Inviting groups of children between the ages of eight and 15 from two poor and predominantly African-American neighborhoods in Baltimore and Pittsburgh to paint, draw and collage their insights into community safety claims top-class research interest. But hopes that the “Visual Voices” model might provide a breakthrough in the growth area of community-based participatory research have yet to be justified.

The UK city of Liverpool is the focus of an experiment that brings families and schools together in an effort to build mutually supportive neighborhood networks to help vulnerable families.

Familiar statistics carry less familiar recommendations for policy and practice: to break the cycle of damaging effects that link disadvantage to maternal depression and to developmental disorders, government should invest in trials of mother and toddler therapy.

Ideas about character have been central to US developmental scientist Richard Lerner’s concept of positive youth development. Is “character education” now likely to find its way on to the policy agenda of a new UK government?

You there! What do you think you’re doing – improving protective factors and reducing behavioral risk, or peddling a cultural perspective that regards most forms of human experience as the source of emotional distress?

“Where politicians have deeply held beliefs about what is effective, it can be tempting to want to cherry pick the evidence that supports those beliefs – policy-based evidence, if you like…” The UK Institute for Effective Education looks ahead to the predictable perils of a General Election year.