Birmingham gets down to family bonding

Advances over 20 years in prevention science are giving policy makers a more sophisticated picture of risk and protective factors that influence young people’s lives, US  researcher David Hawkins has told children’s services staff in Birmingham UK.
 
 

Professor Hawkins, founder of the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington, is one of a number of leaders in prevention science to visit Birmingham as they plan and implement their Brighter Futures strategy - a £41m investment in prevention and early intervention activity in the city. He described the Raising Healthy Children programme and explained how strategies that teach parents and teachers how to engage children in learning, that strengthen bonding to family and school, and that encourage positive behaviour, have long-lasting benefit. The first children to go through the programme in 1985 are still being tracked into their thirties.