¹û¶³Ó°Ôº

¹ó³Ü²Ô»å±ð°ù:ÌýNHS England

Duration:ÌýAutumn 2022 - Summer 2025

Lead: Jessica Deighton

Collaborators:Ìý´¡°Õ-´¡³Ü³Ù¾±²õ³¾

About:Ìý Anna Freud and  have joined forces to develop an autism train the trainer programme for NHS England.Ìý

The National Autism Trainer Programme (NATP) will be delivered to 4,800 trainers over three years. The course is aimed at mental health professionals, and other relevant staff, who currently work or may work with diagnosed or undiagnosed autistic people from the following settings:Ìý

• adult and children and young people inpatient mental health hospitalsÌý

• all age community mental health settings, including CAMHSÌý

• residential special schools and collegesÌý

• health and justice settings   Ìý

The training programme is co-designed, co-produced and co-delivered with autistic people and promotes an experience-sensitive, trauma-informed approach.ÌýÌý

EBPU are working with POD to conduct a formative evaluation to support the development and delivery of this programme.ÌýÌý

You can find out more about the project on the

¹ó³Ü²Ô»å±ð°ù:ÌýThe Julia andÌýHans Rausing Trust, Garfield Weston Foundation, The Prudence Trust, Westminster Foundation.

Duration: 2020 - Ongoing

³¢±ð²¹»å:ÌýHannah Woods (Head of Service), Melissa Cortina (Head of Evaluation)Ìý

About:Ìý The Schools and Colleges Early Support Service is an online whole-school emotional wellbeing offer from Anna Freud, which takes a whole-school approach to mental health. The Service is for young people aged 11-25 experiencing mild to moderate mental health difficulties, like anxiety and low mood, and the trusted adults around them. For young people, it comprises 6-8 weekly sessions (11-25 years old), single session 1:1 consultations (16-25 year olds), and on-demand psychoeducation webinars. School staff are offered termly 1:1 consultations and on-demand psychoeducation webinar. Parents and carers are offered single 1:1 consultations and live and on-demand webinars.ÌýÌý

Ongoing evaluation has been embedded into the programme to monitor feedback, change and continually improve the service. Key outcomes for young people include reduced anxiety and depression symptoms, improved wellbeing, and progress on Goal-Based Outcomes.ÌýÌý

Find out more on the

¹ó³Ü²Ô»å±ð°ù:ÌýNHS England

Duration:ÌýDecember 2022-May 2024

Lead:ÌýJulian Edbrooke-Childs, Emily Stapley

About: The project evaluates the effectiveness of a recently created Youth Intensive Psychological Practitioner (YIPP)Ìýrole being piloted in 18 NHS Trusts. The role is intended to support high intensity mental health services supporting young people with the highest mental health need.Ìý

Anna FreudÌýhas been commissioned to undertake an independent evaluation of the YIPP pilot.Ìý

Duration: 2021 - ongoing

EBPU Lead: Jessica Deighton

Collaborators:ÌýUniversity of Manchester (Project Lead), Gregson Family Foundation

Project Partners:ÌýGreater Manchester Combined Authority, Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth and Southampton Councils

About:ÌýÌý#BeeWell was co-founded by The University of Manchester, The Gregson Family Foundation and Anna Freud in 2019, and developed in partnership with the Greater Manchester Combined Authority. In 2023 #BeeWell expanded into Hampshire, Isle of Wight, Portsmouth, and Southampton.Ìý

Central to the programme is a survey, created collaboratively with 350 young people from 30 schools and a team of mental health and wellbeing experts. The young participants played a crucial role in designing the survey to ensure it reflected what truly mattered to them.

The #BeeWell findings are then shared with schools and coalition partners in order to understand priorities and respond accordingly, with our CORC team meeting with school representatives and young people to discuss the findings in detail.

For more information please visit the

Funder:ÌýMedical Research Council

Duration: September 2023 - November 2024

Lead: Julian Edbrooke-Childs

About:Ìý We know how difficult it can be for children and young people to express their feelings, and its importance in supporting their mental health. Currently, the main way we find out how young people are doing and feeling is with text-based questionnaires. We know these don’t work for everyone. So, we want to create a different type of questionnaire, that uses images and pictures rather than text.

Text-based questionnaires are particularly challenging for certain groups of people, such as minoritised ethnic groups, neurodivergent people, people with special educational needs, and people with English as an additional language. This is because existing text-based measure have often not been designed with people from these groups. We want to hear from different people, including people from these groups. This project will result in the creation of a co-produced image-based questionnaire/measure working with young people and researchers.

Funder:ÌýYouth Endowment Fund and Home Office

Duration: 2023 - December 2025

Lead: Julian Edbrooke-Childs

About:ÌýMainstream secondary schools in England are taking part in our More Good Days at School (MGDAS) study, co-funded by the Youth Endowment Fund and the Home Office.

This national research study, a collaboration between Anna Freud, Knowledge Change Action, Warren Larkin Associates and Youth Endowment FundÌýis a randomised controlled trial to look at how schools can support young people’s wellbeing, working with mainstream secondary schools to identify whether those staff informed and trained to respond to trauma are able to better support students’ mental health and wellbeing.

Find out more about the project on the

¹ó³Ü²Ô»å±ð°ù:ÌýYouth Endowment Fund

Duration: 2023 - August 2025

Lead: Julian Edbrooke-Childs

About:ÌýAnna Freud and the Institute for Fiscal Studies have partnered to evaluate the Your Choice programme, which aims to reduce violence for at-risk 11- to 18-year-olds across London. Your Choice, developed byÌýLondon Innovation and Improvement Alliance (LIIA), supported byÌýLondon’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) involves young people meeting with their practitioners three times per week for twelve weeks and is based on CBT techniques.Ìý

More information about Your Choice can be found on theÌý

More information about the evaluation can also be found on the

¹ó³Ü²Ô»å±ð°ù:ÌýLondon’s Violence Reduction Unit (VRU)

Duration:ÌýJanuary 2024 - March 2026

Lead:ÌýPolly Casey

About:ÌýThe Violence Reduction Unit (VRU) commissioned the Inclusive and Nurturing Schools (INS) programme, which aims to reduce school exclusions and ensure pupils have healthy relationship behaviours and attitudes through systems change, supporting the whole school community to become more inclusive, nurturing and safe.Ìý

The aim of the INS programme is to reduce school suspensions and exclusions through systems change – by supporting schools to reflect on and critically assess their culture, practices, and policies. The VRU have commissioned a team at Anna Freud to evaluate the programme as a whole.Ìý

Further information can be found on the

Funder: NHS England

Duration: 3 years

Lead: Jenna Jacob

About:ÌýUnderpinned by the framework for integrated care (community), the London Vanguards in North East London ICS, South East London ICS and North Central London ICS, are piloting a community-based holistic model of care. Vanguard involves prioritising the needs of children, young people and their parents and carers by actively engaging with local communities to build on existing services and infrastructures, plugging gaps in expertise and capacity as required. These teams work together to develop services to improve the wellbeing of children, young people, their parents and carers, and local communities who may be affected by violence.
Our project is a 3-year independent evaluation of London Vanguard.

Further information is avaiable on the

Duration: 18 months

Lead: Jenna Jacob

About:ÌýThe project is an evaluation of a new programme being piloted. The programme aims to ensure that: 1) pupils who are at risk of exclusion and their families receive rapid and impactful support to be happy and successful in their mainstream school andÌý 2) alternative provision settings and mainstream schools have a shared understanding of the evidence-based approaches that are most likely to support pupils at risk of exclusion. The Programme aims to support pupils in school years 7-8 Ìý(aged 11-13 years).Ìý

Funder: Alder Hey Children's Hospital

Duration: November 2023 - July 2024

Lead: Jenna Jacob

About: Beyond is a transformation programme in Cheshire and Merseyside. It aims to improve care for children and young people that supports their physical and mental health; it is a multi-agency programme with several layers of oversight, delivery and policy. It is underpinned by several policies (e.g., the NHS Long Term Plan, National Healthcare Inequalities Improvement Programme, Starting Well) and aims to reduce inequalities, to give children and young people the best possible start in life by focusing on priority areas.ÌýThe overall aim of our evaluation is to identify what is working well and any elements for improvement in the design and delivery of the Beyond Programme.Ìý

Duration:ÌýMay 2023 – October 2025

³¢±ð²¹»å:ÌýTanya Lereya

About:ÌýBullying is defined as the repetitive, intentional hurting of one person or group by another person or group, where the relationship involves an imbalance of power. Involvement in peer bullying has been found to be associated with a range of adverse outcomes in childhood, including academic problems, school absenteeism, physical and mental health problems, and suicidal ideations and attempts.

United Against Bullying Plus (UAB+) is a whole school anti-bullying programme for schools in England run by the Anti-Bullying Alliance (ABA), which forms part of the National Children’s Bureau (NCB), and in partnership with Kidscape. It has universal and targeted elements, and the overall aim of the programme is to reduce bullying.

The Evidence Based Practice Unit is supporting on the programme's evaluation. The overarching aim of the evaluation is to explore feasibility, acceptability, and readiness for trial of United Against Bullying Plus (UAB+).

Further information can be found on the .

The study builds on prior research with over 100 students, which proved there was sufficient interest from students to run this larger study. The next step is to investigate whether the workshop programme is effective in reducing participants’ stress and improving their wellbeing with larger groups of sixth form students in these areas before it can be offered more widely in the UK.

There are several geographic hubs for BESST. The Evidence Based Practice Unit leads activity in North West England.

Further information can be found on the .

Read the latest

Funder: NHS England and NHS Improvement

Duration: 2018 –Ìý2021

³¢±ð²¹»å:ÌýJulian Edbrooke-Childs

About:ÌýTheÌýEvidence Based Practice UnitÌýand theÌýÌý

We were commissioned by NHS England and NHS Improvement to evaluate the implementation and impact of Community Forensic Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (F:CAMHS) across England.Ìý

CommunityÌýF:CAMHSÌýare 13 highly specialist Tier 4 services. CommunityÌýF:CAMHSÌýprovides input to the network around children and young people who are experiencing mental health and/or learning difficulties, and who are in contact with the youth justice system or present with a high risk of harm to self or others.Ìý

Our evaluation study comprised a mixed-methods design, combining quantitative service activity and feedback data, questionnaires and interviews with young people or their parents and carers, and interviews with staff and referrers.ÌýWe also carried out an economic evaluation.

Education for Wellbeing

¹ó³Ü²Ô»å±ð°ù:ÌýDepartment for Education

Duration:Ìý2018 – 2024

³¢±ð²¹»å:ÌýJessica Deighton

About:ÌýEducation for Wellbeing isÌýEngland's largest research trial of school-based mental health interventions. Schools are randomly allocated to use one of the following approaches:

1. A set of five lessons for Year 9 that use role play designed to improve pupils’ understanding of mental health and reduce suicide rates. Developed in Sweden and America, Youth Aware Mental Health (YAM) encourages pupils to share their own ideas about how to maintain good mental health and how to help each other to find ways to resolve everyday dilemmas.
2. A teacher training programme developed in Canada called The Guide. Adapted for England for the study, it develops teachers’ understanding of mental health, trains them on how to teach their pupils about it and addresses stigma.
3. A series of eight lessons designed to increase young people’s skills around personal safety and managing their mental health, as well as helping them to identify their support networks.
4. Training pupils in relaxation techniques embedded into the school day, every day for five minutes.
5. Training pupils in mindfulness embedded into the school day, every day for five minutes.

So far, the programme has reached over 35,000 pupils across 400 schools.

The Evidence Based Practice Unit is evaluating the approaches, examiningÌýtheir impact on pupils’ mental health and wellbeing.

More information:

The Link Programme

¹ó³Ü²Ô»å±ð°ù:ÌýDepartment for Education

Duration: 2019Ìý– 2022Ìý

³¢±ð²¹»å:ÌýJaime Smith and Melissa Cortina

About:ÌýEBPU led the development of the which helps schools and specialist mental health services audit their work together and develop better working relationships. This framework was used as part of the .

The Link Programme wasÌýdelivered byÌýAnna FreudÌýand supported by NHS England and strategic leaders from clinical commissioning groups,Ìýlocal authorities, education departments, and the voluntary, community and social enterprise sector. The aim of the programme was to bring together local leaders in education and mental health to share challenges and best practice.

The resulting discussions and workshops enabled local areas to identify and develop pathways to timely and appropriate support for children and young people.

The Evidence Based Practice Unit evaluatedÌýthe rollout of the Link Programme.

¹ó³Ü²Ô»å±ð°ù:ÌýNHS England and NHS Improvement

Duration:Ìý2018 – 2021

³¢±ð²¹»å:ÌýJulian Edbrooke-Childs

About:ÌýTheÌýEvidence Based Practice Unit (EBPU)Ìýand theÌýÌýevaluatedÌýthe implementation and impact of the Framework of Integrated Care (SECURE STAIRS).Ìý

The Framework for Integrated Care (SECURE STAIRS)Ìýis being implemented across the children and young people’s secure estate (CYPSE) in under-18 young offender institutions, secure training centres and secure children’s homes. It aims toÌýimprove the quality of care and outcomes for children and young people in the CYPSE. Eighteen sites in England are included in the national evaluation. The Framework for Integrated Care (SECURE STAIRS) provides a framework for a new way of working in the CYPSE that involves training staff to provide more developmentally-attuned, psychologically-informed care, which is centred around comprehensive, co-produced assessments of young people’s needs to ensure that all needs are identified.

EBPU researchersÌýconducted a mixed-methods evaluation to explore the implementation and impact ofÌýthe Framework for Integrated Care (SECURE STAIRS)Ìýand whether it results in sustained cultural changes. As part of the evaluation, sites collected routine service activity data and staff, children and young people and their parents and carers completed questionnaires. A smaller number of interviews and focus groupsÌýwere conducted with staff and young people, and observations of staff meetings were carried out. An economic evaluation alsoÌýtook place.

Data collection took place between August 2018 and December 2020.ÌýFindings have been submitted toÌýNHSE&IÌýto inform policy and practice.