Ten years of A Better Start: lessons for the Early Years
Report
Report
A Better Start: Local evidence syntheses
The local evidence syntheses ensured that evidence produced through local evaluation work was included in the ABS national evaluation.
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About A Better Start
A Better Start (ABS) was a ten-year (2015-2025), £215 million programme set up by the National Lottery Community Fund (The Fund). There were five ABS partnerships based in Blackpool, Bradford, Lambeth, Nottingham and Southend-on-Sea, which aimed to support families to give their babies and very young children the best possible start in life. ABS was place-based, meaning specific elements of delivery varied according to the needs of the local community. ABS aimed to enable long-term systems change with a focus on prevention of problems that can start in early life.
The Fund commissioned The National Centre for Social Research (NatCen) and partners from the National Children’s Bureau (NCB), Research in Practice, Fortia Insight (formerly RSM) and the University of Sussex to carry out the national evaluation of ABS. As part of the national evaluation, three local evidence syntheses were conducted, each focussing on collating evaluation evidence produced locally by the ABS partnerships and their local evaluation partners. This evidence was reviewed to draw out insights that relate to the implementation and impact of ABS, in line with the Theory of Change (ToC). The ToC can be found in Appendix 1.
About this report
The local evidence syntheses ensured that evidence produced through local evaluation work in the ABS partnerships was included in the national evaluation. The first local evidence synthesis (NatCen, 2024) focussed on implementation of ABS. It included evidence that was produced before the end of 2023.
This report includes findings from the second and third local evidence syntheses that were conducted as part of the national evaluation of ABS. By combining the reviews, we were able to identify updated evidence on the implementation of ABS to build upon the findings presented in the 2024 report, while also identifying evidence of impact. In relation to impact, we focussed on evidence of progress towards child and systems change outcomes as they were described in the ToC. We reviewed evidence produced by ABS sites published after the end of 2023 (the call for evidence for the first local evidence synthesis) up until Summer 2025.
