Evaluation of our grants for children affected by domestic abuse
Over the last two years, thanks to generous funding provided by the National Lottery Community Fund and Comic Relief, we have been able to provide an increased number of grants to children impacted by domestic abuse in the West Midlands. This has also provided us an opportunity to understand the role that Chances for Children grants have for agencies supporting this group.
An evaluation, just completed by Starks Consulting and Ecorys, has highlighted some of the benefits these grants can have for agencies, including: improved relationships between support workers and families, better understanding of children’s needs, increased engagement from families and cost savings. It also highlighted some of the challenges support workers find in applying for the support.
The main findings from the report were:
- Chances for Children grants had a significant impact on children and families and on their ability to engage in support, and to move forward positively with their lives.
- The potential for cost savings to the support service in applying were significant with greater stability in family home life, improved access to education and improved wellbeing.
- It is feasible to see how such improvements in children/young people and families’ outcomes would reduce the need for future support from agencies, so reducing the cost of re-referrals into both statutory and voluntary sector agencies.
- More detailed examination of longer-term outcomes for individual cases within agencies would be needed to draw definitely conclusions.
