News
Effective practice in early intervention
21 Oct 2010
The Centre for Excellence and Outcomes (C4EO) has published Grasping the nettle: early intervention for children, families and communities. The report looks at early intervention, the challenges associated with it and the opportunities it provides for supporting children, families and communities in the contexts of local, national and international practice.
The report finds that early intervention does work when “it is an appropriate intervention, applied well, following timely identification of a problem.”
Grasping the nettle is based on over 100 effective local practice examples submitted in response to a call for evidence from C4EO and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services. The aim of the report is to act as a practice guide to help support local authorities and their partners by providing them with the key messages about “what works”.
It also identifies key areas for action for those with a responsibility for policy and practice which include:
- “Parents’ and professionals’ awareness of the importance of language skills needs to be more actively promoted. The forthcoming National Year of Speech, Language and Communication should be made a key focus, upon which further progress can be built. Existing health checks at age two should include a specific emphasis on language development, to detect early signs of possible delay.
- “Workforce development plans need to ensure that everyone working with children and families, especially disadvantaged groups, receive adequate training on language development, engaging and working with parents, and the value and uses of research and data (particularly to analyse need, for early identification).
- “Opportunities should be created to promote the use of trained peer support (including local parents) working alongside professionals – to convey positive influences from their own experience and encourage local families’ full use of advice and practical help from local services and agencies.
- “Further progress is needed to ensure that in every local area there is a continuum of support for the many families whose needs vary over time, with children’s centres and schools at its heart. Children’s centres should be strongly encouraged to develop effective outreach strategies to draw in isolated and “hard to reach” families.
- “In order to consolidate use of the Common Assessment Framework (CAF), rapid progress should be made in making it the standard mechanism for conducting assessments and accessing additional support for both children and families.
- “Intervention programmes should be aligned to whole system change and have a clear purpose, be informed by a comprehensive evidence base and analysis of local needs, and include baseline data to enable evaluation of impact at key stages.” (pp12-13)
For more information please see the C4EO website.
