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Prior to King's College London (KCL) research, social workers did not regularly assess mental health needs of Looked After Children (i.e. those in the care of their Local Authority). KCL investigations showed that 45% of British Looked After Children have mental health disorders, considerably pushing this issue up the policy agenda. KCL developed assessments that are now the statutory annual measures used by all Local Authority children's services in England. The assessments enable Local Authorities to identify the treatment needs of Looked After Children and plan accordingly. The Department for Education requires Local Authorities to complete the measures. The measures are used worldwide and are now key elements of treatment trials of social and psychological interventions to reduce the level of difficulties in Looked After Children.
Improving outcomes for children, young people and families focuses on supporting the development of health and social care initiatives to promote social inclusion and improve quality of life, family cohesion, and health outcomes for `troubled', at risk, and disadvantaged families, demonstrating the following impact:
Coppock's original research has impacted upon children's workforce development strategy and child/adolescent mental health services in England - specifically in workforce up-skilling to provide inclusive, child-centred mental health services. Coppock's research provided intellectual and empirical underpinning for a highly successful training programme 'Mad, Bad or Misunderstood? Interactive Multimedia Training for Professionals Working with Children and Young People' (MBM Training). MBM Training has been delivered to over 4,000 participants including: teachers/social workers/health workers/police officers/residential care staff/parents/carers/foster carers and volunteers and is recognised by the Child and Maternal Health Observatory (ChiMat) as an important tool in mental health promotion and tackling stigma.
Rapid response reports, commissioned from the IOE's Thomas Coram Research Unit (TCRU) by the Departments for Education and Health specifically to inform policy-making, have helped to determine the financial and practical support for disadvantaged families and children in England for more than a decade. This important series of reports has achieved impact not only by producing robust findings that government departments can rely on but by building relationships of trust and mutual understanding between national policy-makers and researchers.
Young Lives is identifying major influences on children's development, from infancy to adulthood, by carrying out a pioneering longitudinal study across four developing countries over 15 years. Young Lives gathers and analyses data on how childhood is changing in diverse communities, especially through the impact of economic, cultural and policy shifts, by studying two age cohorts in each country. UNICEF, the World Bank, Plan International, and Save the Children International, among others, are using Young Lives research to design childhood poverty-reduction policies in the Post-2015 Development Agenda. The research also underpins the re-visioning of global child protection work by UNICEF, Save the Children Canada, and World Vision UK.
UNICEF estimate that over 3,500 children die annually from abuse and neglect in economically developed countries, including 100 in the UK of whom around 4 are from Northern Ireland. Although the number of deaths appears to be falling in the UK, the rate of decline is slowing. This case study describes the impact of three related pieces of research undertaken for the Northern Ireland Executive and the Northern Ireland Commissioner for Children and Young People. The aim was to identify the things that policy makers and practitioners could do differently in order to protect children better, and has led to significant improvements into how reviews are undertaken, and in the child protection policies and practices in Northern Ireland. As a result children have been better protected by child welfare professionals.
In response to a new NHS policy initiative to create child-friendly hospitals, an ESRC funded research project (Space to Care, 2004-7) explored children's own perceptions and experiences of hospital space by seeking out the views of children aged 4-16 who were hospital patients. Through revealing the importance of age as a key differentiating factor in children and young people's views about hospital space, the result of adopting this child-centred approach was to demonstrate that the government's concept of a `child-friendly hospital' was failing to address the different needs of all children up to the age of 16. The findings from the study were therefore used to develop a set of key design principles and evaluation toolkits for healthcare professionals, architects and healthcare planners to help make hospitals more child-centred. These have: (1) informed the health-care design practices of architects, nationally and internationally; and (2) assisted health-care professionals in the UK and Australia to improve their existing facilities.
The findings from this research on noticing and helping neglected children are contributing to shaping effective responses by practitioners. In high income countries neglect is the most frequent category of child maltreatment. In the UK as many as one in ten children may experience neglect and yet systems here, and other jurisdictions with similar models, struggle to provide an effective response. The research at Stirling is improving practitioner knowledge and confidence with the development of comprehensive training materials and follow-on knowledge exchange work with multi-disciplinary groups of practitioners in England. It has contributed to policy development in England and Scotland.
Research providing novel insights into children's perspectives on families and relationships has had wide impact on policy and practice in Scotland. Through a partnership with ChildLine Scotland, research conducted into children's calls has:
Policymakers in the government departments responsible for health and education, Local Safeguarding Children Boards (LSCBs) and many thousands of professionals with child-protection roles have benefited from Bristol's research into inter-agency training. The research provided crucial information on efficient organisational partnerships for training and strong evidence of the effectiveness of inter-agency training in promoting mutual understanding, changing attitudes and developing confidence. Bristol's findings underpinned statutory guidance in the Government's Working Together to Safeguard Children (2010) [b], which required LSCBs to provide such training. The research ended a 30-year period during which inquiries into the deaths of children at the hands of their parents consistently criticised the failure of professionals to communicate and work together effectively and advocated inter-agency training as a solution, but had little or no supporting evidence.
Specific impacts are evidenced in: the citation of the research findings in support of LSCBs' training strategies; the increased provision of training programmes in the three years since publication, in spite of budget restrictions; the successful targeting of previously disengaged groups, particularly GPs; and the use of an NSPCC-sponsored bespoke evaluation toolkit developed by the research team.