NEW: The Kinship Care Practice Guide translates the strongest evidence into actionable recommendations. Find out more.
NEW: The Kinship Care Practice Guide translates the strongest evidence into actionable recommendations. Find out more.
This project or publication was produced before or during the merger of What Works for Children’s Social Care (WWCSC) and the Early Intervention Foundation (EIF).
Foundations for Life is a groundbreaking assessment of 75 early intervention programmes aimed at improving child outcomes through positive parent-child interactions in the early years. This included a range of universal and targeted programmes that specifically supported the non-physical development of children between conception and age five through direct engagement with the parent.
This review provided advice for policy makers and commissioners about how to help parents improve how they live and play with their children up to age 5 to improve their experience of childhood and enhance their ability to flourish and avoid harm.
The interventions were identified through the independent Best Start at Home review commissioned by EIF and published in March 2015. We assessed in detail 75 programmes that met the scope of this report. We assessed interventions in terms of: the strength of the evidence from evaluation studies that they have delivered the impact on child outcomes specified by the scope of the review; and the resource cost of their input requirements. The evidence for the programmes was reviewed and rated by EIF and external experts, as well as scrutinised by the EIF evidence panel of leading academics in the field of early intervention.
Overall, the evidence is strongest for programmes that target based on early signals of risk in child development (targeted-indicated), such as child behaviour problems, insecure attachment, delayed development of speech and lack of maternal sensitivity, although other types of programmes have also been found effective.
Programmes which focus on children’s behavioural development tend to have better evidence of effectiveness than those focused on attachment or cognitive development. This does not mean that attachment
We make a number of specific recommendations, asking that commissioners:
There are four specific areas where we have found gaps in evidence and knowledge that need to be addressed to strengthen the business case for early intervention opportunities. These areas are:
