Nick Axford

the school readiness of children living in a disadvantaged area in Ireland

This study examined the multiple factors that contribute to the school readiness and early school progress of children living in an urban disadvantaged area. Structured interviews were undertaken with parents of children who had recently started school to elicit information about those aspects of childrens health, and their home and neighbourhood contexts that may influence their school readiness. Questionnaires were administered to these childrens teachers to assess the childrens cognitive and socio-emotional school readiness and to identify influences on childrens subsequent progress in their first year at school. Findings indicated that while the majority of children were ready for school, over one-third evidenced difficulties in relation to their cognitive abilities and socio-emotional skills. Regression analyses indicated that factors predictive of school readiness included parental living situation, parenting skills and preschool attendance. The factors cited as important in influencing childrens subsequent school progress included childrens characteristics, their home context, school and neighbourhood environment. Implications for policy and practice, notably preventive intervention programme development are discussed.

Developing a Common Language in Children's Services through Research‐based Inter‐disciplinary Training

Two sources of inertia to improving services for children in need are the difficulties of getting evidence into practice and the complications of inter‐agency working. Current training arrangements in social work and disparities between childrens services professions as regards training requirements are contributory factors. The Common Language project is a work in progress, adopting a research‐based, inter‐disciplinary approach to working with social workers and other childrens services professionals. It comprises core ideas and methods to complement the more specialist knowledge and skills required in each profession. Underpinned by a child development perspective and a scientific development cycle, it rests on a conceptual framework including need, threshold, service and outcome. The approach has three components (each of which includes training): (1) the implementation of practice tools; (2) the planning and development of integrated services; and (3) supporting materials, including practitioner‐orientated modules and a curriculum for PhD students. Distinguishing features include research utilisation, notably a focus on inculcating research‐mindedness as opposed to imparting findings, and also collaborative professional working, in particular via practical connections between different agencies, stakeholders and countries. The project is being evaluated in terms of uptake, change in professional thinking and practice and effects on child well‐being. Next steps for the project relate to broader lessons for social work training emerging from research and development elsewhere.

Exploring concepts of child well-being : implications for children's services

Introduction Part one: Defining and measuring the concepts: Need Rights Poverty Quality of life Social exclusion Relationships between the concepts Part two: The measures applied to children: Prevalence rates and distinguishing features Relationships between the conditions Part three: Implications for childrens services: Matching conditions and service styles Developing congruent childrens services Conclusions.

Are Looked after Children Socially Excluded

The concept of social exclusion has become ubiquitous in the discourse of childrens services in the UK over the last ten years. But is it a useful concept? Nick Axford sets out a definition of social exclusion and examines the extent to which it applies to looked after children, since they are commonly referred to as being ‘excluded’ or ‘vulnerable to exclusion’. He discusses the implications for how service providers define and help these children and for how childhood social exclusion is studied.

Measuring Outcomes in the ‘New’ Children's Services

This article seeks to help senior local policy‐makers, managers and practitioners in childrens services to develop robust but realistic and manageable strategies for measuring outcomes in a multi‐disciplinary context. Drawing on orthodox research methods, it sets out strategies for measuring outcomes in childrens services at individual child, service and community levels. It is intended to show how, in a given local jurisdiction, different approaches to measuring outcomes could fit together logically and within a reasonable budget, so creating an outcome culture and contributing to the development and integration of services. The principles outlined would also apply to adult services.

Involving parents in school-based programmes to prevent and reduce bullying: what effect does it have?

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe how and why school-based programmes to prevent or reduce bullying involve parents, and what impact involving parents has on bullying. Design/methodology/approach – A review of relevant literature, in particular systematic reviews and meta-analyses. Findings – The logic of involving parents in school-based bullying prevention programmes is that this increases the likelihood of parents first, telling schools that their child is being bullied, which in turn enables the school to act appropriately, and second, being able to address bullying-related issues effectively at home. Parent involvement is associated with a reduction in bullying but further research is needed to determine if it is a causal factor. Programmes tend not to include a parenting education and support element, despite negative parenting behaviour being associated with children being a victim or a bully/victim. Practical implications – There is good reason to involve parents in school-based b...

Developing Multiprofessional Teamwork for Integrated Children's Services: Research, policy and practice

risk and protective factors interact, echoing some of Michael Rutter’s work. They also warn against viewing resilience as a personality trait, in order to prevent those unable to overcome adversity being viewed negatively. In addition, the editors argue for resilience to be viewed as a dynamic rather than a static process that may be unavailable at one point in a lifecycle but become active at another as protective factors present themselves. Finally, they outline three strategies for the reduction of risk and enhancement of resilience: (1) reducing the young person’s exposure to risk; (2) interrupting the chain reaction of negative events associated with particular types of adversity; and (3) enhancing protective factors. Their conclusion echoes the recovery paradigm (National Institute for Mental Health in England, 2004) which is influencing work on severe mental illness, that professionals will achieve more for young people who experience adversity if they emphasise their strengths and capabilities rather than their weaknesses.

Enhancing Service Evaluability: Lessons from a Programme for Disaffected Young People.

The effectiveness of childrens services is often limited by a series of problems that also impede meaningful evaluation. This article describes and assesses research strategies to enhance the evaluability of a programme for disaffected young people, arguing that they have the potential to improve services more widely. It explores methods for developing a logic model, setting target group criteria, tightening programme components, identifying sufficient suitable candidates and selecting appropriate measures. Examples of other preparatory work aimed at helping the evaluation are given, including firming-up the programme and evaluation ethics and dealing with the politics of a fairly complex evaluation (a randomised controlled trial) that involves numerous stakeholders.

The effectiveness of the Incredible Years pre-school parenting programme in the United Kingdom: a pragmatic randomised controlled trial

ABSTRACT The prognosis for children with early-onset conduct disorder is poor. Conduct disorder also has a social cost for families and communities, and an economic cost for society through the increased use of health, education, social, legal and detention services. In this study, the Incredible Years (IY) BASIC programme was delivered to parents of pre-school children at risk of developing a conduct disorder and evaluated by pragmatic randomised controlled trial. Participants were parents of 161 children (110 intervention, 51 control) aged between 36 and 59 months (mean age 44 months, 63% boys) and scoring over the clinical cut-off on the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). At follow-up (six months post-baseline), the intent-to-treat analysis showed a mean between group difference in favour of IY on the SDQ total difficulties score of 2.23 (p < 0.05, effect size: 0.50). IY was also superior to control on the Eyberg Child Behaviour Inventory (p < 0.05, effect size: 0.37) and on the Arnold and O’Leary parenting scale (p < 0.01, effect size: 0.43). This study confirms the effectiveness of IY in a public system delivered with fidelity by regular children’s centre staff, supporting findings from a similar trial in Wales. These results support the wider roll-out of IY to similar children.

Exploring the Potential of Shadow Controls in the Evaluation of Children’s Services

This article describes and presents a framework for an under‐used evaluation technique in the context of an evaluation of a programme for disaffected young people. Shadow controls—the use of expert judgement to estimate the success of a programme—are often dismissed in research design as an unreliable form of comparison, but can be useful in situations where there is limited scope for a control group or to enhance the causal inference attributable to non‐experimental evaluations. The exercise described uses a practice tool as a structure for making predictions about the situations of the young people on the programme, assuming they do not receive an intervention. These predictions (shadow controls) are then compared to outcome data for the young people at the end of the programme. The results of the exercise provide some important messages about the programme’s effectiveness and the potential for strengthening non‐experimental evaluation methods. The article also discusses how the method can usefully inform evaluations of social programmes and encourage agency and user collaboration.