The Parenting Support Commissioning Assistant for Local Areas (PASCAL) is a free-to-use decision-making assistant. Its primary aim is to help simplify the complex process local authorities face when trying to identify the best interventions for their area to support parenting and the home learning environment. PASCAL gathers data on over 20 programmes and matches this to local needs and preferences. It focuses mainly on programmes for 3-4 year olds and estimates their impact on helping children reach a good level of development (GLD). 

The goal is to help local authority commissioners to access the information they need to identify suitable and impactful parenting programmes which best meet their specific requirements. We hope this will help local authorities to make the most of their Best Start in Life (BSIL) funding.

Please note: Nesta is a charity and is making this assistant available to local authorities on a free-to-use basis. While we hope you find this assistant useful in your decision-making process, please note that the assistant and the material it makes available are provided for information purposes only. Nesta is not responsible for any reliance you may choose to place on the tool or the material it makes available.

This project addresses a critical challenge: local authorities face significant complexity in synthesizing multiple features of parenting programmes, such as delivery models, cost, strength of evidence, and local population fit. As outlined in our parenting support at scale: market analysis report, the set of parenting interventions is complex and difficult to map to family needs. Evidence on efficacy is very expensive to produce and can be opaque, requiring time-intensive critical appraisal. 

PASCAL seeks to tackle these challenges by bringing together data on local need, evidence strength, cost, parent preferences, and local delivery knowledge to help local authorities access the information they require when commissioning parenting programmes with new BSIL funding made available in spring 2026.

This project is timed to coincide with new funding opportunities. PASCAL aims to help local authorities to take a data-driven approach to decision-making that combines local knowledge with data and rigorous methodology, so that robust value-for-money assessments can be made more easily.

We’ve taken a test-and-learn approach to developing PASCAL, working with users in local authorities to develop and iterate on the design and functionality of the assistant. PASCAL is designed for use by commissioners and other individuals in local authorities who need to make confident, timely decisions about what programmes supporting parenting and the home learning environment to fund and deliver to reach their Best Start in Life GLD targets.

The methodology involves gathering data on nearly 30 different parenting programmes, including cost, predicted impact on each child’s likelihood of reaching a good level of development, evidence strength, and predicted appeal to parents. This has involved complex modelling to predict the impact of different interventions on GLD, as well as conducting a large-scale quantitative survey with over 2,000 parents across the UK to provide a novel assessment of the relative attractiveness of different parenting interventions when presented on a level playing field.

The assistant matches these features against a specific local authority's budget, preferences, and data on local population needs (eg, high numbers of English as an additional language families). It then produces an optimised 'portfolio' of programmes estimated to deliver the highest value for money. Uniquely, it can simulate the predicted impact of this portfolio on the area's GLD statistics. Users can also compare their own custom portfolios and use the comparison table, which shows features of all programmes included in the assistant.