Please note this Trial Protocol was updated in April 2022 to reflect the removal of the impact evaluation and the updated version of our plan for the implementation and process evaluation. The planned impact evaluation has been dropped due to low uptake of the intervention, evident in survey data collected from social workers, family support workers and foster carers in participating LAs in October 2021.

Kitbag is a resource for direct work designed to promote emotional literacy, positive behaviour and good relationships between children, professionals and carers. It contains puppets, animal cards and other items that aim to help children and young people understand and express their feelings.

Since 2019, social care researchers at the University of Sussex have partnered with the Kitbag developers, the International Futures Forum, to embed and support the tool’s wider development, particularly in its use with vulnerable children in social work settings. 

IFF and the University of Sussex are being funded by WWCSC as part of the Open Funding Round to trial the “Putting Kitbags to Work” programme. The programme involves providing social workers and family support workers in intervention group teams with a Kitbag each, access to Kitbag Online and workshops to support practitioners to use their Kitbag. The foster carers and kinship carers of children and young people supported by social workers in the intervention group will also receive a Kitbag.

To evaluate the programme, WWCSC’s Research Team is conducting a Randomised Controlled Trial with four local authorities: London Borough of Bexley, London Borough of Haringey, Oxfordshire County Council and Warwickshire County Council. 

The trial is 12 months long and WWCSC will publish findings from the trial in Summer 2022.

Please see the Privacy notice here.

Please see the updated Trial Protocol here.

Please see the original Trial Protocol here