Our impact
Our impact
Why data is key to our approach
We use robust data and independent evaluation to inform decisions, monitor progress and continuously refine delivery. We work with partners to implement evidence-based early years interventions in real world settings, reviewing and learning as we go.
Our central expertise and insight, including from our Trustees, Advisory Council and Evaluation Advisory Group, strengthen this further, bringing specialist knowledge, research and best practice to support decision-making, inform delivery and enable learning to be applied consistently across places.
Our ambition is to be a leading source of learning and insight on what works in the early years, sharing what we discover so that effective approaches can be strengthened, adapted and used more widely.
Our impact at a glance
Children’s development
9.7
percentage point increase for children on free school meals achieving good levels of development since 2022.
Communication and language
71%
of children in the schools that delivered the Talking Time intervention improved their communication and language skills.
Local systems
700
organisations and professionals working with us to support children in Stoke-on-Trent and Redcar & Cleveland.
The areas we strengthen
We work to strengthen the foundations children need for life and learning from pregnancy to age five. We work with partners towards four shared outcomes which support the key areas of development set out in the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) statutory framework:
- Improving parent-infant relationships
- Improving home learning environments
- Improving communication and language development
- Improving the quality of adult-child interactions in Early Years settings
Some of the ways we measure impact
Supporting families
What we do:
Support free local groups for parents and carers to access.
How we measure it:
Annual parent surveys.
Evidence: 5 x increase in parent, baby and toddler groups in Stoke-on-Trent.
74% of parents in our Stoke-On-Trent wards said Parent Connectors gave them helpful advice .
Building practitioner confidence
What we do:
Train healthcare practitioners in early communication interventions such as Newborn Behavioural Observation.
How we measure it:
Annual data gathering.
Evidence: 100% of healthcare practitioners we trained reported that they expected it to make a ‘significant’ or ‘very significant’ impact on their practice.
Strengthening early language
What we do:
Enable evidence-based early language and communication interventions in nurseries and schools.
How we measure it:
Annual data analysis
Evidence: 97% of children who took part in NELI (Nuffield Early Language Intervention) improved their language scores.
Strengthening local systems
What we do:
Our local backbone teams bring additional capacity and help to join the dots between public, private and voluntary early years support.
How we measure it:
Independent CEI evaluation
Evidence: “Thrive at Five demonstrates strong credibility, high acceptability, and clear potential to drive system-level change.” CEI evaluation report
Improving children’s outcomes
England
We measure this by the numbers achieving a Good Level of Development (GLD) by the end of Reception.
Scotland
We will measure impact using healthy child development data from the 27–30 month and 4–5 year reviews, alongside Achievement of Curriculum for Excellence Levels in literacy and numeracy.
Explore impact in each place
Independent evaluation
Our approach is externally evaluated by the Centre for Evidence and Implementation, with support from the Nuffield Foundation.
This independent evaluation helps us understand what works, where improvements are needed and how lasting change can be achieved at scale.