Blog: What can we realistically expect from training in children’s social care?

Findings from novel evaluation of a trauma-informed training initiative for children’s social care professionals in the UK offers several important lessons about how we assess change in complex systems.

Co-developed by the National Children’s Bureau and Coram Leap Confronting Conflict, Fostering Connections aims to strengthen support for young people aged 10 to 17 in foster care or supported lodgings, by improving how social workers and foster carers understand and respond to trauma. The program brings together young peoples’ social workers and supervising social workers through a mix of e-learning, face-to-face training, reflective practice sessions, and wider organisational activities designed to embed trauma-informed practice across local authorities.

CEI, in collaboration with Bryson Purdon Social Research, recently completed a randomised controlled trial (RCT) and an implementation and process evaluation (IPE) of Fostering Connections. The evaluation was co-funded by the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) and the UK Government Home Office.

To our knowledge, this evaluation is a first in several ways: using a RCT to investigate the impact of social worker training on outcomes for young people in care; evaluating training that brings together different groups of social workers; and evaluating the impact of trauma-focused training for social workers.

The findings offer several important lessons, not only about trauma-informed training, but also about how we evaluate change in complex systems such as social care. 

1. Training can change practice, but that does not always lead to measurable outcomes

One of the clearest findings from the IPE was that practitioners highly valued Fostering Connections. Many social workers described the training as “transformative”. They reported changes in how they understood trauma, how they communicated with colleagues, and how they worked with young people and carers. This matters. In children’s social care, reflective, trauma-informed practice is an important foundation for building trusting and supportive relationships.

However, the quantitative findings present a different picture. The RCT found no measurable improvements in outcomes for social workers, foster carers or young people during the study period. While these findings still provide relevant insight, confidence in them is limited as the study received a very low security rating under YEF evidence standards. This was largely due to challenges encountered during delivery of the evaluation.

No significant quantitative impact does not necessarily mean that Fostering Connections “did not work.” Instead, it highlights an important reality: that changes in practitioner knowledge, confidence and attitudes do not automatically or immediately translate into measurable changes for children and families.

In complex systems like social care, impact is rarely linear.

2. System conditions shape whether training can succeed

The evaluation also highlighted how difficult it can be to embed new ways of working into overstretched services.

Social workers described significant everyday pressures, including high caseloads, workforce instability, competing priorities, and limited time for reflection. Even when staff were motivated and engaged, these wider organisational conditions affected their ability to consistently apply and embed what they had learnt in training. This points to a wider lesson for the sector: training alone is unlikely to deliver large-scale change.

Trauma-informed practice requires more than individual skills. It also depends on supportive supervision, leadership buy-in, stable teams, protected time, and organisational systems that reinforce relational ways of working. Without these conditions, training may feel meaningful for practitioners while having less visible impact at service level.

3. Evaluating social care interventions is complex

The evaluation also demonstrated some of the challenges involved in conducting rigorous research in children’s social care settings.

The RCT faced several methodological difficulties, including participant attrition, placement changes, and young people leaving care during the study period. These are not unusual challenges in social care research, but they can make it much more difficult to detect change.

This is why combining impact evaluation with qualitative research proved so valuable. The qualitative findings, shaped by implementation science frameworks, helped explain what practitioners experienced, how implementation worked in practice, and why measurable outcomes may not have shifted in the way researchers expected.

For complex interventions, using implementation science to understand how change happens is just as important as understanding whether change happened.

4. Realistic expectations matter

Perhaps the most important lesson from this evaluation is the need for realistic expectations about what training alone can achieve.

Training is often treated as a solution to deeply structural challenges in children’s social care. But even high-quality, well-received programs cannot, by themselves, support practitioners to overcome systemic pressures.

Fostering Connections showed promise in supporting reflection, learning and practice development. But sustainable improvements for children and young people are likely to require long-term organisational and system-wide commitment, alongside workforce development.

For researchers, practitioners, and policymakers alike, these findings are a reminder that meaningful change in social care takes time, and that evaluation must reflect the complexity of the systems they operate.

The full evaluation report is available HERE 

The Fostering Connections Trial Report was authored by current and former CEI staff Anne-Marie Baan, Dr Ellie Ott, India Thompson, Paola Castellanos, Dr Sweta Gupta, Ssanyu Kayser, Anna Emsley, Dr Catherine Carroll and Dr Katherine (Katie) Young, in collaboration with Dr Susan Purdon and Caroline Bryson (Bryson Purdon Social Research).