Prevention And Early Intervention With Children In Need

First published in 1999, this volume examines how, in the middle of the nineteenth century, Dr John Snow is reputed to have wrenched the handle from a street pump in central London, forcing people in the neighbourhood to change their drinking habits and so preventing them from contracting cholera from the dirty water. Aspects of the story may be apocryphal, but the general drift of Snow's assault on disease has enormous appeal for health, education, social services and police professionals working with children in need. Why spend so much time struggling to find strategies to cope with the more intractable problems among adolescents, when the problems might be prevented from occurring in the first place? This book tries to untangle some of the complex ideas that underpin effective prevention and early intervention activity on behalf of children experiencing social or psychological difficulty. It describes twenty programmes from Europe and America that have made an impact and where there has been an attempt to evaluate their usefulness. On this basis it suggests some principles for more effective preventive practice.

Family Support introduces and explores the state of the art in preventative social work with children and young people. Drawing on contemporary thinking and research, the book aims to make a contribution to current debates about how we can best support families in need. Underpinning the book is an analysis of how family support is changing, having moved from ‘prevention’ through to contemporary debates about ‘family support’, ‘early intervention’ and ‘early help’. The authors draw on their own practice experiences to ensure the discussion remains highly relevant to everyday realities. The book consists of three parts: Part I examines the history and context of family support; Part II outlines a number of practice approaches to family support; and Part III suggests how family support work can be further developed. The book provides ‘think points’ and case studies to support the reader in reflecting on the material presented and how this can be best applied, as well as including a guide to useful resources. Family Support will be a welcome companion for anyone involved in child welfare and safeguarding services, including students at undergraduate and post-graduate level, practitioners, policy makers and academics.

This book sets out the current state of knowledge about what works in reducing impairments to children’s health and development. Little and Maughan’s book applies a high standard of proof and reproduces only the work of the leading intervention scientists from around the world. After discussing the real world challenges to more effective children’s services, the book goes on to cover policy and practice proven to change the lives of all children, and extends also to effective programmes targeted at children with specific disorders. Examples include changes in household income, early years support, moving families to less disadvantaged communities, improving parenting and using schools to better mental health. The benefits of evidence-based programmes are specified, as are the costs to society of not intervening. The evidence is used to make recommendations about getting effective policy and practice into routine use, and includes illustrations of successful applications of these ideas.

Published in 1994, Prevention And Early Intervention is a valuable contribution to the field of Psychiatry/clinical Psychology.

Need is a popular but controversial concept in social policy. 'Needs-led' has become a mantra in children's services in recent years, yet theorists still argue about the meaning and value of the concept of 'need'. There are lots of needs assessment at the individual child and population levels, but case files vary enormously in quality and reports of need analyses frequently gather dust on shelves. How, then, should we define and measure children's needs, and how should this influence the design of services? This edited collection answers these questions in order to help policy makers, managers, practitioners and researchers with identifying and serving children in need. It offers a critical appraisal of the state of play regarding the theory of need, the needs that children have, methods for assessing children's needs at the individual and group levels, and approaches to designing services to meet identified needs.

Early childhood is considered a critical but often vulnerable period in a child’s development where early identification and intervention can be crucial for improving children’s developmental outcomes. Systems and family-centred perspectives are vital to support families and build their capacities to lead normalized lives with improved family quality of life. This book explores the family-centred practices and systems factors which influence families’ experiences raising children with complex needs. It also considers the ways in which professionals can work with families to build and support parent and child competence. Conceptual and practical work from Australia, Canada, Europe and the United States present descriptions of and implications for different family system frameworks and early-childhood programs. Contributors in this edited volume bring together contemporary information that bridges the research to practice gap in supporting families of young children with disabilities or delays. Chapters include: Early Intervention for Young Children with Developmental Delays: Contributions of the Developmental Systems Approach Family Composition and Family Needs in Australia: What Makes a Family? Working with Families in Early Childhood Intervention: Family-Centred Practices in an Individualised Funding Landscape Family Systems and Family-Centred Intervention Practices in Portugal and Spain: Iberian Reflections on Early Childhood Intervention This book will attract the attention scholars of Parenting and Families; Child Development and Childcare.

After years of research and reflection on the work of the interdisciplinary family justice system Mervyn Murch offers a fresh approach to supporting the thousands of children every year who experience a complex form of bereavement following parental separation and divorce. This stressful family change, combined with the loss of support due to austerity cuts, can damage their education, well-being, mental health and long-term life chances. Murch argues for early preventative intervention which responds to children's worries when they first present them, without waiting until things have gone badly wrong. His radical proposals for reform involve a much more coordinated and joined up approach by schools, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, and Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services. This book encourages practitioners and academics to look outside their professional silos and to see the world through the eyes of children in crisis to enable services to offer direct support in a manner and at a time when it is most needed.