Programme innovation to system shift

Learning about place-based work from AllChild’s expansion to Wigan

This piece reflects on what AllChild’s expansion to Wigan teaches us about how targeted programmes on specific individuals interact with place‑based mechanisms of change for whole places, especially in the organisations that work to balance state and civil society relations. It is part of an ongoing series reflecting on how our taxonomy of categories and mechanisms show up in real work.

As a long-term fan of the work of AllChild, and also after working with the team there at the start of 2025 on thinking about a ‘place’ theory of change for the organisation, I was pleased to see the publication of the first year reflection from the Coram team who are the learning partner for the work of AllChild as they move to Wigan.

Firstly, it’s just great that organisations publish their learning partner work – as often this valuable insight is held within organisations – and secondly, I was interested in the question of place in the AllChild work as it begins to embed in a new community.

For those of us who see things through the place lens, I find it a helpful reminder when I talk to Louisa, the CEO of AllChild, that they don’t just centre that. Yes, there is a strong and growing place-based element to AllChild, but it is also a codified programme with a clear centrality of the trusted adult relationship for specific young people. That is an incredibly valuable mechanism of change for young people, that on its own is not one that is about place. What is so interesting, and I think impactful, about AllChild is that it’s both/and not either/or when it comes to place. As the model is developing, I think it’s become more place-and, and I think that’s going to teach us all a great deal.[1]

I won’t summarise the Coram work here – they have produced a clear and concise document – but what I want to do it reflect on it in terms of some of the questions of place and mechanisms of change in place-based work, and how AllChild’s work highlights the nuance that is so important to consider.

Where do we locate AllChild?

AllChild is classified as a Category 3: State and Civil Society Relations intervention, in our taxonomy. For that to be so, it must be both a charity/organisation delivering support for specific children, and infrastructure designed to reconfigure how state services (schools, social care) and civil society (charities, community groups) interact around children in general. The Coram report described that happening.

In our first report we defined this sort of work as being a service-led mechanism, but we know that needs tightening as a mechanism of change. We want to break that issue down much more in what we do in the coming months across the categories, and I want to start to explore that here.

Our early thinking is that this mechanism is more about innovation programme-to-system change. The mechanism has two distinct phases. First, programme innovation: delivering in ways that are co-produced, evidence-generating and contextually rich. Second, system influence: using the evidence to engage commissioners, policymakers and service leaders. Delivering an excellent innovation programme without the second phase is valuable work but not a place-based mechanism.

What kind of place-based work are we talking about?

AllChild does not attempt to change the whole population directly; it identifies a specific “at-risk” cohort using data (e.g., attendance, social-emotional scores). It then mobilises a “pipeline” of support around these individuals. Perhaps we could usefully consider learning from Targeted Universalism here, as the logic of targeting a group to fix a wider system flows from that thinking. Under that sit a few potential crucial elements of the mechanism that can be seen in the Coram report and which are place-based, and as with the Big Local review I wrote last year, I’m using this to consider what might be the ways to understand and evidence in our next stage of work, so these are just early thoughts:

• Merging state and civil society responsibilities: The Link Worker is embedded in the school but acts as a “boundary spanner,” (a role that connects individuals and institutions across organisational boundaries) bridging the gap between the child, the family, the school, and external services. In the recent Wigan expansion, this was adapted to include statutory “Early Help” assessments, effectively merging a state function with a civil society role. This enables it to more concretely influence and change how the whole of place works, as it is shaping state practice more.

• Coordination and alignment: AllChild does not act as a “Backbone” organisation in the sense of Collective Impact methodologies - it is too centred around the impact programme to be neutral - but it shares many features with a backbone and perhaps underlines that we need to think much harder about what is and isn’t a backbone. It does not deliver all interventions itself but coordinates a network of local Delivery Partners (VCFSEs) to provide specialist support (e.g., arts, therapy, sports), ensuring that disparate resources are focused on the same children. A lot of that sounds like a backbone. The question is whether and how this work shifts how all resources in that place flow around local systems.

• Contextual calibration: In its expansion to Wigan, AllChild utilised a “feasibility and co-design” process. It spent 6-18 months understanding the local context and aligning values with the Local Authority before delivery. This is not a rigid “franchise” model, but it is also not designed afresh in the place. It is one that adapts to local institutional needs, e.g., focusing on school exclusions in Wigan because that was a local priority.

Interaction with non-place-based elements

There are some important elements to the model that are less about place. They include:

• A tight cohort focus

• Clear, standardised metrics

• Managed delivery logic

This highlights how the organisations using mechanisms operating in category three in our taxonomy are especially likely to bring place-based and non-place-based mechanisms of change together, working with whole places and specific individuals at the same time. This is important for those of us looking to understand the field of practice, and I want to dwell on it more in the months ahead. This is a part of their strength and not a weakness.

Evidence

What does this tell us about evidencing this mechanism of change?

What we know (the mechanism works relationally):

• Coordination improves visibility: Schools report that AllChild improves their awareness of and connection to local civil society organisations, suggesting the networking is effective at a professional level.

• Trust is generated through the role: Qualitative evidence from Wigan strongly suggests the “Link Worker” successfully builds trust and safety for children, leading to improved self-regulation and confidence.

What we don’t know (the attribution problem):

• The “dosage” dilemma: It is difficult to prove that the specific “dosage” of AllChild support caused a change, as opposed to the myriad other factors in a child’s life (school, economy, housing). Isolating the intervention in a complex place-based system is methodologically fraught, and it risks undervaluing the work of grass roots and civil society organisations. We need to be clear about this.

• System change: While there is evidence of better connections between professionals, there is limited evidence yet that the system itself (how the state operates) has fundamentally changed or that these changes will sustain without AllChild’s presence. To be fair, they’ve only been there a year, so that would be a tough ask!

This is a one-year learning update, not a final study, and I know the team is already evolving practice through ongoing learning. But it points to many trends in the wider evidence base of place-based approaches, both the relational strengths and the complexity challenges.

Strengthening AllChild using place-based thinking

Finally, as we’re considering what other mechanisms we’re seeing in our research as we go deeper into the categories, I wondered whether a few other elements could help AllChild think about its work:

• Perhaps “System Convening” should be the target: Based on the Coram work, AllChild acts as a coordinator. But the experience of the last couple of years is already encouraging the team to think about moving from “managing” partners to System Convening. This involves not just making referrals, but actively nurturing “social learning” between the school, the family, and the council. The goal would be to change the culture of the school (e.g., how it handles exclusions) rather than just buffering the impact on the child. This is a nuance of the backbone approach and one for us to consider as we deepen our understanding of that mechanism.

• Further integrate “connective scaffolding” (this would be in our Category 1 set of mechanisms): There is already a target for children and families to have their own networks of support that persist after the two-year programme ends. This sort of connective scaffolding, (like the work of Grapevine) is about codifying how to support families to do this as part of the link worker model. I really hope future years of the Coram work or other work from AllChild articulates how they do this for a whole place through targeted universalism, as the field has so much to learn about how to do this well. I know that the team are thinking about this role.

• Measurement for learning: To address the “attribution problem,” AllChild could pivot its evidence strategy towards contribution analysis and system health indicators. Instead of trying to prove “we have helped this child,” the evidence would focus on “how did we improve the health of the support system around this child?” and “what learning loops did we enable?”. This aligns better with the complex reality of place-based work but potentially weakens the relationship with the local and national state, and with philanthropy, that all wants to know about the child. This is an incredibly tough line to tread.

AllChild is a highly impactful model, that does incredible work in the communities it works. Learning from these models about how they drive change and better understanding what is and isn’t place based about that, is a valuable way to challenge those of us who advocate place-based approaches to see the whole picture in practice.

As we continue to review the evidence base around place-based approaches, we’re going to keep highlighting studies, reports and papers that allow us to bring this evidence base around mechanisms of change to life.

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[1] As referenced in this piece on language, we define place-based change as mechanisms of social change that attempt to shift the infrastructure of a place (social, state, market or environmental) to achieve change, and not work with the individual members of the place. A non-place-based mechanism of change would be one that understands change as happening because of direct support to five children who need to build trusting relationships, a place-based mechanism would look at how all children in that place are able to build relationships of trust.