Children and Young Peoples Vanguard Project

Bristol, North Somerset and South Gloucestershire Integrated Care Board is the Southwest ‘Vanguard’ site (one of 12 nationally) commissioned to deliver the Children and Young People’s Framework for Integrated Care (Community), developed out of the Framework for Integrated Care (SECURE STAIRS). The vision of the community framework is to facilitate effective cross-agency working within a trauma-informed system that supports children and young people at risk of school exclusion, those in care or those with a Special Educational Need (SEND) / Social, Emotional & Mental Health difficulties (SEMH) need. 

The Vanguard is a NHSE health and justice funded project, aiming to provide additional support to the most vulnerable children and young people with multiple, persistent and complex needs in the community. Rather than providing a heavily prescribed top-down model of delivery, the Framework provides a set of principles that act as a template for trauma informed cross-agency working, providing preventative support for children exhibiting high risk, high harm behaviours. 

There are seven Vanguard pathways of work which deliver services to young people through existing organisations. There is also a Barnardo’s Lived Experience Group and Trauma Informed System Manager (TISM) working across the wider health and care system, which support the Vanguard’s work.

Our impact

Our Clinical Effectiveness Team closely supported the Vanguard Project Manager and steering group with the development of an external evaluation. The team was involved in: 

  • Securing additional evaluation funding 
  • Developing external evaluation specifications 
  • Meeting with procurement teams, universities and potential bidders 
  • Development of the evaluation tendering process and panel 
  • Providing consultation and support, particularly around expectations, methodology and future sustainability of any evaluation work. 

There was a successful evaluation tendering process in 2022 and a team from the University of the West of England (UWE) were appointed to deliver a mixed methods evaluation of the project. They bring an academic team with significant frontline experience in the criminal justice system to help develop the data and evaluation work of the Vanguard pathways, whilst meeting the needs of this specific project.