Many of the best-evidenced programmes to improve children’s wellbeing come from the US. Local authorities in the UK have turned to them for inspiration, organisations like the Dartington Social Research Unit advocate them, and they have won cross-party interest. Indeed, the NSPCC is testing out and developing such models – like Minding the Baby and the New Orleans Intervention Model.
Yet evidence of global child wellbeing shows the US lagging behind other rich countries. The critics see an oppressive, flawed understanding of what causes child abuse, located in the failings and deficits of individual parents. Can we value evidence produced in a society that refuses to sign up to the UN convention on the rights of the child?
I travelled to the US and to northern European countries with a much better track record than ours for child wellbeing as part of my Churchill Memorial Trust fellowship earlier this year to find out. This is what I learned.
1. Science matters in child abuse prevention
Travelling across the US, meeting with the most advanced thinkers, researchers, and practitioners, I was able to explore their journey, their outlook.
Inspiring figures, such as Dr David Olds, developer of the family nurse partnership, emphasises the need for scientific discipline in analysing the causes and formulating the solutions to child maltreatment. Olds pursues a path of learning and improvement, continually using feedback from practice. He insists any country wishing to implement the programme runs a proper randomised controlled trial because it may be that the safety net in European countries may already achieve the benefits his programme offers. Recent results in the Netherlands point to the opposite; the results there were very positive.
But the best evidenced programmes also show big gaps: what works with whom, and why; the emerging insights in the interplay of genes and the environment; the underlying explanations for resilience; the precise mechanisms of intergenerational patterns of trauma. All demand much greater understanding – and science has a vital role to play in this.
2. We need a much stronger platform of research and development
The Harvard Centre for the Developing Child believes we need to raise our sights; the best of what we know now is only a start. They challenge that even the best evidenced programmes only produce moderate effects when taken to scale outside a research context.
Given the devastating impact of child abuse and neglect and the human toll it exacts, the damage it wreaks across generations, this is not good enough. We need much greater investment in research and development to understand the causes and solutions and to help the most marginalised people connect to the social supports they need to be the parents they want to be.
3. More agile and rapid methods for evidence and innovation are the way forward
We’re more likely to influence evidence-based policy-making if innovation cycles move as fast as the cycles of decision-makers. Policy-makers need to be able to travel with researchers and see learning emerging within tighter timeframes – often governed by electoral deadlines.
Using new research technology, we can make real breakthroughs. This demands collaboration between practitioners and researchers, co-design of new interventions, testing in a much shorter cycle. It means being more nimble in testing and changing as you go.
At Harvard, Penn State, San Francisco, Oregon Social Learning Centre, Denver Prevention Research Centre, and in New Orleans, I found enthusiasm for new and more rapid ways of producing evidence that can have an impact, and this exciting development is growing into new programmes across different research centres and sites.
4. The best platform for evidence-based policy is equality and children’s rights
In the US, ambitious, entrepreneurial leaders in early childhood development adopt a pragmatic and tactical approach. Their aim is to understand how to link the use of defined programmes to wider community approaches; vital ingredients if the goal is system change, and to create more knowledge in a more rapid cycle. However they work in a society that lacks a comprehensive welfare safety net, so the horizons are necessarily constrained.
In Europe, the natural starting place common to researchers and policy and practice leaders is a broad exploration of the key social policy principles. These cover ideas that seem like value positions; respect for children’s rights, universality, and equality.
In the Netherlands, in Finland, in Sweden, and in Denmark, I met people passionate about children’s rights, wholly committed to upholding them and eradicating the harm that child abuse does, as a matter of principle.
Like the US, they invest significant effort in scientific research and testing. This for them is entirely in line with a fundamental commitment to children’s rights. There is a moral and scientific imperative for experimentation and innovation at all levels of social policy in the quest to prevent child maltreatment and ultimately to eradicate it.
There is strong evidence that these principles are the most powerful levers we have for improving children’s lives. This atmosphere provides the most fertile ground for research-derived evidence to be applied for the benefit of all children.
But setting it up as a battle of ideologies misses the point.
What’s clear is we need to understand more than we do now about child development, child maltreatment, and the complex problems faced by vulnerable families and communities.
I believe that a synthesis of the most persuasive thinking emerging from the US, together with the clarity and focus evident in Europe, can set us on the road to breakthrough in the fight to end child abuse.
Follow Matt Forde on Twitter: @matt_forde
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