The SMILE that says mentoring too often doesn’t work

24 June 2008

So many people in the US have said they’d like to be a mentor that, in theory, every child in the country could have one. But the evidence emerging from randomized controlled trials warns that haphazard school based programs often do more harm than good.

Iowa shows the worth of adding SFP to the LST

18 June 2008

Put two proven programs together in the right combination, one based on work with the family the other designed to help adolescents cope with peer pressure, and you may have the makings of a doubly effective assault on substance misuse, new findings from Iowa suggest.

Don’t leave the lessons of after-school out on the doorstep

2 May 2008

Harvard researchers’ scrutiny of after-school programs has identified numerous academic and health benefits, particularly when parents help to plan the content.

Parents struggle to get their kids moving

21 April 2008

The findings of research analysts in Arizona suggest that the Scottish Government’s £6m investment in family-focused treatment programs to combat obesity among the country’s children will need to be cleverly spent to make much difference.

Forget those power games – learn more by saving the whales

17 April 2008

Analysis of studies involving 17,000 adolescents in eleven countries indicates that cooperative approaches to learning are more closely associated with high achievement than competitive, individualistic ones.

Better to protect too many children than too few?

15 April 2008

More sophisticated risk assessment built on a better understanding of traits and vulnerabilities has enabled US caseworkers to make more accurate predictions about which families in the child protection system are most likely to continue to harm or neglect their children.