A Growing Health Toolkit
A Growing Health Tool Kit is a practical guide produced by Garden Organic and Sustain to help community food growing projects work with the health and social care system. It explains how health commissioning works, how to develop and present food growing activities as health services, and how to gather evidence and measure impact. The toolkit brings together research on the physical, mental and social benefits of gardening, alongside product examples, evaluation tools and case studies of commissioned projects. It is designed to support community growers to secure funding, build partnerships and contribute to public health outcomes.
St Giles evaluation protocol
This document outlines the evaluation protocol for the SOS+ embedded mentoring programme, developed by St Giles Trust and evaluated by the National Centre for Social Research (NatCen). The programme aims to reduce violent offending among children and young people involved in criminal activity, youth violence, or exploitation by embedding mentors with lived experience in schools. It details the study’s rationale, methodology, target group, intervention design, and evaluation components, including impact, implementation, process, and cost analyses. The document also emphasizes equity, diversity, and inclusion, ethical considerations, and data protection measures, providing a comprehensive framework for assessing the programme’s effectiveness and scalability.
Stigma in the System
This report, “Stigma in the System,” explores how stigma is embedded in the UK social security system, impacting claimants’ financial security, mental health, and trust in the system. It examines public perceptions, institutional practices, and internalized stigma, revealing how these factors discourage people from claiming benefits they are entitled to. The report highlights the emotional toll of navigating the system and offers recommendations to humanize, simplify, and better resource social security, aiming to reduce stigma and improve outcomes for claimants. Essential reading for policymakers, advocates, and anyone interested in creating a fairer, more supportive welfare system.
UK Trauma Council: Research Roundup Mar 2025
PECIAL EDITION #3 Childhood Trauma and Domestic Abuse
This document is a comprehensive research roundup on the impact of trauma and childhood domestic abuse, highlighting key factors that influence children’s mental health and recovery. It explores the emotional and psychological effects of domestic abuse, factors that exacerbate harm, protective elements fostering resilience, and evidence-based interventions like group therapy, art, and play. It emphasizes the importance of supportive relationships, tailored approaches, and intersectionality in addressing diverse experiences. Practitioners, researchers, and policymakers can use this resource to better understand and support children and young people affected by domestic abuse.
Safe Lives: Values and principles for effective multi-agency working
This document outlines values and principles for effective multi-agency collaboration to support children, adults, and families. It emphasizes a cultural shift towards “doing the right thing” over “doing things right,” focusing on trust, transparency, and shared responsibility. Key values include accountability, boldness, care, and dynamism, while principles stress flexibility, safety, inclusivity, and collaboration. It provides guidance for professionals to create impactful, person-centered responses, foster positive relationships, and ensure safety and wellbeing. Ideal for those seeking to improve multi-agency practices and prioritize the needs of individuals and families in their work.
Understanding stalking – beyond the myths
A blog post from Somerset Domestic Abuse that outlines what stalking is, its prevalance, the impact it can have and also signposting to places where statistics or support may be available
Local Trust – Delivering Big Local: The Role of Locally Trusted Organisations
The Big Local programme uses key service providers, known as Locally Trusted Organisations. Their main role is to manage Big Local funding on behalf of volunteer-led partnerships. This paper sets out what Local Trust knows about Locally Trusted Organisations in general and in relation to resident-led decision making and control. It identifies gaps in knowledge and questions to explore through research. This is mostly focused on instances where the relationship does not work.
Stronger Together – A co-production toolkit
A complete toolkit that explores what co-production is, information on 5 key themes – collaboration, diversity, respect, empowerment and involvement. This document has links to further documents and resources that may be useful for those who are exploring their co-production journey and how to include people from their community within their organisation(s) or service(s).
Stronger Together – Developing a co-commissioning model
A learning guide for anyone involved in commissioning or funding decisions who wants to apply a co-governance approach. Includes examples and links to further resources to learn more.
Stronger Together – Co-production in research
A learning guide for anyone wanting to use a co-production approach within research or evaluation activities. Includes key recommendations, an example and further resources that may be useful