This event took place on Tuesday 4 June. You can watch the recording below.

With a general election looming, a policy refresh is on the horizon for all political parties in the UK as they seek new ideas to take into the next government. But poor institutional memory and failure to learn from other countries’ experiences can lead to policy failures and substandard outcomes. How can an upcoming government avoid this? What examples of successful policy outcomes exist in the UK and around the globe for the government to draw upon? And what lessons can the UK learn to help tackle future policy challenges?

In the first event of our new How to make good things happen series, we looked at England’s teenage pregnancy strategy, reflecting on the success that was achieved and the transferable lessons for other social policy areas.

Developed in 1999 by the Social Exclusion Unit, the cross-governmental Teenage Pregnancy Strategy aimed to reduce teenage conceptions in England by half by 2010. Reductions began in the early 2000s and accelerated later in the decade, with the target eventually achieved in 2014.

We used this case study to look at the delivery of a challenging outcome target. How was a cross-sectoral strategy established and maintained? How were preventive interventions and changes to services developed and delivered? How did wider youth policy and other social changes affect teenage conception trends?

Moira Wallace, who oversaw the original teenage pregnancy strategy in the Social Exclusion Unit, joined Nesta CEO Ravi Gurumurthy to explore the policy’s successes and challenges, and look for lessons that could be applied in other policy areas this decade.

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The opinions expressed in this event recording are those of the speaker. For more information, view our full statement on external contributors.