Open wide – get ready to stop

US anti-social behaviour expert and preventative check-up specialist Tom Dishion told a London audience of children’s services experts, last night, that effective interventions were going more the way of good dentistry than of emergency healthcare.
Best known for his explanations of how adolescent peer groups escalate anti-social behaviour, Dishion is Director of the Child and Family Center at the University of Oregon. He was speaking at the annual lecture organised by the Dartington-i the former service design and prevention policy implementation arm of The Social Research Unit.
 
There were strong signals that prevention is a science growing in confidence, and that it needed to look less to medicine for a coherent treatment model, he argued.
 
“Too often we are urged towards a medical model, of diagnosing the ‘disease’ and treating it. I’m not sure that child and adolescent development in the context of family life is like that. It's more a case of health maintenance. It's like dental care. We all need a check-up and a little bit of help every now and then. I like to talk about health maintenance.”
 
The previous day he was in Birmingham speaking to senior staff in children’s services and partner organisations across the city. He was the latest among leaders in prevention science visiting the city as it plans and implements its Brighter Futures strategy - a £41m investment in prevention and early intervention activity.

 
See: Think once, think twice – get ready to stop