Vashti Louise Berry

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.

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.

Ethical Considerations in Conducting Family Violence Research

There is a lack of procedure in the UK guiding social researchers faced with ethical questions. In particular, investigators concerned with family violence and its effects on children face some of the most complex ethical dilemmas in social research and there is a need for greater transparency of ethical procedures. This paper summarizes some key ethical principles guiding social research focused on children, and the decisions that researchers face when conducting studies in the area of child maltreatment or domestic violence. A case example of a study conducted in Dublin, Ireland is used to illustrate difficulties surrounding decisions of informed consent, confidentiality and disclosure, distress and danger, and questioning children directly about their experiences of family violence. The advice of the ethics committee and the solutions agreed by the research team are shared. While the study was subject to a review by an independent ethics committee, in the absence of nationally-recognized or agreed guidelines, good ethical practice is largely dependent upon the moral judgments of the research team. It is hoped that by providing one such case example, others might be encouraged to report on their own ethical protocols and procedures.

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.

The Potential for Co-Production in Developing Violence Against Women Services in Wales

The UK Conservative government has committed to increasing funding for domestic violence and abuse (DVA) services in England but this has not been extended to Wales. Wales has however made clear commitments to developing these services, through the Violence against Women, Domestic Abuse and Sexual Violence (Wales) Act 2015. This article draws on focus groups and interviews with 53 service users and 31 purposively selected service providers to explore their perspectives on Violence Against Women (VAW) service provision in Wales. There are clear shared priorities and some tensions between service user and provider perspectives on appropriate services. Drawing on the long history of intermediate co-production in VAW services, the article argues that co-production at strategic level is now needed. This would provide an arena for resolving tensions, setting standards and developing funding criteria to enable co-produced VAW policy and build resistance to funding cuts.

Incredible Years parenting programme: cost-effectiveness and implementation

Purpose – There is growing interest in the economic evaluation of public health prevention initiatives and increasing government awareness of the societal costs of conduct disorder in early childhood. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the cost-effectiveness of the Incredible Years (IY) BASIC parenting programme compared with a six-month waiting list control. Design/methodology/approach – Cost-effectiveness analysis alongside a pragmatic randomised controlled trial of a group-parenting programme. The primary outcome measure was the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a measure of child behaviour. Findings – The IY programme was found to have a high probability of being cost-effective, shifting an additional 23 per cent of children from above the clinical concern to below the cut-off on the SDQ compared to the control group, at a cost ranging from £1612-£2418 per child, depending on the number of children in the group. Originality/value – The positive findings of this study have led to...

Can study tours help promote evidence-based practice in children's services?

Interest in evidence-based programmes and the science underpinning them has mushroomed in the UK and Ireland in recent years as policy-makers and senior managers seek tried-and-tested methods of improving child well-being. This article examines whether study tours, a form of experiential learning, can help to promote evidence-based policy and practice in childrens services. Participants on two study tours to the United States in 2005 to visit evidence-based programmes and their developers were interviewed by telephone 30–36 months later. Results are presented in terms of: (1) what participants felt they were exposed to on the study tours; (2) how the tours had changed their thinking; (3) what impact the tours had in terms of actions; (4) the factors that affected the impact of the study tours; and (5) the value added by the study tours over and above other means of learning about evidence and evidence-based services.

The parent programme implementation checklist (PPIC): the development and testing of an objective measure of skills and fidelity for the delivery of parent programmes

ABSTRACT Background: Group-based parent programmes demonstrate positive benefits for adult and child mental health, and child behaviour outcomes. Greater fidelity to the programme delivery model equates to better outcomes for families attending, however, fidelity is typically self-monitored using programme specific checklists. Self-completed measures are open to bias, and it is difficult to know if positive outcomes found from research studies will be maintained when delivered in regular services. Currently, ongoing objective monitoring of quality is not conducted during usual service delivery. This is odd given that quality of other services is assessed objectively, for example by the Office for Standards in Education, Childrens Services and Skills (OFSTED). Independent observations of programme delivery are needed to assess fidelity and quality of delivery to ensure positive outcomes, and therefore justify the expense of programme delivery. Methods: This paper outlines the initial development and reliability of a tool, the Parent Programme Implementation Checklist (PPIC), which was originally developed as a simple, brief and generic observational tool for independent assessment of implementation fidelity of group-based parent programmes. PPIC does not require intensive observer training before application/use. This paper presents initial data obtained during delivery of the Incredible Years BASIC programme across nine localities in England and Wales, United Kingdom (UK). Results: Reasonable levels of inter-rater reliability were achieved across each of the three subscales (Adherence, Quality and Participant Responsiveness) and the overall total score when applying percentage agreements (>70%) and intra-class correlations (ICC) (ICC range between 0.404 and 0.730). Intra-rater reliability (n = 6) was acceptable at the subscale level. Conclusions: We conclude that the PPIC has promise, and with further development could be utilised to assess fidelity of parent group delivery during research trials and standard service delivery. Further development would need to include data from other parent programmes, and testing by non-research staff. The objective assessment of quality of delivery would inform services where improvements could be made.