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.

Earlier this year, researchers Michael Little and Dwan Kaoukji had the opportunity to work with a non-governmental organisation (NGO) in Ethiopia to help develop a service to prevent children from the risks of being sexual exploited.   

The unit contributed towards the design and evaluation of a new service aimed at reducing the number of children forced to migrate from rural areas to the capital city, Addis Ababa, because of difficult social and economical conditions. In many cases, these children are exploited by adults, forced into prostitution and exposed to severe risks to their health and development. 
 
The project was organised and facilitated by Childhope, a UK based charity working in partnership with ten NGOs across the developing world towards the protection of street and working children. One of these partners is an NGO based in Addis Ababa is Children Aid-Ethiopia (CHAD-ET), that provides services to children who have left their homes and rural villages to find work in the cities. Services include counseling, health care and vocational training to help children develop the skills needed to make a better life for themselves. 
 
Having recently secured funding, CHAD-ET and Childhope are working together to introduce a new prevention programme that seeks to change peoples’ attitude towards child migration. The unit will assist in developing a strategy for the service and evaluating its impact on reducing the number of child migrants.

Despite the legal requirement that local authorities should identify and assist ‘children in need’, children’s services agencies are still struggling to do so meaningfully and efficiently, we argue in the latest edition of the British Journal of Social Work.

Nick Axford's article analyses the strengths and weaknesses of prevalent approaches to determining the needs of child populations England and Wales before discussing new methods. It also argues how resources could and should be transferred to these more robust approaches. Failure to make wider use of them is endangering attempts to achieve better outcomes for children, Axford claims.
 
Click here to view article.

The question of whether a study tour can do more than stimulate, refresh or entertain its students by changing the way they work when they get back home is the subject of a forthcoming Unit journal article.

The European Journal of Social Work is publishing an account of the results of two Unit trips to the US during 2005 that enabled participants from the UK and Ireland to see model prevention and early intervention programmes in action and to meet their developers.
 
On the basis of interviews 30-36 months later, the article considers how far the experience changed participants’ thinking and led to innovations in services and service planning inside their organizations. It also identifies factors that helped or hindered the process. The article sheds light on how to get proven programmes adopted and implemented well, the challenges of cross-national policy transfer, and methods for promoting research utilisation.
 
See: Axford N, Jonas M, Berry V, Green V and Morpeth L (in press) "Can study tours help promote evidence-based practice in children's services?" European Journal of Social Work.

The effect on children’s development of catastrophe, disease, war and poverty and the astonishing resilience that enables some to endure the worst terrors are the focus of a new collection of papers co-edited by Unit researcher Dwan Kaoukji.

The effect on children’s development of catastrophe, disease, war and poverty and the astonishing resilience that enables some to endure the worst terrors are the focus of a new collection of papers co-edited by Social Research Unit researcher Dwan Kaoukji.  Published in November, the book reviews children’s services in the global South and brings together latest reliable evidence. A contribution to the Ashgate Library of Essays in Child Welfare and Development, the international selection discusses the risks to child well-being and the interventions and aspects of good practice. Dwan Kaoukji’s partner is the project has been Najat M’jid, the director of BAYTI in Morocco, a non-profit organisation dedicated to housing street children and preventing the illegal migration of children to Europe.
 
Both authors have had experience working in the developing world. Dwan has been at the Unit since 2006 and is writing a Phd on the processes that connect international NGOs with local communities working with children in the global South.
 
The book is available for purchase on our website. 

The relevance of religious symbolism to the social sciences – and to everyday life in a "postmodern" world – is a focus for debate at the latest meeting of the Centre for Social Policy, which takes place at Dartington Hall, today and tomorrow.

Canon Melvyn Matthews, Chancellor Emeritus of Wells Cathedral, will argue that human beings live symbolically by innate impulse. "It's not that we need symbols but that we live by symbols in any case. We never do without them even when we think, as modern rational creatures, that we can. "Considering in particular the value to Christian society of the Cross and the figure of Mary, he will say: "their presence has enabled us to live with suffering in a constructive manner. They have allowed us to see the importance of self giving in  community life, and allowed us to affirm the feminine and give value to desire. "In theological terms we have been able to see that suffering and the feminine are sacramental of the divine"

Other perspectives on the importance of symbols and structures in relation to family law and justice, social welfare and mental health are being presented by Fellows Mervyn Murch, Bill Jordan and Douglas Hooper.

Much in the Research Unit evidence archive resonates with this week’s promise by PM Gordon Brown to make a formal apology to all children who were shipped between the UK and Australia, Canada and other former colonies in the post war period.

The separation of children from their families and the significance of return and home featured in many Unit studies during the 1980s and 1990s. And the forced migration of children to Canada in the colonial period between 1867-1917 is the focus of a meticulous study by founder trustee Roy Parker, published last year.

Parker’s Uprooted considers the plight of some 80,000 British children – many under the age of ten – who were shipped from Britain to Canada by Poor Law authorities and voluntary bodies during the years following Confederation.

He examines the motives and methods of the people involved in both countries, why the policy ended, the effects on the children involved and their fate. He also explores the economic, political, social, medical, legal, administrative and religious aspects of the story.

He concludes with a review of evidence from more recent survivors of child migration, discussing the lifelong effects of their experiences with the help of modern psychological insights.

Such survivor testimony has provided a moving accompaniment to the Australian soul-baring that prompted this week’s UK announcement.

British Children's Secretary Ed Balls said the child migrant policy was "a stain on our society".

"The apology is symbolically very important," he told Sky News television. "I think it is important that we say to the children who are now adults and older people and to their offspring that this is something that we look back on in shame."
Uprooted can be purchased online from the Unit's Publications Page. 

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.

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 city of Birmingham's experience as a testbed for a comprehensive early intervention strategy, and the Social Research Unit's contribution to its design and evaluation were explained to Stormont Executive members, last week.

Unit director Michael Little and Tony Howell, Strategic Director, Children, Young People and Families in Birmingham were guest speakers at a seminar hosted by Barnardos and the Office of the Northern Ireland First Minister and Deputy First Minister.

It focused on how best to allocate public resources to improve the prospects of children and young people. Birmingham’s Brighter Futures strategy provided a case study.

Junior Minister, Sinn Féin MLA Gerry Kelly said: "We recognise the very real benefits that can be realised through providing timely and targeted interventions, most importantly for the young people involved – but also for the economic benefits that be achieved by such practices."

His Democratic Unionist counterpart MLA Robin Newton said: "We realise that there are no quick fixes. We must raise awareness, at all levels, of the need to re-evaluate our spending. The cost of investment at an early stage can be much less than the cost of tackling problems, which may later emerge if action hasn’t been taken early enough."