An Oregon University-designed holistic “Family Check up” speaks for the fruits of a career that connects understanding of the neural mechanisms inside the brain with deep insights into the ordinary clutter of family life.

The complaint against the science behind children’s services used to be that it was plain inferior to anything in the natural sciences. The work of the average social scientist was barely worth a physics lab. technician’s white coat. But as the complexity of the task is better understood, attitudes are changing.

Studies in five Australian high schools have persuaded researchers to float the concept of “academic buoyancy” as a useful measure of everyday resilience to classroom setbacks.