The Investing in Children website provides free and independent information on the costs and benefits of competing investment options in children’s services. It is aimed at commissioners and policy makers and combines information about what works with economic data.
Investing in Children allows users to search over 100 interventions to find those that match their criteria. Interventions are listed for children and young people aged 0-22 and cover a range of outcome areas, including health, emotional well-being, education, behaviour and relationships.
Users of the website can search by outcome, age group and level of intervention. Information provided about each programme includes what it comprises, the target group, the outcomes affected, how much it costs, what benefits it is predicted to yield, who to contact about implementation, and where it currently operates in the UK.
The assessment of whether programmes work is based on standards of evidence that focus, respectively, on what the programme is, how it has been evaluated, what the evaluations show in terms of impact, and what we call ‘system readiness’ – whether the programme is ready for implementation in public service systems. Programmes that meet the standards according to Blueprints for Health Youth Development are badged as ‘Blueprints approved’.
The cost-benefit information comes from work done by the Social Research Unit at Dartington to adapt the cost-benefit model developed by the Washington State Institute for Public Policy (WSIPP) in the US to the UK context (primarily England and Wales). The model takes an approach to cost-benefit analysis that is consistent across policy areas, cautious in its estimates and relevant to the real world of public and private sector investments in child health and development.