early-intervention-next-steps

Box 1.1: Bedrock capabilities
Social capabilities – a child will engage
in give-and-take exchanges with an adult;
will engage with other children; will
demonstrate the ability to get along with
others; will understand and respond to the
emotions of others; will develop a sense of
belonging to a larger community through
social interactions and relationships, and
will have an awareness of their relationship
to others in a group; and will develop
the ability to interact co-operatively with
others.
Emotional capabilities – a child has
secure attachment; is able to experience,
recognise and express a variety of
emotions, and to recognise and empathise
with those emotions in others; will manage
their internal states and feelings, as well as
stimulation from the outside world; will
develop strategies to control emotions and
behaviours; will manage their behaviours;
and will recognise their ability to do things.
24. By building these capabilities we enable
children to be happily engaged with others and
with society, and to learn, to develop fully, to
attain and to achieve. These skills are such critical
building blocks that most people would assume
that they are common to all of us. Yet for many
they are absent or underdeveloped. This has
inevitable consequences for the individual and
society. Building their essential social and emotional
capabilities means children are less likely to
adopt antisocial or violent behaviour throughout
life. It means fewer disruptive toddlers, fewer
unmanageable school children, fewer young people
engaging in crime and antisocial behaviour. Early
Intervention can forestall the physical and mental
health problems that commonly perpetuate a cycle
of dysfunction.
25. Indeed, evidence and experience from
our country and overseas suggest that Early
Intervention that develops social and emotional
capability can reduce truancy, antisocial behaviour,
crime, health problems, welfare dependency, the
Chapter 1 Early Intervention: providing the social and emotional bedrock for all children
need for statutory social care, underattainment,
exclusion from school and the need for
educational alternative provision. All of these
problems impose enormous and continuing
costs on local and national government and on
wider society. Many of these costs show up in
public accounts but others are invisible, although
no less real to their victims. For example, one
disruptive child at school can exhaust the attention
and energy of teachers and reduce the quality
of education for other pupils. Fear of crime
can trap people in their homes. Perhaps worst
of all, poor outcomes for young people often
impact on their own parenting capacity as they
take on responsibility for our next generation of
children. In reducing common social problems,
Early Intervention ofers both immediate rewards
for society and the prospect of long-term gains.
In our book in 2008 Iain Duncan Smith and I cited
some of the evidence to support that assertion;
since then, that evidence has grown greater and
stronger.
Adverse childhood experiences
26. Much academic literature clearly demonstrates
that adverse childhood experiences can have a
detrimental infuence on a number of outcomes.
The California Adverse Childhood Experiences
Study6 was one of the largest investigations
ever on links between childhood maltreatment
and later life health and well-being. As many as
17,000 participants had comprehensive physical
examinations and provided detailed information on
childhood abuse, neglect and family dysfunction.
The study found that adults who had adverse
childhoods showed higher levels of violence
and antisocial behaviour, 7 adult mental health
problems, 8 school underperformance and lower
IQs, 9 economic underperformance10 and poor
physical health. These led to high expenditure on
health support, social welfare, justice and prisons;
and lower wealth creation. The scientifc rationale
for Early Intervention is overwhelming.
The inter-generational cycle
27. Largely remedial public funding, invested over
generations, and repeated shifts in public policy
have done little to afect a fundamental problem:
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