Joint working - A quest to prove prevention works

The Department for Children, Schools and Families is developing a green paper on early intervention and prevention.

Due to be published in October or November, at the same time as a green paper on families, a source close to Children's Secretary Ed Balls says it is designed to help directors of children's services make the economic case for investing in early intervention.

Although still in its early stages, CYP Now understands from an expert helping to draw up the strategy that an initiative called Communities that Care (CtC) will feed into the green paper's development.

The initiative has influenced government policy before (see box). So what does the re-emergence of this concept reveal about how the Labour Party is gearing up for both the next general election and the tough financial climate?

Focus on prevention

CtC tackles social exclusion and problem behaviours by working with local communities to promote better outcomes for the children and young people living in them. It focuses on prevention and community leadership, and also on ensuring that any change in practice is informed by robust evidence on what works.

Charity Catch 22 (formerly Rainer Crime Concern) oversees the approach. Research shows there are risk factors in children's lives that increase the chances of developing health and behaviour problems as they grow older, says the charity's chief executive, Joyce Moseley. These factors could be school-age pregnancy, drug abuse or crime.

"Changing the incidence of these problems is a long-term process and involves looking at what's going on in people's lives. The CtC process identifies the buffers that will prevent risk so young people don't end up behaving in this way, " says Moseley. She describes it as an "operating system" - the "only one backed by many years of research". The approach has already been tested in Wales. It starts with a survey of pupils in secondary schools.

"We aim for an 80 per cent response rate," explains Pat Dunmore, Catch 22's director for CtC in Wales. "This enables you to drill down into the data and find out what's going on. We then work with the local community to prioritise key risks such as poor parenting, availability of drugs or truancy."

Gaps in service provision are then identified and a strategy put in place to address these. Crucially, these interventions are based on evidence of what works - many of which are contained in a booklet called A Guide to Promising Approaches. For example, it includes the well-known "Triple-P Positive Parenting Programme", where random control trials have shown significantly reduced disruptive behaviour by children as a result of the interventions.

Dunmore is enthusiastic about the benefits of the approach. "It's about making sure that, if you're going to spend money on services, then you spend it on services that you know work and you know that the community needs. It's about looking at what's needed for the next generation to prevent problems recurring, getting the services they need, sticking to it and not wasting money."

While the exact content of the green paper is yet to be revealed, it is clear that CtC chimes with many of the issues that directors of children's services want it to resolve.

As Debbie Jones, chair of the Association of Directors of Children's Services' resources and sustainability policy committee, says: "We're working with the research community and saying: 'Please give us the evidence we need (on the impact of early intervention) to help us fight for our budgets'."

COMMUNITIES THAT CARE: How it has influenced policy

The Communities that Care (CtC) process started in Washington University in 1979.

By 1995 there were 500 programmes running across the US. Studies on its impact have shown positive results.

For instance, one suggested that students from communities where the process was not used were 27 per cent more likely to initiate antisocial behaviour during grades 6 and 7 than students from CtC areas.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation began looking into the process in 1995.

In 1997 it created a registered charity called Communities that Care to implement the process in the UK.

Reduction in crime

Research by Sheffield University on the impact of the programme in the Eastside areas of Swansea found promising results. For instance, there was a decrease in six types of crime and antisocial behaviour by young people.

The proportion of pupils who said they'd stolen something in the past year fell from 18 to 13 per cent and the number who'd carried a weapon in the past year fell from 13 to eight per cent.

CtC was cited as an example of best practice in the Social Exclusion Unit's report Young People, which became part of the National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal.

It was also cited as good practice in Children's Fund guidance and has influenced work by the Youth Justice Board on preventing youth crime.

CtC became part of youth crime charity Rainer (now Catch 22) in 2006, and the process was rolled out in 30 areas across England, Wales and Scotland.