Dudley Lodge commissioned us to undertake a first-of-its-kind systems-focused evaluation of Hurdle, a voluntary, trauma-informed programme supporting parents who have experienced, or are at risk of, repeated child removals. The primary aim was to explore how parent-centred support can reduce pressure on the wider child protection system. Conducted at the end of Hurdle’s initial five-year National Lottery-funded programme, the evaluation moved beyond individual outcomes to examine wider benefits for child protection services, statutory agencies and public resources.
We used a mixed-methods approach designed to assess systems-level impact, considering how changes experienced by parents could influence the wider child protection ecosystem, as well as the associated cost savings to statutory services using costed case studies and publicly available unit-cost data.