This report identifies both "risk" and "protective"
factors in childhood that predict later offending behaviour,
and promising interventions. Risk factors include low achievement
in primary school, as well as low income and poor housing;
protective factors include parents' bonding with the child
at age 0 to 2, and the opportunity for involvement in community
issues at age 9 to 14. Promising interventions include home
visiting programmes for new mothers, parenting training,
high quality early childhood education and tutoring, whole
class and whole school approaches, and holistic programmes
for young people.
Interventions for children
The report reviews several different studies, including
Reading Recovery. It argues that the gains in reading ability
made under the scheme address the risk factor that it has
identified of low school attainment at ages 3 to 8.
Interventions for parents
and families
Home visiting
The report quotes evidence from the United States about
the effectiveness of three home visiting interventions,
which included some form of education for the children and
which produced measurable reductions in offending among
participating children, compared with similar children whose
families did not receive home and educational support (1).
Helping parents change their behaviour
The following are principles from successful parenting programmes:
- New parenting skills must be
actively rehearsed. Approaches such as videotape
feedback, role play and rehearsal are very effective.
It is essential that parents practise new parenting behaviours
at home.
- Parenting programmes must teach
principles rather than prescribed techniques. When
parents learn behavioural principles, they acquire the
tools to decide what works best for them and to respond
positively and appropriately when new situations arise.
- Programmes need to include both
sanctions for negative behaviour and strategies to build
positive relationships through play and praise.
Work that helps parents to encourage positive behaviour
but does not help them to deal with problem behaviour
can lead to early improvements, but these positive changes
may not be maintained.
- Difficulties in the relationships
between adults in the family cannot be ignored.
Maximising participation in programmes
Components of successful programmes based on evidence from
Head Start
are also identified (2):
- Making the programme easy to
access by providing transport, meals, child care
and accessible locations.
- Encouraging every parent's participation.
The programme is advertised as a universal programme,
offered to all Head Start families, but high risk families
are specially targeted and encouraged to come. Parents
are visited prior to the course, and parents who have
already participated in the programme are encouraged to
call on reluctant parents.
- Parents are encouraged to bring partners, relatives
or friends to the group, so if one person has literacy
difficulties, a friend can offer to keep some written
records. The midweek phone call from the course leader
also helps in this regard.
- The programme is collaborative
and assumes that leaders and parents both have expertise.
Leaders ask for parents' ideas and parents participate
in goal-setting and are encouraged to adapt the intervention
to meet their own individual needs.
- The programme encourages participating parents to
help each other, reducing isolation and finding new
sources of support. This includes making 'buddy calls'
to one another during the course.
- Parents are helped with ideas
for building support networks outside the group
and encouraged to involve other family members in mutual
support.
- Special efforts are made to contact parents who seem
unhappy with the programme and to resolve problems. The
programme views disengagement as the leaders', not the
clients', problem.
Interventions for young
people
Multi-Systemic Therapy (MST) is an intensive support programme
for young people aged 10 to 17 and their families. Evaluation
and replication in clinical and community settings in the
US suggest that it is a particularly effective intervention
for adolescents with behavioural problems, including violent
and chronic young offenders (3). It is
now being introduced in the UK.
MST targets multiple factors that can contribute to anti-social
behaviour, and so promotes such approaches as: encouraging
young people not to spend time with peers who are a bad
influence; building stronger bonds to conventional groups
such as the family and school; enhancing parenting skills
such as monitoring and discipline; and developing greater
social and academic competence in the young person.
Individualised treatment plans are designed in collaboration
with family members, and include addressing identified barriers
to effective parenting such as parental mental health problems
or drug abuse. MST also helps family members to build a
social support network and uses the strengths of this social
network to bring about changes in behaviour. MST is typically
provided in the home, school and other community locations
over a period of about four months.
References:
(1) These were: the Houston Parent-Child
Development Centre (Johnson and Walker, 1987), which offered
support at home for mothers and pre-school development opportunities
for children from age one; the Syracuse study, (Lally, Mangione,
Honig and Wittner, 1988) which offered home support for
parents, as well as pre-school and some day care education
for children from 0 to 5 years; and the Yale Child Welfare
Project, (Seitz, Rosenbaum and Apfel, 1985) in which a home
visitor offered parenting, employment and educational support
over the two first years of life.
(2) C. Webster-Stratton (1998) Parent training
with low income families: promoting parental engagement
through a collaborative approach. In J. Lutzker (ed.) Handbook
of Child Abuse Research and Treatment, New York,
NY: Plenum Press.
(3) S. Henggeler (1999) Multisystemic Therapy:
An overview of clinical procedures, outcomes, and policy
implications. Child Psychology
and Psychiatry Review, vol. 4, pp. 2-10.
Links
Sutton, C., Utting, D. and Farrington D. (ed.) (2004).
Support from the Start: Working with young children and
their families to reduce the risks of crime and anti-social
behaviour. London: Department for Education and Skills.
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