Updated 9 April 2013

Innovation Fund: Help and Support for Separated Families

Introduction

In July 2012 the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) launched a new Innovation Fund to provide help and support for separated families across Great Britain. It aims to support separated families and help them to collaborate in the best interests of their children. This note provides further information about both rounds of the competition. The first round is now complete and the second round is due to begin early Summer 2013.

Background

The Government believes that strong and stable families are essential to a strong and stable society. When families do separate they should be offered the help and support required to enable them to work together in the best interest of their children.

Following the publication of the Green Paper, Strengthening families, promoting parental responsibility: the future of child maintenance, and advice from an external expert Steering Group, we developed and launched a web application which provides online information and support to parents going through separation. This will soon be supported by telephone support for parents that cannot access the web or need more intensive support.

Additionally, Government is committed to enabling the development of other initiatives to help separating and separated parents to work together in the best interests of their children. DWP are doing this via this Innovation Fund to support separated families across Great Britain. Over £10m will be allocated to this fund over two bidding rounds. The first round has now been completed and details of successful suppliers and the projects being funded can be found below. The second bidding round will begin early Summer 2013 and contracts are expected to go live early 2014.

Key objectives of the Innovation Fund: Help and Support for Separated Families

The two key objectives of this Innovation Fund are to:

• Test a range of interventions to understand what is effective in encouraging collaboration and reducing conflict amongst separating and separated parents. We will develop an evidence base of effective interventions.
• Increase the number of children benefiting from child maintenance arrangements by reducing conflict and improving collaboration between separated and separating parents. This will be achieved by developing effective interventions that help parents work together to make their own arrangements and avoid using the courts or the statutory child maintenance system.

Who can bid for this Innovation Fund?

DWP will welcome bids from public, voluntary and private sector organisations, either on their own or in partnership with others.

It is likely that the organisation(s) who deliver the services to the separated parents (either the main contractor or sub-contractors) will be required to have previous appropriate experience of working with separated and separating parents.

Other information

More detailed information about the opportunities available through the second round will be made available soon on this site, Contracts Finder and the Official Journal of the European Union.

All projects funded by this Innovation Fund will be fully evaluated so that we can learn lessons and build our evidence base as well as considering wider replication of the interventions that work best.

DWP Innovation Fund: Help and Support for Separated Families Round One - Initial Application Results

We are pleased to announce that we have now completed the selection process for the first stage of Round One of the Innovation Fund: Support for Separated Families competition. The names of the successful suppliers of the Initial Application Form (IAF) stage are as follows:

• Berkshire Family Mediation
• Bristol Family Mediation
• Children 1st
• Families Talking
• Family Lives 01
• Family Lives 02
• Gingerbread
• Howells LLP
• Malachi Specialist Family Support Services
• Mediation Herefordshire
• Medway Citizens Advice Bureau
• Mumsnet Ltd
• National Family Mediation 02
• One Parent Families Scotland
• One Plus One Marriage & Partnership Research
• Relate Greater Manchester South
• Relate Ltd 01
• Relate Ltd 02
• Relationships Scotland
• Resolution
• Resolve Cymru
• Spurgeons
• Tavisstock Centre for Couple Relationships 02
• Tavisstock Centre for Couple Relationships 05
• The Centre for Separated Families 02
• The Centre for Separated Families 05
• The Parent Zone
• The Wise Group
• West Yorkshire Family Mediation Service 01
• West Yorkshire Family Mediation Service 02
• Wikivorce
• Working With Men

DWP Innovation Fund: Help and Support for Separated Families Round One - Successful Suppliers

We are pleased to announce the successful suppliers for Round One of the Innovation Fund: Help and Support for Separated Families competition, which are the following organisations.