The Social Research Unit is among child policy research centres in Dublin this week for the latest meeting of a network bringing international perspective to the problems of child poverty, child abuse and neglect.

Unit thinking about the role in children’s services of ‘operating systems’ as a framework for evidence-based programmes, cost-benefit analysis and reliable evaluation was discussed at the annual conference of the UK Association of Directors of Children’s Services.

Social Research Unit director Michael Little urges the Michael Sieff Foundation to new depths of reflection as an infomed interdisciplinary critic of UK children and families policy.

Links between The Social Research Unit and the influential Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning (CASEL) at the University  of Illinois, are being strengthened by the temporary departure of researcher Tim Hobbs.

Above all else, we want to understand why some children develop better than others and why it is so difficult to make evidence-based practice part and parcel of mainstream services.

The need for better understanding of the thin line between domestic violence, child maltreatment and the routine turbulence of ordinary family life, and for interventions that recognise the sliding scale of seriousness, is the theme of a Unit presentation at the annual UK congress on child abuse and neglect.

Above all else, we want to understand why some children develop better than others and why it is so difficult to make evidence-based practice part and parcel of mainstream services. Studies are in progress or soon to begin into how the dynamics in societies, neighbourhoods, schools or families affect the risks to children’s health and development. It is well known that many children exposed to significant threats to their well-being progress without obvious problem. We want find out why this happens, and, similarly, what are the consquences for the children who succumb.