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This chapter describes the Bucharest Early Intervention Project (BEIP) is a randomized controlled trial comparing the effects of foster care as an alternative to institutional care for young children abandoned at birth and placed in institutions in Bucharest, Romania. This study comprehensively assessed 136 children between the ages of 6 and 31 months who were institutionalized in all six of the institutions for young children in Bucharest, Romania, and followed them systematically through to 54 months of age. Institutionalization was associated with profoundly negative effects on child and brain development. Virtually all domains of development were compromised by institutional rearing: physical, brain, cognitive, linguistic, and social-emotional development. Nearly half of institutionalized children appeared to suffer from one or more forms of psychopathology. The good news is that foster care appeared to be effective in diminishing some forms of psychopathology and normalizing other domains of development; the bad news is that it was not affecting all domains of development, nor did full recovery occur in most domains assessed to date.

Delayed child development is a cumulative process that starts as early as in the womb and, once begun, may be difficult (or very costly) to reverse during school years and adulthood. This explains why early childhood development (ECD) has been recognized as having high returns over the life cycle in both developing and developed countries. Yet, very little is known with confidence about the economic justification for ECD programs in general and in developing countries in particular. The economic justification must depend on the comparison of benefits and costs of each ECD program. In this chapter, we review what is known and, perhaps more importantly, what is not known about components of economic analysis of ECD programs.

Early childhood interventions are implemented to make a difference in people’s lives, but demonstrating how they have worked is a challenge. Because many reported programs are conducted in high-income countries, results are neither representative nor balanced. This chapter reviews evidence obtained from a range of early childhood interventions designed to reduce violence and build peace, and the outcomes that were achieved in children and parents. Classic longitudinal as well as more nascent early childhood interventions are analyzed using a broad framework. These interventions focus on young children and families and are associated with peaceful outcomes at individual, family, and community levels. The mechanisms by which benefits contribute to the peaceful outcomes are unclear. However, at child and family levels, these outcomes are predictors of reduced violence and a culture of peace in adulthood. It is suggested that early experiences pave the way to positive outcomes later in life, and thus early interventions are important. Programmatic and policy-level strategies are proposed to link peacebuilding with early childhood behavior, and a call is made to improve the direct measurement of peace promotion outcomes. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.

In the autumn of 2006, the government introduced plans for interventions for early developmental prevention of serious harm. They targeted babies and young children who belonged to dysfunctional families. This signified the drift from a post-crime society to a pre-crime society. This chapter explores some researches on early risk factors associate with antisocial behaviour and early preventive interventions. This research and study on early developmental factors and interventions is useful as it can identify different types of groups of young people who offend and pathways into and out of crime, each with distinguishing characteristics that can be traced back to infancy. This chapter also points out to the findings of these researches and considers some of the practical and ethical problems which they raised. The chapter concludes that the concept of early intervention should not be dismissed and that the most important is the way programmes are developed, and their objectives and outcomes.

Some children and young people are conceived as being particularly susceptible to ‘risk’, implying constructions of vulnerability and invoking the imperatives of protection and safeguarding (as in modern child welfare discourse). Conversely, different constituencies of the young are deemed to comprise a primary source of ‘risk’, implying a threatening or menacing presence and invoking regulatory and corrective priorities (as in contemporary youth justice discourse). Such binary conceptualisations inevitably tend to oversimplify. Nonetheless, they each provide rationales for various forms of early intervention, greater levels of adult supervision, more intensive patterns of regulation and surveillance and, ultimately, circumscribed access to public spaces for children and young people. On closer inspection, however, whether in the child welfare realm or the youth justice domain, the logic and consequence of early intervention strategies are pitted with theoretical, conceptual and practical problems. This chapter engages with such problems as they specifically relate to the youth justice sphere in the United Kingdom and, by drawing on key sources of evidence in the space available, provides a knowledge-based critique of early intervention.

This chapter describes an evidence-based approach to the management of physical aggression in elementary and middle school students. Drawing from a public health prevention framework, it presents strategies for selective intervention (also known as early intervention) with this population. Selective intervention targets students who display elevated levels of aggression relative to the general population of same-age students, but who do not display a level of aggression that calls for intensive treatment. In contrast, universal intervention (or primary prevention) targets all students in a school regardless of risk status, and indicated intervention (treatment) targets students who have a specific problem or diagnosis (e.g. conduct disorder).

Prevention rather than cure is the obvious, common-sense approach to dealing with any problem, and it is unsurprising that criminal justice policy has been driven by such an ideal. Shortly after entering government in 1997, New Labour embarked on what was seen by many commentators as a more holistic model of crime prevention than its predecessor Conservative government had utilised, with the establishment of Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships. This book examines government policy in the United Kingdom in relation to early intervention programmes that aim to support families and to prevent youth crime. It raises some important questions about prevention strategies, such as whether early intervention is symptomatic of a creeping criminalisation of social policy whereby a coercive approach is used to force so-called problem families and their children to engage with services; how local people themselves are engaged in crucial decisions about how to tackle crime and social problems; and how those most detached from the mainstream can be motivated to take advantage of support provided.

This book raises important policy questions in relation to early intervention strategies and crime prevention work with children, young people and their families in the United Kingdom. In terms of current government policy, early intervention has become firmly embedded under New Labour's administration as the overarching strategy to address both social exclusion and offending behaviour among children, young people and their families. There are a number of assumptions underpinning the approach set out in the book: that the earlier the intervention, the better it will be; that targeted as opposed to universal provision is appropriate; and that coercive engagement based on a carrot-and-stick approach is most effective. In conclusion, this chapter charts a path through the contentious intervention field in the context of the reformed youth justice system and its rebalancing during 2008. It considers how the greater integration of youth justice with youth services, children's services and family work allows for a new structure at a local level in which to respond properly to the needs of those young people and families considered most at risk of offending.

This chapter analyses the intricate network of interests and their agendas that characterise social policy provision generally, focusing down on social investment in children's services and the early intervention field. In particular, the chapter looks at three key stakeholder groups with interests in early intervention: business, politicians and professionals, and their interlinked alliances and partnerships. It examines how corporate money, power, and influence have pervaded various children's services, from child protection work to family and early intervention initiatives to education services. This occurs through ‘philanthrocapitalism’ — an amalgam of an economic rationale of early intervention coupled with moral notions of social philanthropy.

Institutionalization of children is a worldwide problem, and the consequences of these deprived early experiences have been known for some time. To examine how profound early neglect impacts the course of human development, we designed the Bucharest Early Intervention Project: the first randomized controlled trial of family care intervention on young children institutionalized in infancy. The Project is unique in that it includes measures of brain structure and function. Results suggest that early psychosocial deprivation has profound effects on gray matter structure that do not appear to remediate, although subtle intervention effects were observed for white matter volume. EEG activity was significantly affected by early psychosocial deprivation, but there appeared to be remediation of this functioning by the time children were eight years old and had spent close to six or seven years in families. Project data argue for changes in the manner in which societies address abandoned children. An important step toward building just and peaceful societies is to provide family-type care for young children instead of institutional life, as being raised in a family greatly enhances a child’s skills in emotion regulation. The link to peaceful societies is through these processes. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.

Not long ago, little was known about early-intervention program characteristics for deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Two recently published seminal documents addressing best practices in early intervention have shed light on the question: What works in early intervention and why? The Joint Committee on Infant Hearing in the United States described goals and benchmarks for early intervention programs. In Europe, an international panel of experts identified 10 foundational principles to guide family-centered early-intervention programs and practices. Although these documents will surely enhance the quality of services throughout the world, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. That is, consumers must be the ones who determine the extent to which these recommendations are meaningful. Their application in practice and what we might learn from this will refine our understanding of their efficacy. Five evidence-based practice recommendations are described from these documents and adaptations to be considered across widely different populations of children, families, and diverse cultural contexts.

In most parts of the developed world, young deaf or hard-of-hearing children are eligible to receive early intervention services, which provide support and services not only to the child, but also to the family. The shift from the early intervention system to school can be conceptualized as an ecological transition; children and their families experience change on many levels with the departure from the family-centered services of early intervention and the entry into the child-centered school environment. The discussion has a twofold purpose: to review what has been documented about the transition experience and to describe the process for children with hearing loss from an ecological systems perspective, with a particular focus on relational aspects among the home, early intervention, school, and governance. The discussion concludes by considering transition dimensions, qualities of ecological contexts, and indicators of a smooth transition for deaf or hard-of hearing children.

This chapter concludes the book with a number of challenging questions concerning the future. Among them are, will the movement to listen to and take account of the voices of children and young people in the policy process gain more public recognition and support? What will be the impact of further rapid advances in information technology on children themselves, their parents, and the helping professions? Will principles of preventive mental health and early supportive intervention come to underlie and be integral to the work of the education services (and primary healthcare) and that of the interdisciplinary family justice system? The chapter also considers the prospects for developing an early preventive approach to promote children and young people's positive mental health and wellbeing.

The concept of social exclusion has been central to New Labour's social policy since its election in 1997. The Sure Start programme, announced in 1998 and expanded by 2004 to include 400,000 children under four and their families, has been a central element in the government's long-term strategy to prevent social exclusion by breaking the cycle that plays a significant part in its (re)production. This chapter looks at how the problem of the intergenerational reproduction of social exclusion has been conceptualised by the New Labour governments and how this is reflected in policy. It examines the evolving policy interventions since 1997 with parents of preschool children designed to ‘break the cycle’, and what this conceptualisation of social exclusion and the policies associated with it leave out. The initial announcement in 1998 was for a programme of 250 Sure Start Local Programmes in areas of high deprivation. Sure Start has been transformed from an early intervention policy to the provision of universal preschool services that integrate health, education, advice and support in Sure Start children's centres across the United Kingdom.

This chapter focuses on early childhood experiences and how they may contribute to cooperative and peaceful behaviors and outcomes in the later childhood years and into adulthood. Five interrelated topics are explored: (a) universal tensions ever pushing us toward competition or cooperation; (b) socioeconomic inequities that powerfully constrain children’s (and adult’s) potential to contribute to and participate in a healthy and peaceful society; (c) the protective and enabling forces of the early caregiving environment when it is sensitive and responsive to children’s needs; (d) the malevolent, if culturally understandable, influences of harsh parenting practices and child abuse; and (e) a summary of early psychological interventions that promote sensitive parenting and secure attachments well known to be associated with cooperative, nonviolent behaviors across childhood and beyond. Each section is punctuated by suggestions for further research and public policy developments (national and international) that could further advance the cause of peace. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.