Incredible Years "Basic" makes a brave entry into the world of US child welfare services where up to 250,000 families a year feel the dubious benefit of evidence-free, empirically-light parent training.
Treatment foster care can improve the prospects of young people living in care but it’s important not to overstate its successes, suggests a Campbell collaboration review.
The internet is fast overtaking television as the thief of young people’s time, and reports of cyber abuse are growing at a similar rate. Not so, reliable preventive interventions, says a new Campbell Collaboration review.
All family practitioners know that you don’t often get second chances. Too many families are let down by the family therapy process and drop out. And no matter how good the intervention program is, poor implementation can lead to ineffectiveness or even harmful effects. Speaking at a conference earlier this month, Thomas Sexton and Astrid Van Dam considered practical solutions to this problem.
A UK systematic review of the research has confirmed the effectiveness of parenting programs internationally, this time in relation to children with conduct disorder; but it also identifies a lack of consistency in the supporting studies and is able to find only rudimentary information about the long-term cost benefit.
The usefulness and disadvantages of labelling – assigning disagnoses to children – is much debated. So how will the forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) negotiate this contested area?
Thirteen years after youth offending and welfare were separated, do we need a fresh start on juvenile justice? The Independent Commission on Youth Crime and Anti-Social Behaviour’s new report suggests we do.
Their work on interventions to tackle aggressive and anti-social behaviour in children has given Mark Fraser and Maeda Galinsky valuable insights into the wider lessons for the design and development of evidence-based programs.
David Utting’s transition from national newspaper journalist to producer of some influential work on children’s services and parenting is now plotting reforms in the youth justice system.
A new study published in the medical journal The Lancet reports that gene abnormalities have been found in children with ADHD. This is the first reported evidence of a biological basis for the condition. But just how well do gene mutations explain behavior?
A model in Washington State is being adapted at the Social Research Unit at Dartington (SRU) that could show UK policy makers not only what works but also how money can best be spent.
“Changing the world one baby at a time” may sound a slow process but it’s the way that Kate Billingham, project director of Nurse Family Partnership (NFP) introduced the program to the UK.
In the final article in this series, Manuel Eisner replies to the comments made by Olds, Sherman and Strang. Eisner concedes that Olds’ argument is well made and that it moves the debate on from the value added by an independent trial to when it is appropriate to conduct such a trial. His reply is therefore largely directed at comments made by Sherman and Strang.
In the third of four stories, Lawrence Sherman and Heather Strang argue that Manuel Eisner’s explanation of the correlation between developer-led evaluations and the identification of positive effects fails to account for other possibilities. If a ‘developer effect’ exists, as Eisner suggests, is there also a ‘prosecutor’s effect’, whereby independent evaluators are biased against finding program success?
In the second of four stories on the findings from developer-led versus independent evaluations, David Olds, developer of the Nurse Family Partnership program, argues that wider problems in the testing and replication of interventions also need addressing.
In the first of four stories focused on the findings from developer-led versus independent evaluations, Manuel Eisner proposes a model of systematic bias that threatens developer-led trials.
Tests in Australia on the effectiveness of the Family Risk Factor Checklist screening questionnaire have highlighted the difficulties parents and teachers alike face when they attempt to predict which children are most prone to mental health problems.
Knowing how good or bad things are for children in different parts of the world is not necessarily very illuminating unless it goes with an understanding of the underlying trends. Research from the Netherlands is helping to explain the changing European picture.