Welcome to February’s edition of the Cordis Pulse – a monthly digest of key research and policy developments across the sectors in which Cordis Bright provides research and consultancy services, i.e. adult social care and health, children and young people's services, and criminal justice.

This month, we are pleased to share our independent evaluation of the Prevention and Diversion Assessment Tool (PDAT), commissioned by the Youth Justice Board. The PDAT aims to support more consistent, proportionate and Child First-aligned assessment practice in prevention and diversion. Our evaluation highlights promising shifts towards strengths-based conversations, alongside practical challenges around systems integration and variation in local implementation. Alongside the report, we worked with children to co-design a short explainer video to support meaningful participation in assessment conversations.

We’re also excited to launch our new mini-series, Making mentoring work, drawing on our experience of evaluating mentoring programmes. The series explores what works in mentoring, how to evaluate programmes and what is needed to build a stronger evidence base as mentoring programmes continue to grow across the UK.

In this edition we also summarise some recent publications across our sectors from the Government's proposed policing reforms which emphasises neighbourhood policing and stronger national coordination, to a series of evidence reviews of disabled people’s lived experience in the UK and national evaluations from the Department of Education.