The Department of Children, Equality, Disability, Integration and Youth (DCEDIY) is working with the Early Intervention Foundation to develop the What Works Ireland Evidence Hub of prevention and early intervention programmes. The Hub is an initiative of the What Works Programme, which supports the use of evidence in both policy and practice for children and young people. The What Works Ireland Evidence Hub will support policy makers, service commissioners and providers across a range of policy and service areas in their decision making about services for children and young people.
What is the What Works Ireland Evidence Hub?
The Hub is based on the existing EIF ‘Guidebook’ in the UK, which provides details of prevention and early intervention programmes that have been evaluated and show some evidence of improving outcomes for children and young people. For each programme the Guidebook provides:
- the specific outcomes it has been found to improve and the size of those improvements;
- how the programme is delivered and how it works; and
- the conditions or resources that can improve its likelihood of being effective.
The What Works Ireland Evidence Hub will contain information on over 100 prevention and early intervention programmes that are already included on the EIF Guidebook, in addition to programmes in Ireland that will be assessed for evidence of their impact. Evidence of impact can include preliminary evidence or more significant, robust studies.
This accessible, easy to use online tool will be available on the What Works website, where it can be used by policy makers and service commissioners across all sectors and services relevant to the lives of children and young people.
Call for submissions
DCEDIY will be seeking submissions from providers of prevention and early intervention programmes used in Ireland, who wish to have their programmes included in the What Works Ireland Evidence Hub. The Call for Submissions is expected to open in September 2022. During 2022-2023, the Early Intervention Foundation will assess 10 different prevention and early intervention programmes used in Ireland that have evidence of observable, positive impacts on outcomes for children and young people.
Online workshops will be held in October 2022 to help to build awareness and understanding of the What Works Ireland Evidence Hub and to explain more about the submission process. They will be open to anyone working to improve the lives of children and young people.
The inclusion of a programme within the Guidebook will not mean that the programme is endorsed by either DCEDIY or EIF.
The Department has contracted the Centre for Effective Services to support the project.
Information about the workshops and how to register will be available on the What Works website over the coming months.
Sign up to the What Works Mailing List.