Early Intervention: Policy and practice developments in England Helen Jones Professional Adviser ACWA Conference Sydney

What do we mean by ‘early intervention’? Prevention of any problem ? Prevention of most serious problems ? Trying to stop things getting worse ? Promotion of positive development?

Policy Problems Identification of needs at earlier stage is resource intensive and requires additional services to be in place Concern about ‘treating the worried well’ or problems which would have been resolved without intervention Does early intervention normalise or stigmatise?

And… Do we understand enough about effectiveness in early interventions which may require more than soft focus parenting support ?

Emotional and social well-being in childhood and adolescence Importance of a resilience framework Importance of an overarching outcomes framework Importance of service integration and partnerships Importance of links between universal, targeted and specialist interventions

Resilience framework ‘ In a resilience framework, practitioners are encouraged to attend to the developmental task of doing well in life’ Newman 2004

Current policy framework Every Child Matters (ECM) -ECM : Next Steps -ECM : Change for Children National Service Framework for children, Young people and maternity services

Every Child Matters: focus on outcomes be healthy stay safe enjoy and achieve make a positive contribution achieve economic well-being

Key domains of resilience

Every Child Matters Programme Principle of progressive universalism delivered through -Children’s Centres - Extended Schools - Parenting Strategy Universal services to identify and reach children and families in need of targeted and specialist support

Aims of Every Child Matters Improving outcomes through: improvement and integration of universal services: early years, schools, health service early identification and intervention, with more specialised help services reconfigured around child and family – multi disciplinary teams, multi-agency working listening to children, young people, parents to be delivered through 150 local change programmes

Prevention-Promotion Agenda Children’s centres to identify and support families and work with other services By 2010 all schools will offer access to core of extended services including parenting support Integrated Youth Services for 13-19s

Common Assessment Framework (CAF) The CAF is a standardised approach to conducting an assessment of a child’s additional needs and deciding how those needs should be met. It can be used by practitioners across children’s services in England

Common Assessment To help identify children who require additional services To support the integration of services Used by all professionals To achieve common thresholds of concern Legislation in Children Act 2004

Harmonised system of assessments Common Assessment (assessments undertaken by any professional in making a referral) Assessment framework (assessments of need undertaken by social workers) + Looking After Children (Undertaken by social workers to assess outcomes for children and young people in care) = Integrated Children’s System

Information Sharing Index Operational information-sharing Index by 2008 Central index with 150 local parts To support effective prevention and early intervention Index will contain all children in England

The Index in practice Information Hub / Information Sharing spine name, address and date of birth school or other educational setting GP a flag stating whether the child is known to agencies/contact details where a child is known to more than one specialist agency the lead professional who takes overall responsibility for the case

The leaves and stem model of information systems Health Record Education Record Social Care Record ie. ICS Health Record Education Record Social Care Record ie. ICS Health RecordEducation Record Social Care Record ie. ICS LEAVES STEM CHILD 1 CHILD 2 CHILD 3 R1R1 R2 R3

System Reform Respond earlier to need and so doing improve child outcomes Redirect resources way from high cost heavy end where there is little evidence of proportional benefit

Promoting Child and family Wellbeing 4 key dimensions - distinguishing promotion, prevention and early intervention -focusing the intervention -length and intensity -values for engaging the community

Interventions Framework Universal, targeted and specialist services delivered at levels of Child, family, community, society Prilleltensky et al 2001

Examples Child- Portage programmes Family- Surestart Communities- Portsmouth ‘Safer Communities’ Societal- Tax credits

Early intervention for foster and adoptive families Using evidence-based interventions with foster and adoptive families as part of standard training, not in response to difficulties e,g Webster Stratton Healthy Care: to support the provision of a healthy environment for looked after children by training carers in benefits of play and creativity