The new edition of the Journal of Children's Services looks at whether the England and Wales Children Act 1989 has lived up to its promise.

The first of a two-part special edition is guest-edited by Rupert Hughes and Wendy Rose, both of whom were in the Department of Health at the time and closely involved in taking the Act through Parliament and, for some years after, in efforts to get it implemented. How well is the court system introduced by the Act working? Are local authorities providing the right balance of services? Are the terms right under which the child can be removed from the parents in his or her best interests? What is the balance between the interests of parents and children? These are among the questions considered by contributors.
 
The second part of the special edition, due out in September 2010, covers the support, care and protection services heralded by the 1989 Act.
 
Follow this link to view the Journal online.

Findings from a Social Research Unit study of the needs and characteristics of separated children seeking asylum in Ireland are now published in the April edition of the Child Care in Practice Journal.

The first empirical work of its kind in Ireland, the study established that such children are very far from being a homogenous group.

They face a multitude of risks and, although some experience significantly poor outcomes as a result, others thrive in their new environment and excel once properly settled.

In ‘The circumstances and needs of separated children seeking asylum in Ireland' Ali Abunimah and Sarah Blower describe how they were able to distinguish distinct patterns of need reflecting different types of experience and difficulty, which in turn require different types of service response.

Reference:

Abunimah, A, & Blower, S. (2010) The Circumstances and Needs of Separated Children Seeking Asylum in Ireland, Child Care in Practice, volume 16, number 2. PP 129-146. 

Key journal articles in the field of child development are brought together in a new book edited by Unit Director Michael Little and Barbara Maughan, from the Institute of Psychiatry, London.

Published by Ashgate as part of its Library of Essays in Child Welfare and Development, Child Development shows how understanding of the causes and consequences of impairments to children's health and development has been transformed in recent years.
 
A range of issues are covered, including the relative contribution of genetics and the environment, the way in which the brain re-wires itself at critical points in a child's development and the interplay between environmental influences and the individual characteristics of the child.
 
Other books in the series look at the law and child development, children's services in the developing world, defining and classifying children in need, children in state care and effective interventions for children in need.
 
Reference
Maughan, B. and Little, M (2010) Child Development, Aldershot, Ashgate
 
See the publishers website for further details or to purchase a copy of the book. 

'Which?' reports are famous for ranking computers, refrigerators, cameras and other consumer goods according to their quality and value for money ('Consumer Report' is the US-equivalent). 

At the Social Research Unit's annual lecture, held in London on 17th June, Steve Aos described how he and his team at the Washington State Institute of Public Policy produce 'Which?' style reports for State policy makers on programmes designed to improve outcomes for children.
 
The method has three steps: find out which programmes work, work out their costs and benefits, and develop portfolios of potential investments. The focus is on programmes that have been evaluated in real-world settings by randomised controlled trial or other rigorous comparison group designs. Benefits are calculated in terms of gains not just for programme recipients but also for taxpayers and wider society.
 
The Institute has conducted this work in numerous policy areas, including crime reduction, education, substance abuse, mental health and teen pregnancy. So, an early education programme might cost $7,700 per young person but yield $19,500 in benefits from increased earnings and reduced crime (amongst other things) the equivalent of over $2.50 benefits per dollar of cost. The higher the cost-benefit ratio the higher the programme is ranked.
 
The Institute conducts a risk analysis to check what the chances are of an investment not breaking even. But selecting programmes is the easy bit: doing them is harder. Aos also explained to the London audience how Washington State tries to get evidence-based programmes built into mainstream practice. “If we are going to realise some of the financial benefits we anticipate from our model we need to get the right people to the right programmes. The right people means the high risk populations, those who are candidates for expensive interventions like custody.
 
"There is a parallel focus on quality assurance with a strong attention to fidelity, and providers that fail to implement adequate systems to support quality implementation risk having their funding withdrawn." There was huge interest in Aos’s presentation, including leading representatives from government, academia and practice.
 
There was also considerable support for the work of the Social Research Unit and a collective of local government agencies to attempt a translation of the Washington model for use in the UK.
Follow link below to download a copy of the slideshow.

The West Midlands Regional Safeguarding Board has highlighted Birmingham's work to introduce evidence-based programmes and cost-benefit analysis to Children's Services at its first regional safeguarding awards ceremony.

The award  was in recognition of the Brighter Futures strategy, developed in collaboration with the Social Research Unit, and the way the City Council has strived to use high quality research evidence to inform their investment of £41m in prevention and early intervention activity.
 
This innovative approach represents a bold move on the part of politicians and senior officers at a time when the City Council has been under intense scrutiny following a series of damning reports on its social work services and the tragic and highly publicised death of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq.
 
The Social Research Unit has supported the planning and implementation of Brighter Futures. It is currently evaluating three programmes and leading on developing the technology to support cost-benefit analysis.

The Unit's collaboration with Birmingham City Council to defend costs and demonstrate the benefits of implementing new programmes in the city is described in the latest newsletter from Social and Emotional Learning Update. 

Of the five, two are among the “model” programmes selected by the US Blueprints for Violence Prevention standards agency. They include the Incredible Years parents and teachers training series and Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS). The extent of Birmingham's interest in social and emotional learning makes it unusual among English cities.
 
The Social Research Unit has been helping to ensure that the programmes are carried out with fidelity to their original designs, and to evaluate their impact on children’s wellbeing. In addition, the partnership has been developing a cost-benefit model to guarantee a maximum return on the £47 million investment.
 
The target payback is £100 million over the next ten years. The newsletter can be accessed on the Social and Emotional Learning Update website. For more information about the story, follow this link.

Unit researchers Morpeth and Little present at this years annual conference on the implementation of evidence-based programmes in the city of Birmingham, and the idea of using large systems to improve better outcomes for children.

The third annual Blueprints conference took place this year from April 7-9 in San Antonio, Texas. The purpose of the conference was to disseminate scientific evidence on violence, delinquency and drug prevention programmes for children and young people, and to provide practitioners with the guidance and tools needed to implement these programmes successfully.
 
The programmes discussed are “model” prevention programmes, such as Incredible Years and PATHS that have been proven to improve outcomes for children effectively. In addition to the along with “promising programmes” that have been identified as potentially having a high rate of effectiveness. A list of these programmes can be viewed on the Blueprints website, on the following link.
 
Conference workshops typically explore the challenges and lessons learned from the implementation and evaluation of model programmes across the globe.
 
Michael Little and Louise Morpeth presented alongside Cheryl Hopkins from Birmingham Children’s services on their collaborative work to implement evidence-based programmes in the City. The Birmingham Brighter Futures strategy calls for the implementation of four of the Blueprints model programmes; these include Incredible Years, Triple-P, Nurse Family Partnership and PATHS, and emphasizes the importance of implementing these programmes with fidelity. Apart from assisting the city council with the development of the strategy, the Unit’s involvement has been to evaluate the impact of these investments on child outcomes.
 
Other conference presenters included prevention scientists David Olds, creator of Nurse Family Partnership, and Mark Greenberg, creator of the PATHS programme (Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies).
 
To find out more about the conference, follow this link.

One of the Unit’s close colleagues in North Africa, Najat M’jid, who runs the Casablanca-based charity Bayti (‘my house’) is in London, this week to launch a new collection of key articles about children’s services in the global South.

Najat founded Bayti in 1993 to improve the condition of working children in Casablanca. Among the first organisations of its kind in her country, it provides a refuge and temporary accommodation for young children, as well as apartments for adolescents and help with social reintegration and rehabilitation.
 
The collection of research insights she has co-edited with Unit researcher Dwan Kaoukji locates her experience in the wider context of activity from Sudan to El Salvador, and deals with the effects of catastrophe, disease, war and poverty on children's development. They will be talking about they found, this Wednesday evening, at a reception at the Commonwealth Club.
 
Dwan Kaoukji’s involvement with the Unit arose out of its connections with the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago. Her doctoral study-in-progress, of role of NGOs as innovators, is related to her links with another of the Unit’s collaborators, the social justice charity ChildHope.
 
Najat M’jid’s UNESCO-funded work in Morocco brought her a nomination for the Chevalier de La Legion d’Honneur in France. For more about their book, which is published in the UK by Ashgate, visit this link.

Inconsistent and frequently inadequate measurement means that we too often we do not know what services children and families actually receive, says Unit researcher Nick Axford in an article soon to be published in the journal Child & Family Social Work.

In 'What's in a "service"?' he outlines the ingredients before analysing the strengths and weaknesses of how services have been measured for research, policy and practice purposes.

The task is critically important, he argues, not least because otherwise it is very difficult to evaluate what are increasingly referred to as ‘services as usual’ in controlled trials, and to distinguish them from the alternative content of evidence-based programmes.

His article concludes by outlining potential applications of a more nuanced and consistent approach to measuring children's services.

An early version of the article will be available for download on our publications page. Follow this link to see the journal Child & Family Social Work.