What we mean by research

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 what are the consequences for the children who succumb.

We are also investigating how evidence is translated into policy and practice. We want to discover why programmes that have been shown to improve child outcomes are so seldom taken up and so poorly implemented. These studies are intended to inform the Unit’s efforts to transform services and national policies.

Scientific development is usually spoken of as a consequence of productive research. But we are also trying to exploit the scientific potential of our own development activity. For example, most of our efforts to improve how communities or local government engage with children start with an epidemiological study.

We use the data we assemble about well-being, what influences it and how to validate our research measures and shape hypotheses about helping children with different patterns of impairment. Since the Unit requires that all its attempts to enhance children’s services are fully evaluated, ideally by experiment, more high quality data emerge at that point in the process about how far children flourish with or without extra support.