Realist economic evaluation of the Family Wellbeing Partnership

Full project title: Realist economic evaluation of the Family Wellbeing Partnership, West Cumbria project

Duration: 1 August 2025-31 October 2026

Project lead for CPHWB: Dr Hamed Zandian

Research partner/collaborator: University of Cumbria 

Funder: University of Cumbria Default Scheme

Children growing up in poor neighbourhoods in West Cumbria face worse life chances than children growing up in wealthier areas. The Family Wellbeing Partnership (FWP) is a collection of charities. Together, they support families to help them give their children a better start in life and to improve their children’s health, mental health, wellbeing and life chances. We want to know if the support given has made a difference to the children and families supported.

We will use a method called ‘realist economic evaluation’ to help us find out how the support services work, for whom, in what contexts, and with what related impacts and opportunity costs. We will collect background information from the charities about their activities, and we will talk to families getting support, project staff and others interested in the FWP. Then we will analyse the information we have gathered.

We will share findings with people who want to improve the life chances of children in disadvantaged families and communities. Our findings will help decision makers and funders to design better services and understand the cost benefits. We hope that what we find out can be used to develop effective services for children and families in other places to improve more children’s life chances.

• A conference abstract titled: Interpreting ‘value’ in Realist Economic Evaluation to support commissioning decisions, accepted for oral presentation at the 2025 International Conference for Realist Research, Evaluation and Synthesis, 22-25 September 2025, Atlanta, Georgia, USA.

For further information about the project, please contact Dr Hamed Zandian (hamed.zandian@uwe.ac.uk).