For the independent review of children’s social care, we were asked to scratch beneath the surface, by looking at wider family contexts, to understand the impact of the system on the families who navigate it.
Who is responsible for supporting young people who are struggling to find employment or apprenticeships? A new Minister with a joint DfE and BIS portfolio wanted the two departments (plus, later, DWP) and four delivery bodies to form a virtual …
The Secretary of State was interested in investigating if ‘Ofsted’ style ratings could be introduced for health and social care providers. This initiative had a challenging history, a mixed evidence base, and it was subject to strong stakeholder opinions.
Ministers and officials at the Department for Work and Pensions were looking for new ways to tackle youth unemployment. Despite receiving a lot of attention in recent years, youth unemployment continued to present a challenge
Design thinking has becoming an increasingly popular concept with policy makers. But what does it mean? Put simply, it means stepping into the shoes of the user, seeing the world and experiencing it from their point of view. If we …
Colleagues at the Department for Education produced a solution for frontline social work training in collaboration with a social enterprise and pro-bono private sector support. Find out the lessons learnt They approached us with a solution Government was seeking ways …
The Department of Health wanted to make progress with its efforts to develop recommendations for front-of-pack nutrition labelling. Over nearly ten years, the work had been undermined by significant disagreements between stakeholders.
In early 2009, the Animal Health and Welfare Division (AHWD) in the Rural Directorate in the Scottish Government was tasked with developing a policy to achieve “Officially TB Free (OTF) status” for Scotland.
Between 500 and 900 million people living in rural areas of developing countries depend on livestock for food security, nutrition, and transportation. In Africa, up to 50% of cash income is derived from livestock. However approximately 25% of livestock in developing countries die annually from preventable/treatable animal diseases, causing annual losses to national economies ranging from £10million-150million/year.
England is at a cross roads. Big advances in average life expectancy mean that people are living longer. This is an extraordinary story of success but also brings many challenges – 1 in 3 people over 65 will develop dementia. 800,000 in the UK already have Dementia and this number will double in the next 30 years. Dementia is already estimated to cost £19bn a year, a huge cost to the economy.
Smoking rates in England have fallen very little since 2007. Cancer Research UK reports that smoking kills more people than road accidents, overdoses, murder, suicides and HIV combined – by a factor of five. Smoking is also a major contributor to health inequalities – accounting for around half of the excess risk of premature deaths between the highest and lowest socio-economic groups.