Social Research Unit

The summer edition of the Journal is out now!

The summer edition of the Journal of Children’s Services is out now. The new edition of the journal (6.2, 2011) is the second of four this year, and focuses on youth justice.

In a guest editorial for the new edition of the Journal of Children's Services (6.2), Rod Morgan argues that scaling back criminal justice agencies combined with a lack of money for criminal justice intervention could actually be very positive in the long run.

This is in a context of huge uncertainty and gloom among youth justice workers. The axing of the Youth Justice Board and significant budget cuts are combining with a bleak outlook for young people as the number of unemployed 16-24 year olds approaches one million.

Morgan argues that despite many positive policies, the previous UK government was ‘tough on crime’ and not ‘the causes of crime’ as it claimed. The number of children criminalised and incarcerated soared. This was despite the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, the enormous cost and overwhelming evidence that such actions actually increase the likelihood of re-offending.

The special edition on youth justice is based on the Independent Commission on Youth Justice report, “Time for a Fresh Start”, published nine months ago. It also advocates a smaller state and a bigger society when it comes to youth justice, for example with greater use of non-criminal controls such as the family, neighbourhood and school.

The special edition assembles a highly respected cast of commentators in the field to discuss questions arising from the report.

Edition 6.1 was published in March 2011. To subscribe to the JCS, which includes free access to the 5-year online catalogue of articles, follow this link: Subscribe Now!

MORE FROM THE JOURNAL

Journal edition examines the effects of the 1989 Children Act, 21 years later

August 11 2010

The new edition of the Journal of Children's Services looks at whether the England and Wales Children Act 1989 has lived up to its promise.

Journal of Children's Services

The new edition of the Journal of Children's Services looks at whether the England and Wales Children Act 1989 has lived up to its promise.

The first of a two-part special edition is guest-edited by Rupert Hughes and Wendy Rose, both of whom were in the Department of Health at the time and closely involved in taking the Act through Parliament and, for some years after, in efforts to get it implemented. How well is the court system introduced by the Act working? Are local authorities providing the right balance of services? Are the terms right under which the child can be removed from the parents in his or her best interests? What is the balance between the interests of parents and children? These are among the questions considered by contributors.

The second part of the special edition, due out in September 2010, covers the support, care and protection services heralded by the 1989 Act.

Follow this link to view the Journal online.

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.

Implementation science – the real thing?

Researchers and evaluators are in Bethesda, Maryland, this week, to work at “methods and measurements” for a new science of dissemination and implementation

Few will dispute that there are big obstacles to the uptake of evidence-based interventions in children’s services, and that even when they are commissioned they are not necessarily implemented very well.
Successful introduction is no guarantee of sustainability: interventions may be delivered for a short period — typically as part of a pilot supported by ring-fenced funding — but then they fizzle out.
This year’s third annual US National Institutes of Health conference on the subject is covering five key issues related to these thorny problems.

The first is how to measure the fidelity and quality of implementation. Few of the available products synthesize information about promising implementation practices in a language that will reach non-scientific audiences. Conference presenters will be exploring the value of tools that offer more practical guidelines for increasing the quality of implementation.

If consumers, clinicians, funders, and policy makers are to be able to determine how far they get the interventions they need and ask for, more efficient and effective fidelity measurement methods are wanted.
A key challenge is to make such judgments routine, but few fidelity measures are used in practice and fewer meet the different needs of clinicians and manager. Such measures as there are tend to be unwieldy and expensive. So a key question, particularly pressing in schools, for example, concerns the necessary trade-off between effective (valid and reliable) and efficient calculations of fidelity.
A second issue on the conference agenda is how to develop capacity among providers for the suitable selection and implementation of evidence-based interventions. Prevention “operating systems” such as Communities that Care, which assist communities and service delivery agencies in the selection and implementation of programs, have demonstrated the value of improving local capacity.

But does providing community stakeholders with technical assistance actually improve their insight into the selection, implementation and evaluation of interventions? And can the growth of expertise be assessed qualitatively as time goes by? A study of the Iowa-made PROSPER operating system examines these questions.

A third fundamental concerns scaling up effective interventions. Is there reliable routine practice that can be followed when implementing widely across communities a program that been tested and proven in a relatively small number of trial sites?

Case studies to be presented, this week, include a five-year prospective study of the process and outcomes of scaling up a family planning innovation in Mali, India, Madagascar, Guatemala and Rwanda.
In those enormously varied surroundings, the researchers applied quantitative measures to establish whether the model was integrated into training programs. They also conducted focus group discussions and interviews with staff to identify the relational, socio-political, environmental and economic factors relating to scale-up.

Another presentation considers the value of “train-the-trainer” models of a kind frequently used in public and mental health to disseminate programs to community settings.
“Master trainers” teach “instructor-trainees” the content of an intervention, as well as the process of training others. The newly-trained instructors go on to lead training sessions for target groups. Do trainers disseminate the program to the target audience — and how good is the training by the second generation instructor-trainees?

A fourth issue is how to measure and promote organizational readiness for change.

Measures such as the Organisational Readiness to Change Assessment (ORCA) developed to support cardiac care are reliable but what is the relationship between baseline readiness scores and implementation? One presentation examines this in relation to hepatitis prevention services.

None of these issues will be relevant if no-one knows much about evidence-based interventions in the first place. Many researchers and professionals continue to be frustrated by the low rate and slow pace at which proven solutions are applied in practice. One presentation explores whether the systems and infrastructure commonly used in marketing and distribution have anything to offer.

Coca-Cola products should always be “within an arm’s reach of desire” said the drink manufacturer's CEO, Robert Woodruff, in the 1960s. What do programs like PATHS, Incredible Years and Functional Family Therapy have to learn from the company’s market segmentation, sales and customer service activities?

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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