced by the wider system.
13 - Spreading and implementing promising approaches in child and family services
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- By Fiona Arney, University of South Australia, Kerry Lewig, University of South Australia, Robyn Mildon, Knowledge Exchange and Implementation, Parenting Research Centre, Aron Shlonsky, University of Melbourne, Christine Gibson, University of South Australia, Leah Bromfield, University of South Australia
- Edited by Fiona Arney, University of South Australia, Dorothy Scott, University of South Australia
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- Book:
- Working with Vulnerable Families
- Published online:
- 06 August 2018
- Print publication:
- 09 September 2013, pp 235-246
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Summary
Learning goals
This chapter will enable you to:
RECOGNISE the role that research can play in improving the lives of vulnerable families and their children
THINK about how you might use research to inform your practice with vulnerable families and their children
UNDERSTAND how evidence-informed programs and practices are spread and implemented in the child and family service sector
RECOGNISE the factors that influence whether programs and practices will become embedded in service delivery with vulnerable families
UNDERSTAND how a focus on high-quality implementation practices can support better outcomes for families.
Introduction
THERE IS AN urgent need to enhance outcomes for vulnerable children and their families, and the evidence base for strategies that can meet this aim is growing daily. But there are limits to the extent to which this evidence base is or can be embedded in policy and service delivery. As many of the chapters in this book have described, vulnerable families have highly complex needs and often live in chaotic circumstances, characterised, for example, by parental alcohol and drug misuse, parental mental health problems, and high levels of family conflict and violence (Bromfield et al., 2010; Dawe & Harnett, 2013; Mildon & Shlonsky, 2011). Evidence-based approachesto working with families in these circumstances are limited, with only a number of programs being tested through rigorous research methodologies.