Family Hubs Evaluation Innovation Fund

Expressions of Interest are sought from research organisations or consortiums working in partnership with family hub(s) on evaluation of the service effectiveness, outcomes and impacts and value for money of family hubs. All expressions of interest must be a partnership between:

• A research supplier/consortium (can be a research agency or consultancy, Higher Education institute, think tank, or other research bodies); and • Family hub(s) (or consortium/group of these, and could be a local-authority run family hub, a group of local authorities with family hubs, voluntary and community sector organisations that deliver family hubs, health commissioners that fund or deliver family hubs, school-based family hubs, or other models).

For contractual purposes, the lead bidder and contractor should be research supplier(s) but they must work with named family hubs for their Expression of Interest proposal, to deliver the evaluation, and have a service-level agreement in place covering relative roles, responsibilities and contract costs within the evaluation.

Contracted suppliers and partner hubs are expected to work with the separately contracted National Centre for Family Hubs and Integrated Family Services on dissemination activities and to generate guidance and toolkits on evaluation for wider benefit.

There is an upper cap of £400,000 per evaluation contract. Project design and set up will commence in April 2021. We expect the projects and contracts to end by March 2023 at the latest.

Additional information: The Government made a manifesto commitment to "improve the Troubled Families programme and champion Family Hubs to serve vulnerable families with the intensive, integrated support they need to care for children - from the early years and throughout their lives".

In Budget 2020, the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced £2.5 million for research and the development of best practice around the integration of services for families, including family hubs, and how best to support vulnerable children. This funding is being administered by the Department for Education.

https://assets-global.website-files.com/5da42e2cae7ebd3f8bde353c/5dda924905da587992a064ba_Conservative 2019 Manifesto.pdf in 2019

Please Note: **Answers to any supplier questions received during the Expression of Interest stage will be posted on this page by the end of Monday 4th January 2021.

Q&A update to be published on 4th January 2021.