This paper explores the effectiveness of schools’ engagement with other agencies in two separate collaborative reforms supporting vulnerable children and families in North West England during a period of policy upheaval and extensive funding cuts. It brings together two research studies which were both designed to evaluate the effectiveness of programmes and the collaborative arrangements that had been established and their impact on the vulnerable children and families they were designed to support. One of the reforms was a large scale attempt to improve support and provision for all families in need across a city, the other was a smaller, targeted programme aiming to improve support for vulnerable families in one area of a geographically isolated town with significant levels of deprivation.  Schools were integral but not lead stakeholders in both programmes.

With a theoretical perspective informed by models of effective multi-agency collaboration (Cheminais, 2009), network theory (Borgatti et al, 2013) and theories of change (Connell & Klem, 2000; Cummings et al, 2011), the paper’s comparison of the outcomes from two contrasting programmes offers the potential to draw out implications about how to engage schools in multi-agency support for vulnerable children and families in the UK and internationally at a time when opportunities to develop such programmes is affected by severe budget cuts and policies promoting decentralisation and increased school autonomy (Lubienski, 2014; Sandals & Bryant, 2014). The research objectives for the two studies focused on:

• The impact of the programmes, and their specific sub-programmes and interventions, on vulnerable children and families
• The effectiveness of the programmes and the collaborative structures and processes within them.

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