Translated from the USA to the UK, the Family Nurse Partnership program is slowly gathering evidence that suggests a breakthrough in helping vulnerable families.

The infant science of effective program implementation finds a useful analogy in the culinary arts: it's often not what you cook but how you cook it that matters.

National caricature suggests they ought to know: researchers at University College Dublin confirm that limiting peer group pressure and investing in early intervention programs are likely to help steer young people away from problem drinking.

“Giving families a bit of Incredible Years is not the same as properly implementing it. It’s like baking a cake. You need all of the ingredients. People will have their own way of going about things but all the basic components have to combined in roughly the right order. There may be some adaptations – for diabetics, for example, but there are no short cuts.” Carolyn Webster-Stratton makes the case for fidelity in the kitchen of parenting programs.

With three reports out on early intervention and another expected, there is a chance of a big shift in policy, but even this leaves some questions unanswered.

UK Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg launched Graham Allen’s Review of Early Intervention in the Gherkin, the heart of London financial district.

A step change in UK prevention and early intervention policies is heralded today with the first report of the independent review undertaken by Graham Allen, Member of Parliament for Nottingham and long time campaigner for evidence-based programs.

A study to test the effectiveness of the PATHS programme for social and emotional learning skills in schools with high and low poverty levels offers some new insights but was still inadequate to tell the whole story.

The evaluation of preventative programs can be problematic, but a new study suggests that there is a way to get the complete picture.

Fifteen years ago, a Barbie doll’s verdict on math class focused attention on a gender conundrum in US schools which continues to test the data analysts inside University of Texas child development research.

A major US study looked at how the mental health of children worsened when they were taken into care, but offers pointers to how this can be avoided.

Former Labour reform minister Frank Field has produced a report that throws cold water on post-war social democratic thinking about the causes of, and how to tackle child poverty.

Payment by results for providing agencies is controversial but, in the second of two articles on the work of Clay Yeager, we see how in Florida it is having a dramatic effect on work with juvenile offenders – and state finances.

In the first of two stories, we see how Clay Yeager’s long career is an illustration of how far the understanding of prevention and intervention by public authorities have come.

Helping first-time parents through the transition to parenthood can improve the behaviour and well-being of their children, a new study of the Family Foundations programme suggests. But why do boys seem to benefit more from the programme than girls?

Yesterday Prevention Action examined Britain’s long history of birth cohort studies, distilling the contribution that such research has made to our understanding of child development. Today we reflect upon how this learning has contributed to both policy and prevention science.

How do we identify critical periods for children’s health and development? Britain has been conducting longitudinal studies, following the same group of people born in a given week throughout their lives, for over 60 years to do just that and much more.