About us
Foundations is the national What Works Centre for Children & Families, established in 2022 with a clear vision: that vulnerable children have the foundational relationships they need to thrive.
Our mission is to generate and champion actionable evidence that improves services and support for family relationships. We focus on children who need targeted support to address family-level risks, children experiencing harm or abuse in the home, and children in care and care leavers.
Children deserve support that genuinely improves their lives. Robust evidence helps ensure that decisions in children’s services are shaped by what is proven to work – not by chance, habit or access to resources. We generate and synthesise high-quality evidence, translate complex findings into practical tools, and work with partners to put that evidence into practice.
Our work spans some of the most important challenges facing children and families. We support parenting, strengthen wider family networks, help prevent domestic abuse and support children who have experienced it to recover, and work to ensure children in care have stable, close relationships.
We sit at the junction of evidence, policy and practice. We work closely with local authorities, national policymakers, practitioners and researchers, as well as children, young people and families themselves. Through our Evidence into Practice programme, we work with nine partner places across England to support the effective use of evidence in practice. Our Experts by Experience Panel ensures that the voices and experiences of children and families help shape our organisational decision making.
Our partnerships strengthen our research, challenge our assumptions and guide the choices we make. We believe evidence has the greatest impact when it is understood, trusted and used well. Our role is to help turn the best available evidence into better decisions, better services and, ultimately, better outcomes for children and families.
Strategy
Strengthening family or other close relationships for children is vital to give them the foundations they need to thrive in life.
Our strategy explains how we will generate and champion actionable evidence to improve services for children and families.
To read more on our strategy, please visit the website link here: https://foundations.org.uk/about-us/our-strategy/
Equity, diversity and inclusion statement
We know the children’s services don’t work fairly for everyone.
That’s why we embed equality, diversity, inclusion and equity in everything we do – from the research questions we ask, to the evidence we generate, to the guidance we produce. We are committed to supporting services that reduce disparities and drive a more equitable system for children and families.
To read more on our EDIE commitment, please visit the website link here: https://foundations.org.uk/about-us/edie/
Finances
Income
In 2025/2026, Foundations’ total income, including grants and trading activities, was £8.9 million. This included £8.1 million in core funding from the Department for Education (DfE), and while this forms the majority of our funding, we continually aim to diversify our income sources. To this end, we have secured £0.5 million in additional funding from other grants, and £0.2 million on a commercial basis from our contracts for services, all of which further our charitable purpose. Income from our trading activities amounted to a further £0.1 million.
Expenditure
Foundations’ total expenditure in 2025/26 was £8.9 million. This included £3.55 million on external delivery, evaluation and research, funded by our three grantors - the Department for Education, the Evaluation Task Force, and the Youth Endowment Fund.
Support costs of £0.9 million covered essential running costs, while governance costs were £0.05 million.
Expenditure on deliver staff was £4.4 million, reflecting our multidisciplinary staff team delivering the three critical aspects of a What Works Centre - evidence, policy, and practice across early intervention and children’s social care - and an efficient operations support function. Foundations provides excellent value for money and does not employ any fundraising staff.
Details of our finances can be located on the Charity Commission website.