The What Works Network helps deliver more effective and efficient public sector services by creating and sharing high-quality evidence to inform decisions by practitioners and policymakers.

The 13 What Works Centres that comprise the network receive funding from a variety of sources, and departments and public bodies are major funders for many.

1. The Education Endowment Foundation received a £125 million endowment in 2011 from the DfE, to be spent over 15 years. It received a subsequent £137 million endowment from DfE in 2022. It receives additional funding from the DfE and other parties as outlined in its annual report and financial statements. In the financial year ending March 2022, it reported £30.4 million in grants from DfE.

2. The Youth Endowment Fund received a £200 million endowment in the Home Office in 2019, to be spent over 10 years. It receives additional funding from the Home Office (via a Centre of Excellence grant) and other parties as outlined in its annual report and financial statements.

3. The Youth Futures Foundation received £90 million via the Dormant Assets Scheme in 2019, and a further £20 million via the scheme in 2022. It receives a small amount of other grant income as outlined in its annual report and financial statements – in 2021 this other grant income was approximately £21,000.

4. The Centre for Homelessness Impact is primarily funded by an anonymous private donor. In the financial year ending June 2022, this total was £1.65 million. It receives additional funding from other parties – including DLUHC, MoJ, the Cabinet Office and the National Institute for Health Research – as outlined in its annual report and financial statements. In the financial year ending June 2022, this additional funding amounted to approximately £462,000.

5. The Centre for Ageing Better received a £49.6 million endowment from the National Lottery Community Fund in 2014, to be spent over 15 years. It receives additional funding from other parties – including UKRI in the fiscal year ending March 2022 – as outlined in its Report of the Trustees and financial statements.

6. The Wales Centre for Public Policy was awarded £9 million in 2022, to be spent over five years. Its core funders are the Economic and Social Research Council, the Welsh Government and Cardiff University.

7. The What Works Centre for Local Economic Growth is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and three government departments: BEIS, DLUHC, and DfT. It has received approximately £1.4 million per year under its current grant.

8. Two centres – the Early Intervention Foundation and What Works for Children’s Social Care – have recently merged into one centre, which is operating as What Works for Early Intervention and Children’s Social Care. DfE has been the primary funder of both organisations historically, and plans to be the primary funder of this merged organisation in the future. The funding figures provided relate to the centres in their previous forms.

• What Works Children’s Social Care was primarily funded by the DfE. In the financial year ending March 2022, the grants it received from DfE totalled approximately £17.4 million.

• The Early Intervention Foundation received funding from multiple government departments and other funders, as outlined in its annual report and financial statements. In the financial year ending March 2022, it received approximately £2.4 million in restricted and unrestricted funding from its core cross-government grant, and approximately £184,000 from the Home Office.

9. What Works Centre for Wellbeing receives funding from a wide range of sources. Its largest funder is the National Lottery Community Fund – in the financial year ending March 2022, it received approximately £357,000 from them. It does not receive significant public funding – in the financial year ending March 2022, it received approximately £81,000 from DCMS.

10. The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education is primarily funded by the Office for Students, who’ve supported the centre with £4.5 million over 4 years since 2019.

Finally, there are three What Works Centres which sit within professional, arms-length or non-departmental public bodies. These are:

11. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE)

12. The What Works Centre for Crime Reduction (part of the College of Policing)

13. The Money and Pensions Service

Smaller What Works Centre functions sit within each of these larger organisations. The Cabinet Office does not have information regarding the precise funding levels available for the What Works sub-teams within these larger organisations, but the aggregate funding levels for these organisations should be accessible in the public domain.

Both contracts with NESTA and Cardiff University are monitored through the following mechanisms:

• A joint weekly meeting to review progress, deliverables, risks and budgets as well as agreeing priorities for the week ahead. The Department for Education’s (DfE) What Works Centre (WWC) management team lead the meeting.
• A joint monthly contract and finance review against key performance indicators. DfE WWC management team lead this meeting.
• A WWC steering group comprising the Chief Social Worker and senior DfE officials, (and by invitation, sector experts, where applicable to the issues arising) meets monthly.
• Key decisions are presented to a strategy board comprising senior DfE officials and chaired by Indra Morris, Director General for Social Care, Mobility and Equalities.

The cost committed to date of setting up the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care is £9,804,191.00 million. In October 2017, two contracts were awarded by Department for Education to establish the What Works Centre. A consortium led by NESTA was awarded the contract for an ‘incubator’, to develop the infrastructure, recruit the leadership team and develop the communications and dissemination strategy. Cardiff University was awarded the ‘research partner’ role to start the evidence synthesis and begin new trials and evaluations where there are gaps in the current evidence base. Both contracts will run until March 2020.

I am sorry that it has taken so long for a question in 1989 to get an answer, but I can tell the hon. Gentleman that setting up a centre of expertise on sexual abuse is exactly what the Home Office is doing. It will play a significant role in identifying and sharing high-quality evidence on what works to prevent and deal with sexual abuse and exploitation. Alongside this, the Department for Education’s existing What Works centre will ensure that social workers across the country are able to learn from the best examples. It is a good example of Government reform, which I know the hon. Gentleman supports.

Will the Prime Minister ensure that his Government’s performance includes the long-overdue creation of a centre of evidence on sexual abuse of children—something that I first raised in Prime Minister’s questions with Margaret Thatcher in 1989? We can deal with the awful consequences of child sex abuse for victims and perpetrators, but we must also use early intervention expertise to stop it happening in the first place. Will the Prime Minister back the excellent work of Ministers and Members from all parties and get this much-needed What Works centre up and running without delay, within the five-year term of this Government?

The What Works Network is currently made up of seven Centres, which are independent of government. The Centres aim to empower policy makers, commissioners and practitioners at both the local and national level, to make decisions based upon robust evidence of what works, and deliver cost efficient, impactful services.

Information requested about the location of the Centres is set out in Table A. The number of staff in each Centre is a matter for the individual organisations and is not collated centrally.

Centres sign up to a set of What Works Network requirements (https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/451328/What_Works_Network_-_Membership_requirements.pdf), and each Centre has an evaluation plan in place. The Cabinet Office is working with Centres to assess their impact and inform the future infrastructure to support evidenced based decision making

Table A – What Works Centres and addresses