A manual to guide the implementation of the Incredible Years BASIC parenting programme in Birmingham, UK, has been completed.

The manual is aimed at the Children's Centre managers and staff involved in implementing the programme but will also help other stakeholders – parents, teachers, local services, policy makers – understand what the intervention is about.It describes what Incredible Years seeks to do and how, and explains why the programme is being implemented in Birmingham.
 
The manual also provides guidance on implementation, covering subjects such as training and supervision, parent recruitment and delivering the course with a multi-lingual group. The final chapter sets out how the evaluation will work. The manual does not replace the programme materials but rather accompanies them.
 
Incredible Years is a parent training programme. It helps children who may have difficulties with their behaviour, such as temper tantrums, being impulsive or unable to concentrate, disobedient or defiant, bullying or fighting with other children. It has been implemented in most states in the US and also in parts of the UK, Canada, Norway and Ireland. It is being implemented in Birmingham in a pilot project and evaluated to a high standard. If the results are positive, it is hoped to roll it out across the city.
 
The Incredible Years programme is aimed at parents of children aged 3-4 who live near these centres and who feel that they would benefit from having some help in managing their children’s behaviour.

Vashti Berry graduated as Doctor of Philosophy today from the University of Bath.

Vashti’s doctoral studies considered the impact of different strategies to resolve family conflict on children’s health and development. The work sparked her interest in the way that neighbourhoods, schools and families mediate risks to child well-being. The research, based on a sample of families selected to be representative of Dublin Ireland, showed how psychological aggression and minor physical violence -the most common way of resolving conflict in families- elevates the risk of childhood disorder by an order of three. As well as sponsoring a broader inquiry into the role of neighbourhoods, school and family context in child development, Vashti’s study has highlighted the potential for public health approaches to child protection and domestic violence. Joining Vashti at the ceremony were her parents, husband Graham and son Tristan.

David Jodrell, a psychology graduate whose dissertation on disability policy in education won him a British Psychological Society award in 2007 has joined the Unit this month as a research assistant.

 
One of David's projects will be to help adapt an established will-being measure, Kidscreen, for use by children with special educational needs. It will be trialled as part of our partnership in the Birmingham City Council Brighter Futures initiative.
 
David became interested in child development during his studies at the University of Wales Institute, Cardiff.  His primary role will be to assist Unit director Michael Little, but he also hopes to broaden his knowledge of evidence-based policy and practice.

Michelle Obama and Gordon Brown squeezed in visits to the House of Commons, yesterday, around a presentation to the growing UK prevention lobby by Social Research Unit guest Roger Weissberg.

Weissberg was in London to give a series of presentations on the contribution of social and emotional learning to child outcomes.
 
The event in the House of Commons was arranged by prevention advocate Graham Allen MP and attended by his Conservative ally Iain Duncan Smith MP.
 
Prior to the Commons meeting, Weissberg attended a lunch meeting of experts interested in establishing an organisation with capabilities similar to the US Collaborative for Academic and Social, Emotional Learning or CASEL.
 
He is a founder member and president of CASEL, which provides implementation and evaluation resources for school districts across the United States operating social and emotional learning curricula.
 
The Unit's interest in CASEL's work stems from its impact on child well-being. A recently published systematic review by Weissberg and Joe Durlak of over 700 experimental studies involving 270,000 children shows that the curricula reduce conduct disorders by 10 per cent and emotional disorders by nine per cent. More dramatically, the curricula drive up academic performance by 11 per cent. These impacts were felt by all children in a school.
 
Weissberg presented in Committee Room 14 of the House of Commons. Afterwards Prime Minister Gordon Brown and his parliamentary colleagues arrived in the midst of the lastest Govrnment crisis. At the other end of the Palace of Westminster, Michelle Obama and her children were on a private visit.
 
Weissberg is in England with his daughter Elizabeth, a philosophy graduate from Yale. Today he travels to Birmingham were the Social Research Unit is supporting the City's implementation and experimental evaluation of the social and emotional learning program, PATHS. On Wednesday he is meeting polcy makers and educators in Northern Ireland.
 
Download Weissberg's PowerPoint slides in PDF format to see his presentation.

The Social Research Unit submits annual reports to Companies House as required by the Charity Commission. An annual review summarising our work and finances is available for download.
 
 

Prevention Action conference coverage this spring included a visit by senior researcher Vashti Berry to the Society for Research in Child Development biennial meeting in Denver, USA.

This multidisciplinary conference routinely covers nearly every aspect of human development, but this year paid particular attention to interventions for children and families.
 
Visit the site for reports from a symposium where Arthur Reynolds made the economic argument for prevention programs, a discussion of randomised controlled trials of school-based interventions, and a profile of Edward Zigler, Sterling Professor of Psychology at Yale.

Eric Taylor, Emeritus Professor of Child Psychiatry at the Institute of Psychiatry in London, presented at a seminar convened by the Peninsula Medical School. Taylor, a recognised world leading expert on childhood hyperactivity set out the guidelines emerging from the recent National Institute for Clinical Excellence review of the treatment of ADHD.

The need for clinical guidelines was emphasised by the finding that rates of administration of medication for childhood attention disorders in the UK varies from between three in 1,000 cases to three in 100 cases. When asked what surprised him most about the review, Taylor pointed to the cost-effectiveness of psychological interventions such as parenting training. “It is well known that such treatments are effective”, he noted, “but I had doubted whether the costs of their administration would be less than the financial benefits. This review has shown me to be wrong in this regard”.

Prevention Action was in Denver this week reporting on the biennial Blueprints for Violence Prevention conference. Blueprints is managed by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence and assesses programs according to independently agreed standards of evidence. 
 
Those that have been rigorously evaluated and can demonstrate positive effects are awarded model programme status. The week-long coverage includes stories about Big Brothers Big Sisters, Life Skills Training and an interview with Blueprints Editor Del Elliot. A brochure of the papers presented at the conference is available on their website. 
 
The next Blueprints conference will take place in March, 2010 in Denver, Colorado. 
 

Peter Townsend, Emeritus Professor of Social Policy at Bristol University, Essex University and the London School of Economics has died of a heart attack at the age of 81.

Townsend, co-founder of the Child Poverty Action Group, had a long association with the Social Research Unit at Dartington, primarily through his leadership of social policy at Bristol.
 
The Unit was closely tied to Bristol University until the retirements of Roy Parker and Peter Townsend in the 1990s. Peter contributed to the founding of the Centre for Social Policy at Dartington in 1993 but withdrew from his fellowship on the grounds that there was too much thinking and not sufficient action. The Centre provides a context for experts to continue their work beyond formal retirement.
 
His great achievement was to rediscover and re-define poverty in the 1960s. Even today, no serious study of poverty and its effects omits reference to Townsend’s work. The strength of his contribution is reflected in the establishment of the Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research with which The Social Research Unit continues to have close links.
 
Two founder members of the Social Research Unit worked with Peter Townsend at the LSE. Royston Lambert became a fellow researcher after completing his first degree at Cambridge and Spencer Millham did some of the fieldwork for the study of old people’s homes, The Last Refuge.
 
Roger Bullock, Chair of Trustees at the Social Research Unit, was among Peter’s first five MA graduates at Essex University in 1965 and assisted projects on disability and poverty. Roger's obituary to Peter will appear in Friday's edition of Prevention Action.