Social Research Unit

Reefer madness: seeking the links between evidence, policy and practice

A new edition of the Journal of Children’s Services, guest-edited by Nick Gould and Ian Butler from the University of Bath, UK, examines the nature, quality and use of evidence in the development of children’s services.

Its starting point is that children’s services brings together people from a wide range of professional and disciplinary traditions, occupational cultures and political orientations.

These reflect contrasting experiences of using evidence and different views of what constitutes evidence, how its quality is judged and how it should be used.

Contributions to the edition include a philosophical analysis of the meaning of evidence by Nancy Cartwright from the London School of Economics and a discussion of options for closing the ‘implementation gap’ between research and practice, by Nick Midgley from the Anna Freud Centre, London.

Ray Jones from the Universities of Kingston and London reviews the contribution of research evidence to 60 years of childcare policy in the UK, while Del Elliott, from the University of Colorado, US, explores why proven violence prevention programmes are so rarely used.

To subscribe to the journal follow this link.

MORE FROM THE JOURNAL

Evidence-based policy? where is our theory of evidence?

February 09 2010

Two articles featured in the latest edition of the Journal of Children’s Services highlight the complexity of measuring what services children and families receive.

Journal of Children's Services

Two articles featured in the latest edition of the Journal of Children’s Services highlight the complexity of measuring what services children and families receive.

The Good Behaviour Game, discussed by Katherine Hynes and colleagues from Penn Sate University, Pennsylvania, US, can be quantified in terms of the number, length and frequency of sessions and quality of delivery.

But as editors Nick Axford and Michael Little point out, “Very few children who may be in desperate need of such carefully administered help come anywhere near such manualised programmes.” One attempt to help capture the complexity of ‘services as normal’ is the Client Service Receipt Inventory (CSRI), used in adapted form by Elizabeth Monck and Alan Rushton to chart the use of post-adoption help.

However, the editors suggest that for all its strengths the measure “pays more attention to the frequency and location of contacts with agencies and professionals than to service content” and that “the detail relates primarily to hospital visits and school-based provision”. These are two of the better approaches to measuring services available, they argue. “Most accounts actually say surprisingly little about what children or families received. They make it no easier to imagine what a service ‘looks like’.

“There is a case for developing and testing new research measures of service provision and a need for a degree of standardisation across agencies in terms of how service use is represented in assessment tools and statistical returns. They acknowledge the potential pitfalls with this but argue that something needs to be done: “Critics may argue that this approach is hopelessly reductive: a service is fundamentally relational – a complex and dynamic transaction between two or more people.

One may as well try to understand affection by anatomising a kiss. “Currently, however, disparities in language, classification, type of information recorded and format prohibit meaningful comparison or the compilation of data for individual children.”

The trend according to Starbucks

November 13 2009

The question of how far and how well it is possible to adapt proven programs to meet local conditions, and news of an experiment in Hong Kong to encourage immigrant parents to become service providers in their own right feature in this quarter’s revamped Journal.

Journal of Children's Services

Editors Nick Axford and Michael Little compare recent changes in the world of service design to the shift in merchandising from mass production to the “nicheing” typified by the growth of Starbucks in the 1990s.

Reflecting on a discussion by US researchers Daniel Perkins and Lisa Chauveron of how far successful implementation of a classroom-based social and emotional learning programme depends on the similarities between pupils, they write: “It stands to reason that to be fixed on fidelity to the extent of giving no guidance about the type and amount of adaptation permissible for different recipients and contexts will limit practitioners’ capacity to tailor a programme meaningfully. It is also likely to undermine professional autonomy and innovation. Equally, since it is only human to fiddle, and creative ingenuity is only a small step beyond mere fiddling, programme ‘drift’ is inevitable.

The problem is that some changes made in good faith are reactionary and likely to undermine the programme’s impact. The resulting impasse has been identified as one of the main barriers to the widespread adoption of the ones that work best.”

The manifesto for a new 'law of love'

June 07 2009

A book summary of the results of the UK Good Childhood Inquiry has made the case for a new approach to child welfare and well-being that rejuvenates ideas about public service and neighbourly love.

Journal of Children's Services

A book summary of the results of the UK Good Childhood Inquiry has made the case for a new approach to child welfare and well-being that rejuvenates ideas about public service and neighbourly love.

Until now, the UK’s persistently poor showing in the European league tables of child happiness and well-being has produced little more substantial than hand-wringing and promises to do better.

Here it has at least found articulate and imaginative advocates for change in the shape of a panel of experts assembled by the Church of England Children’s Society to analyze the results of its Good Childhood Inquiry.

A Good Childhood” is fundamentally concerned with re-examining what children need in order to “flourish,” a state which it defines as “social engagement and the enjoyment of life – fulfilling our capacity to live in harmony with others and with ourselves”.

Too much in our current living patterns fails to promote these ends, the authors argue.

Unusually they go on to criticise the pursuit of individualism, defined as “the belief that the prime duty of the individual is to make the most of her own life, rather than to contribute to the good of others”. In its place they advocate a change of ethos, a “law of love”.

To read the full review of Richard Layard and Judy Dunn’s “A Good Childhood: Searching for values in a competitive age” see Prevention Action.

Liverpool in FAST parenting trials

The UK city of Liverpool is the focus of an experiment that brings families and schools together in an effort to build neighborhood networks to help vulnerable families.

Developer Lynn McDonald and UK project leader Elspeth Bromiley described the progress in Liverpool schools of Families and Schools Together (FAST) at a seminar in Exeter, last week.

McDonald devised FAST in a non-profit community agency serving children and families, and later studied it as part of her work at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison. She has since moved to the UK to be Professor in Social Work at Middlesex University in London.

At eight, weekly after-school FAST sessions groups of families share a meal and take part in structured games, responsive play and music. In facilitating this process, the program builds social capital in the local community. After the eight weekly sessions, FAST parent graduates lead monthly sessions of their own.

Experimental evaluation in the US suggests that FAST not only improves parental and child well-being but also succeeds in engaging and retaining the interest of the “hard-to-reach”.

FAST’s progress inside school neighborhoods is steered by a team of parents, key community members, school support staff and other practitioners (perhaps a counselor or therapist). It is down to the team to recruit parents, on the principle that local members are most likely to know the community and the parents who might be interested. As many as 40 families (four groups of ten) might be taking part at any one time.

Depending on its success, Elspeth Bromiley aims to have FAST rolled out to all Liverpool schools over the next three to five years.

She told the Peninsula Medical School seminar, “The implementation has been very carefully managed. I have worked hard to get support from the children and young people’s partnership as well as the school community. We aim to get this embedded into the system. People’s job descriptions are even being changed to make sure the program is delivered properly”.

MORE FROM PA

Sure Start’s shaky start is shored up

June 21 2009

Latest findings from the national evaluation of Sure Start show a reversal: the UK’s flagship programme for disadvantaged children and their parents seems to have started working.

Prevention Action

Latest findings from the national evaluation of Sure Start show a reversal: the UK’s flagship programme for disadvantaged children and their parents seems to have started working.

Reported in The Lancet, the new findings contrast with evidence that emerged in 2005 which showed mixed results and led to arguments about the value of the programme, the integrity of the evaluation and the lack of useful relationship between the two.

The newer results indicate that children in Sure Start areas are showing significantly better social development, more positive behaviour and greater independence than those in comparable areas where the programem has yet to be introduced.

And the effects are not confined to children. The researchers from Birkbeck College at the University of London found that families in Sure Start areas are less likely to resort to negative parenting tactics, provide a better home learning environment and use other services for helping children and families more regularly.

In similar contrast to the 2005 results, which suggested Sure Start might actually be doing harm among some of the most disadvantaged populations, such as workless households, single parents and teenage mothers - the benefits being observed are now evenly spread.

Prevention action in Denver

June 05 2009

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.

Prevention Action

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.

We have long experience of communicating evidence and ideas to people who are in a position to support the healthy development of children. But there is still a tendency on the part of governments, communities, schools and families alike to neglect effective methods or else to overlook them altogether.

Two contrasting projects figure prominently in our dissemination portfolio. Prevention Action is a daily newspaper published online. Stories from around the world cover breakthroughs in prevention science and its international application.

The Journal of Children’s Services is a peer-reviewed quarterly. It focuses on academic research on child development and children’s services, primarily but not exclusively from Europe, North America and Australasia.

We do other things to connect the research and practice communities. For example, we sponsor study tours of effective services in North America and Europe and we convene conferences and seminars of experts working internationally in the field of child development and the prevention of impairments to well-being.

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