Welcome to our online resource. Here, you’ll find a range of information and resources offering an insight into CELCIS's complex change programme: Addressing Neglect and Enhancing Wellbeing (ANEW). The information, recordings, and other resources on this page detail how we used Active Implementation in Scotland to prevent child neglect and enhance wellbeing by supporting local multi-agency partners to strengthen early support for children, young people and their families. In the following sections, you’ll find some background to the programme, alongside detailed information about our evidence-informed approach to practice change.

Introduction

All children have the right to have their needs met. These include having loving, supportive relationships at home, enough food to eat, clean, proper clothing, shelter, support for learning, healthy growth and development, self-esteem, and healthcare. Evidence tells us that when a child’s emotional, physical and/or psychological needs are persistently not met, for whatever reason, areas of their health, development and growth can be seriously impacted. The effects on children and young people’s wellbeing and ability to thrive can last long into adulthood. This means that, over time, without effective early intervention, there can also be a greater demand on crisis-response and specialist services, which can impact on the availability of supports for children and families, at times when they are most in need.

In Scotland, it is recognised that there is more that must be done to strengthen the early support and reduce children and young people’s experience of neglect and its significant long-term effects on wellbeing. The Addressing Neglect and Enhancing Wellbeing (ANEW) programme, which ran with CELCIS support from 2017 – 2023, was born out of a need to address these concerns.

What is ANEW?

The ANEW programme was informed by existing evidence that highlighted the need to minimise the barriers to effective early intervention and focus on children and families in need of support, who may be known to services but falling just below the thresholds for formal measures to be taken. The evidence base included the findings of Christie Commission (2011) on the delivery of public services,  the Brock Report (2014) on safeguarding vulnerable children, the work of Professor Brigid Daniels (2015) on noticing and responding to neglect, and the Child Protection Systems Review (2017).

In order to strengthen a preventative approach to child neglect and wellbeing concerns, the Scottish Government commissioned CELCIS to develop a programme to be delivered in partnership with local authority areas. CELCIS identified Active Implementation as the approach which would best suit this complex change programme and help bridge the gap between research and practice. The programme also employed a rights-based approach, aligned with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Through these lenses, we aimed to identify the strengths and challenges across the whole system and support a more effective approach to enhance the supports for and the wellbeing of children in need of care and protection and their families.

The ANEW programme was launched in 2017, funded by Scottish Government as part of the Child Protection Improvement Programme. The team at CELCIS started by selecting and working alongside three local authority partner areas: Dundee, Inverclyde and Perth and Kinross.

An Active Implementation approach helps us to ensure that practice changes are sustainable over time, therefore, although CELCIS’s involvement in ANEW concluded in early 2023, the programme continues in Dundee, where the local implementation team works on scaling up and sustaining the practice changes. .

Using an implementation approach to strengthen practice for children and families: Learning from the ANEW programme

Active Implementation was relatively new in Scotland when ANEW was launched and we believe that what was learned over six years, including in relation to implementation, has relevance far beyond the programme. To share what was learned, we have developed this online resource designed to support anyone beginning, currently undertaking, or wishing to learn from a complex change programme to effect systematic change and strengthen the early support for children and their families. Here, you’ll find:

• An overview of the background to the ANEW programme, including the evidence and approaches that informed its development;
• The story of how, over six years, our team put Active Implementation’s frameworks into practice to support local multi-agency partners to develop their implementation capacity and expertise, and facilitate practice change to support real change for children and their families, using Dundee, one of the ANEW programme’s local authority partner areas, as a case study;
• Key learning, tools, and resources from the ANEW programme;
• A series of recorded and written reflections from frontline practitioners, senior managers, and others working at the heart of the programme.

This resource will be of particular interest to decision makers, funders and leaders who aim to enable complex change, but also to practitioners in the health and social care sector, but what was learned can be applied in various other settings.

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