The Care Review, while recognising the role the Innovation Programme has played in creating stronger practice, asserts that the impact of its scale and spread approach is limited in the absence of more fundamental change. The Care Review considers the evidence backing its own recommendations is already ‘compelling and comprehensive’, while the evaluations from the Department’s successor schemes are only due between Autumn 2022 and 2027.28 The Department is having to balance the tensions between the time taken to learn about outcomes from its longer-term evaluations and the desire in the sector for early action.29 The Department considers that it is moving towards the point of transitioning from scale and spread into changing mainstream approaches of social care practice in order to influence impacts on a greater scale.30 21 Q 52 22 C&AG’s report, paras 9, 18, 2.2 and 3.1 23 Q 56 24 EPC0003 p.2 25 EPC0001 p.1 26 Qq 54, 57 27 Qq 44, 53 28 Josh MacAlister, The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care Final Report, May 2022 p.46, and C&AG’s Report para 20 29 Q 14 30 Qq 72–73 Evaluating innovation projects in children’s social care 11 2 Supporting the system for improving children’s social care Improving data in children’s social care