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The prominence of late intervention in service delivery culture contrasts with the depth of scientific evidence that demonstrates the advantage of intervening early to prevent the development of social dysfunction and problems. The paper seeks to address this issue.

This paper draws on the author's experience as a leading UK politician advocating the greater use of evidence‐based early intervention approaches, including in two independent reviews to Government.

Early intervention programmes not only deliver better outcomes for children and families, but also yield substantial service savings and provide significant returns on investment. An Early Intervention Foundation, independent of government oversight, will respond to localised demand for evidence‐based interventions, and disseminate the body of science in a digestible and practical form.

The paper argues that the Early Intervention Foundation will lead a cultural shift towards localised, evidenced‐based services funded by evolving and innovative finance methods.

The transition to parenthood can pose challenges for women and men, and these are heightened in the context of social disadvantage (e.g. poverty, deprivation, social exclusion, housing instability and disabilities). There is mounting evidence that video-feedback approaches can provide a valuable buffer against such adverse outcomes. This study aims to evaluate the acceptability and preliminary clinical impact of video interaction guidance (VIG), delivered by health visitors and community support workers in a socially disadvantaged London borough, selected due to its multiple indices of deprivation predicting child and maternal adversity.

The study followed a non-randomised, before-and-after evaluation design. Health visitors and community support workers were trained in VIG delivery following the VIG Association-UK protocol. Families with infants under 12 months were conveniently recruited and received six weekly home-based sessions of VIG. The primary outcome was the acceptability of the intervention, assessing parents’ experiences using semi-structured interviews post-intervention. Clinical outcome measures were recorded pre-and post-intervention to yield preliminary evidence on intervention effectiveness.

In total, 23 families partook in the study, of which 19 completed the pre- and post-VIG quantitative analysis and 6 also completed the post-VIG qualitative interviews. Qualitative analyses documented high rates of acceptability and perceived improvement in family well-being. Preliminary outcome data indicated that completing the VIG intervention was associated with decreased parental anxiety and depression and increased parental confidence, parent-infant relationship quality, as well as an improvement in infant social and emotional development. However, the selective nature of convenience sampling limits the generalisability of the findings. The non-randomised design of the evaluation implies that findings can only be interpreted as preliminary evidence of intervention effectiveness. These considerations are addressed in the discussion.

The results of this study provide preliminary evidence of the acceptability and effectiveness of VIG delivery by health visitors and community support workers to new parents in socially disadvantaged urban communities. However, this study must be pursued further to be evaluated with larger, randomised samples to further explore the generalisability of VIG effectiveness in such settings.

The objective of this paper is to study the efficacy of the ASPECTSS Design Index's concepts as drivers of design intervention for educational environments for students on the autism spectrum. Based on the seven principles of acoustics, spatial sequencing, escape spaces, compartmentalization, transitions, sensory zoning and safety, ASPECTSS formed the basis for a preliminary post-occupancy evaluation (POE) and survey of an existing school environment.

Concepts drawn from the review of other strategies for autism spectrum disorder (ASD) friendly design were integrated with the seven ASPECTSS principles to create a design framework and consequent design retro-fit for a Pre-K-12th grade public school for students on the autism spectrum. The following design interventions were proposed: colour-coding based navigation; acoustical treatments in key circulation spaces; introduction of transition alcoves; classroom reorganisation using compartmentalization principles and the introduction of escape spaces for de-escalation. Specifically, a classroom template of modules of ASPECTSS-compliant layouts was provided to all staff. The efficacy and impact of these interventions were assessed using a whole campus online staff survey with further probing using classroom observations and subsequent interviews.

The results show alignment between the implementation of the ASPECTSS informed design interventions and responses to nine of the Likert scale items were all significantly lower than the middle response, indicating a high degree of satisfaction from survey respondents. These questions and responses related to the colour scheme facilitating ease of navigation for visitors of the school, the acoustics of the building successfully mitigating sound magnification and subsequently student distractibility, the organisation of the classrooms enhancing learning and the de-escalation zones allowing improved management of disruptive behaviours in the classroom.

This study focuses primarily on the Autism ASPECTSS Design Index as a framework for assessing classroom efficacy. Other tools and frameworks may produce different insights. A single school site was studied. Validation of these findings in other school environments is necessary before generalising these strategies at scale. The use of qualitative tools, primarily teacher and staff surveys, provides one lens into the efficacy of these design strategies. Further research using measurable biometric indicators such as heart-rate and stress levels measured through wearable technology could provide a first step towards the triangulation of these findings.

These findings could help provide more standardised best practices for designing learning environments for autism, potentially providing supportive strategies with real impact on learning quality, skill development and knowledge acquisition in school environments. This could potentially have economic implications by supporting more efficient progress for autistic students through their school curriculum.

Similar to economic impact, if validated and generalised, these findings could help with sense of accomplishment, general mental health improvement, alleviation of family stress and potential reduction of stigma in the autism community.

There is a slowly emerging field of design guidance for autism schools, but very little empirical evidence on the measurable efficacy of these strategies. This research provides one type of such evidence, as measured by the perceived impact from the point of view of staff and teachers at the school.

Evidence on implementing effective adolescent mental health promotion and prevention interventions in the European context is underdeveloped. The purpose of this paper is to identify evidence-based mental health promotion and prevention interventions for adolescents that have been developed and/or implemented across the school, community and digital settings in Europe. This review also sought to identify the relevant implementation processes in relation to what works, for whom and under what circumstances.

A narrative synthesis of the evidence was conducted which included two stages: a systematic search of studies assessing adolescent mental health promotion and prevention interventions; and a selection of interventions with the most robust evidence base, using pre-defined criteria, that have been either developed and/or implemented in Europe.

A total of 16 interventions met the inclusion criteria. The majority of interventions were school-based programmes. The review findings support the delivery of interventions aimed at enhancing young people’s social and emotional learning (SEL) and preventing behavioural problems. Results indicate that the effective delivery of SEL interventions on a school-wide basis could provide an important platform on which other universal interventions such as anxiety and bullying prevention, and targeted depression prevention could be developed in a multi-tiered fashion. There were a limited number of studies providing robust evidence on the effectiveness of suicide prevention, digital and community-based interventions.

This review identifies a number of robust evidence-based promotion and prevention interventions for promoting adolescent mental health. While the interventions have been implemented in Europe, the majority has not been evaluated rigorously and few included detailed information on the quality of programme implementation. Evidence of the effective cross-cultural transferability of these interventions needs to be strengthened, including more systematic research on their implementation across diverse country contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to refute See and Gorard’s paper published in this journal in 2015 which argues that parent-based interventions for school readiness are ineffective.

Methods and results from 107 studies that were cited in See and Gorard (2015a) and associated reports were reviewed. Evaluations were made based on comparing the original studies with the summaries of those studies in the publication.

In this rebuttal, the authors show how See and Gorard erred to correctly report methods, sample sizes, outcomes measured, and the actual results of prior research.

The authors suggest that See and Gorard do not provide solid evidence within their article to back up their claims about parent intervention programs. This rigorous review of See and Gorard’s primary sources reveals that the empirical evidence stands contrary to the claims being made. See and Gorard inaccurately reviewed publications which contradict their conclusions, and they relied on a vast amount of unpublished papers by students to support their claims.

The authors demonstrate how See and Gorard misapplied their own standards of evaluation; the authors claim that their source materials contradict the “finding” they purport to present; and the authors argue that they chose lesser known studies when more reputable ones were available.

The purpose of this paper is to describe a collaboration between independent researchers and an English local authority to develop a framework for understanding and measuring outcomes in children centres.

The project was based on developing a system for collecting quantitative and qualitative data that would reflect the multi-dimensional services delivered by children centres. This was called the Early Intervention Performance Outcomes Framework. It utilised the concept of interim outcomes and in so doing the aim was to create a system that would provide evidence for the difference these services could make to children and their families’ lives. It was also important for the system to enhance and not detract from service capacity in a period of austerity.

The paper reports on the project when it had generated its first year of data. The paper describes the overall success of the project, the on-going challenges it faces and provides some examples of how interim outcomes represented “steps along the way” for children and families.

The innovative collaboration described in this paper provides a positive example of how research methods can enhance both service design and delivery. It will be of interest to both those who work and manage children’s services and those engaged in research.

The purpose of this paper is to report on how early years practitioners worked with the ORIM Framework to support work with parents to promote early literacy experiences.

Co-produced Knowledge Exchange (KE) was used to develop and evaluate work with parents to facilitate their young children’s literacy. Information was gathered in discussion groups, interviews with parents and practitioners and feedback from all the parties involved.

Practitioners and families engaged with each other in the further development of an established literacy programme, and families demonstrated “ownership” of the co-produced knowledge after the end of the project.

Project design in co-produced research and KE is necessarily flexible. The focus is on practitioners’ knowledge and ownership of the process, sharing knowledge with parents and enhancing children’s experiences.

Practices that can enhance parental engagement in their children’s early literacy are varied and multiple and ORIM can be used flexibly to plan, develop and evaluate innovative and community – (and family –) specific practices.

Where parents have more knowledge of children’s early literacy development they are in a better position to support them; for learning communities there are implications in terms of future development of work with families to support early literacy development.

This paper contributes an original approach to the co-production of research with early years practitioners. It also identifies specific issues around the ethics of ownership in co-produced research.

This paper aims to make the case for early action approaches with migrant families, introducing a set of principles for practice, mapped against the Professional Capabilities Framework for social work and the Social Work England professional standards.

The paper first explores the context of social work with migrant families, outlining the challenges and gaps in our conceptual understanding of this work. The paper then introduces a conceptual model of work with migrant families which draws on the literature from social work and allied professions, and informed by social work values and ethics.

Current social work practice with migrant children has been criticised as defensive, procedural and lacking a coherent conceptual basis, particularly for those who are subject to the no recourse to public funds (NRPF) rule. This field of social work practice would benefit from an evidence-informed model of practice, anchored in human rights approaches and focused on early action. Eight principles, drawn from existing good practice in other social work and social care contexts, are outlined as the basis for a new model of practice in social work with migrant families.

The NRPF rule is a provision in the immigration rules that prevents people who are subject to immigration control from claiming most social security benefits in the UK. In recent years, there has been an increased interest in research about the NRPF rule and its negative impact on children. However, there is currently no evaluated model of social work practice for children and families with NRPF.

Strong relationships between parents and education professionals benefit all, especially children with disabilities. Parents of children with disabilities were integral to the development of special education, are their children’s best advocate, and are the members of the Individual Education Plan team who know the child the best. As education professionals we must strive to develop and maintain a strong relationship with parents and involve them in all aspects of their children’s education. This chapter provides an overview of parental rights and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA). The theoretical foundations of parental engagement is discussed and explored. Finally, recommendations are provided for developing and maintaining strong relationships with parents of children with disabilities.

The purpose of this paper is to consider the needs of children and young people with an intellectual disability and behaviours described as challenging in light of the article “The Ealing Intensive Therapeutic and Short Breaks service: An Update Five Years On”.

Contemporary literature associated with the provision of support to children and young people with an intellectual disability and behaviours described as challenging is considered. Some of the recent challenges associated with the provision of effective and timely support in light of current research, policy and practice are highlighted.

The Ealing service’s continued success is discussed within the context of new ways of working required to meet the needs of the client group and their families/carers.

The commentary reinforces the need to evolve service models that can provide specialist, timely and intensive support. The importance of early intervention is highlighted.