Early intervention: Key to giving disadvantaged children opportunities they deserve
The government have announced an independent review of early intervention which is to be chaired by the Labour MP, and early intervention advocate, Graham Allen.
The DWP's press release says:
Early intervention can provide children with the social and emotional support needed to help fulfil their potential and break the cycles of underachievement which blight some of our poorest communities. The review will look at and recommend the best models for early intervention and advise on how these could be extended to all parts of the country. It will also consider how such schemes could be supported through innovative funding models, including through non-Government streams.
Mr Allen was the co-author, along with Iain Duncan Smith, of a paper on early intervention for the Centre for Social Justice which we covered here.
Coincidentally I recently came across a paper prepared for the DCSF which reviews the issues for early intervention and was published in March.
One of the recommendations made was:
Rather than conceptualising earlier intervention as an alternative to later intervention, a better model would be a continuum of graduated interventions that are appropriate at different stages in the life course of problems, with the key issue being to identify the most appropriate intervention to match specific needs at a particular point.
This point was also emphasised in another report to the last government on early interventions that we picked up on here, which said:
Both research and practice also suggest that a significant proportion of children with emerging difficulties and their families will need continuing support as they grow up: a single intervention made early, however well designed and delivered, cannot be expected to ‘fix’ matters. Early intervention is not an ‘inoculation’ and extra help will often be needed.
It seems that while early intervention can be extremely useful it is still a band-aid and what we need is sunblock.
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This blog tries to pick up relevant media and research stories about drug education. It mainly focuses on information in England as this is the geographical remit for the Drug Education Forum. We welcome comments that are on topic.Categories
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