Early Intervention In Childhood Setting

Clare MessengerImplementation Advisor, The Early

Intervention Foundation

What I will talk about

• The Early Intervention Foundation

• The importance of early intervention in early years

• Integrated systems for early years

WHO WE ARE…

EIF launched on 4th July 2013 as a charity and a What Works CentreWe promote Early Intervention to:

• Tackle the root causes of social problems

• Improve children’s life-chances, breaking the often intergenerational cycle of disadvantage

• Reduce the cost of failure to the taxpayer

WHAT WE DO….

WHAT IS EARLY INTERVENTION

• Early Intervention is about getting additional, timely and effective support to children who need it – enabling children to flourish and preventing costly, long-term and damaging outcomes

• Programmes, Practices and Systems to prevent social cost and personal harm for children and young people, from conception to early adulthood.

• Early Years AND “Early” activity

£70,000 – the cost of each child with untreated behavioural problems, 10 times the cost of children without behavioural problems

£59,000 - the average annual cost for a young person to be placed in a young offenders institution

£10m a day - the productivity loss to the state as a result of youth unemployment

£2.9bn – the current total cost of children in care, half of which is spent with dealing with children who have been abused

Source: Early Intervention: The Next Steps, report by Graham Allen MP, January 2011

WHY IS EARLY INTERVENTION IMPORTANT

Early Brain Development

• Compelling evidence• Emotional brain largely created in the first 18 months• At birth: 10 trillion synapses - 200 trillion by age 3 (implies rapid learning

via early life experience) • Experience – hard wiring • Embryo is affected by what the mother experiences eg DV • Child’s development is affected by the responsiveness of their mother• Parenting• Attachment and attunement

Why intervene at a young age?

– A child’s development score at just 22 months can serve as an accurate predictor of education outcomes at 26 years

– Vocabulary at age 5 has been found to be the best predictor of whether children who experienced social deprivation in childhood were able to escape poverty in later adult life.

– A study of boys assessed by nurses at age 3 as being ‘at risk’ found that they had two and a half times as many criminal convictions as the group deemed not to be at risk at age 21.

– Some 54% of the incidence of depression in women and 58% of suicide attempts by women have been attributed to adverse childhood experiences, according to a US study

Poor communication skills impact on...

Educational achievement Behaviour/vulnerability

Mental health

Employability

Criminality Disadvantage Cycle

•Vocabulary at 5 a powerful predictor of GCSE achievement

2/3 of 7-14 year olds with serious behaviour problems have language impairment

40% of 7 to 14 year olds referred to child psychiatric services had a language impairment that had never been suspected

47% of employers say they can’t get recruits with the communication skills they need

65% of young people in young offender institutions have communication difficulties

Children from low income families lag behind high income counterparts by sixteen months in vocabulary at school entry

What Helps?

• From birth, children’s learning results from their interaction with people around them, significantly affecting their later educational outcomes (Roulstone, 2011)• Good quality early relationships and secure attachment enable a

growing brain to become efficient, enhancing cognitive abilities (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child, 2011)• The developing brain of the baby adapts itself to the quality of the

relationship with parents, creating neural circuits that mirror his or her experiences (Belsky et al., 2011)

THE STILL FACE EXPERIMENT

What can we do?

• Universal preventive services• Targeted EI for those families that need it, understand risk factors and

route causes• Evidence based programmes• Think EI! , improving social and emotional development and

communication skills• Antenatal• Universal health services, health visiting programme• Children centres• Early years practitioners• Integrated approach

Family Nurse Partnership

US evaluations have found:•48% reduction in verified cases of child abuse and neglect by the time the children were aged 15 •56% reduction in A&E attendances for injuries and ingestions during child’s second year of life •28% relative reduction in all types of health care encounters during child’s first two years of life•79% relative reduction in the number of days that children were hospitalised with injuries or ingestions in child’s first two years of life

Incredible Years • to help their babies feel loved,

safe, and secure and encourage their babies’ physical and language development.

• The parenting group format fosters peer support networks and shared learning.

• Trained Incredible Years facilitators use video clips of real-life situational vignettes to support the training and stimulate parenting group discussions and practice exercises with their babies.

• Providing Incredible Years to the 150 or o 3-year-olds at risk of conduct disorder would cost roughly £780,000 per year

• Most of those 150 children at risk of a conduct disorder in their third year of life will be calling on child protection, special education, foster care and youth justice provisions.

• Equivalent cost of taking 20 children into foster care for 1 year.

• If Incredible Years ensures that 21 of the 150 children do not require foster care it pays for itself, before taking account of any other improved outcomes.

20 PIONEERING PLACES

Greater

Manchester

Newcastle

Nottingham

Poole

Plymouth

Solihull

Staffordshire

London Tri-

borough

Wiltshire &

Swindon

Worcestershire 

Blackpool

Blackburn with

Darwen

Cheshire West &

Chester

Croydon

Dorset

Essex

Gateshead

Hertfordshire

Islington

Lancashire

SYSTEMS, PROGRAMMES & PRACTICE

Integrated Systems in Early Years• Commissioning• Governance• Strategic and operational targeting• Integrated assessments and delivery • Information sharing• Evidence based programmes • Best and promising practice for integrated structures • Single front door• Integrated MA teams • Single management structure / professional supervision

Early Intervention in Action