ArticlePilot and feasibility studies2025
Protocol for a feasibility and pilot study of the implementation and impact of specialist multi-agency teams supporting children and young people at risk of, or experiencing, violence or criminal exploitation outside the home.
Article in Pilot and feasibility studies, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundAcross the United Kingdom (UK), there are increasing calls for the implementation of multi-agency approaches to addressing violence or criminal exploitation outside the home (i.e. extra-familial harm) that address the needs of the child/young person (and their families) and the neighbourhood context in which harms occur. However, to date, there is very little evidence on what an effective multi-agency approach to supporting children and young people, and their families, looks like, or the services they should provide. This article presents the protocol for a feasibility and pilot study of a specialist multi-agency team embedded in neighbourhoods to support children and young people, and their families, who are at risk of, or experiencing, violence or criminal exploitation outside the home.
methodsA mixed-methods feasibility and pilot study will examine implementation across five UK sites. Pre- and post-outcome measures will be collected from ~1000 children/young people receiving targeted support (~200 per site). Interviews will be undertaken with children and young people, parents/carers, and stakeholders to examine views and experiences of programme implementation and outcomes/impacts, and as relevant evaluation design and outcome measurements. The extent to which findings from the feasibility and pilot study support progression to a full impact study will be reviewed. If a randomised controlled trial (RCT) is not feasible, we will explore a quasi-experimental (natural experiment) evaluation design, using the 'Target Trial Framework' to make explicit where a future evaluation will align with, and where it deviates, from the ideal target trial (RCT). DISCUSSION: This study will provide an important and timely contribution to the emerging, but limited, evidence base surrounding the implementation of place-based multi-agency interventions to support children, young people, and their families at risk of extra-familial harm. This work has direct implications for informing UK policy and practice in the wake of the Independent Review of Children's Social Care (2022), which called for a 'whole system reset' including an improved, multi-disciplinary 'revolution in Family Help' to improve outcomes for children and young people, and their families. PROTOCOL REGISTRATION: The full study plan is available here: https://youthendowmentfund.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/REVIEWED-YEF-AC2-Feasibility-Pilot-Study-Plan-FINAL-July-2024.pdf and via the Open Science Framework: https://osf.io/s9bux/ .
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.