We are not yet convinced the Department’s dissemination of learning from the programme is delivering widespread improvement. The Innovation Programme and its successor schemes have spread practice from six promising innovations across 57 further local authorities. There is some evidence that practice from the schemes is being taken up outside the scope of the funded programme. There is encouraging early data indicating the potential impacts of projects in these successor schemes. The Department does not yet have a complete picture of the impact of the programme on outcomes for children, however, and the evaluations from the successor schemes are only due between Autumn 2022 and 2027. The Department recognises the need to balance the tensions between the time needed for its formal evaluations to report, and the desire in the sector for early action. Understanding impact is also complicated by the lack of a coherent set of outcomes for children’s social care. The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care considers that the programme’s ‘scale and spread’ approach is limited in the absence of fundamental change and that there is sufficient evidence already for investment in new approaches, warning the costs of inaction are too high. Recommendation: The Department must set out a coherent set of outcomes it expects from the sector in its response to the Independent Review of Children’s Social Care, and further report on the impact of the innovation programme and successor schemes in supporting these outcomes. Recommendation: The Department should set out how it will secure a better understanding of the take-up of learning by local authorities across the country.