Behavioural self-regulation difficulties during childhood are highly predictive of children’s involvement in criminal activity during the teenage years and adulthood. Children’s self-regulatory skills are highly associated with their ability to form positive relationships with others, as well as their success in school. Behavioural development involves children’s ability to monitor and regulate their own behaviour, attention and impulses.

Cognitive outcomes typically targeted by early intervention include performance on standardised tests, school achievement, and higher education and employment opportunities once they leave school. Positive cognitive development is strongly associated with a child’s success in school and entry into the workforce.

Cognitive development includes children’s acquisition of speech and language skills, their ability to read and write, their numeracy capabilities and their understanding of logical problem-solving.

Physical outcomes targeted by early intervention activities include improving birth outcomes, reducing the incidence of infectious diseases and decreasing childhood obesity.

Physical development involves children’s physical health, maturation and the presence or absence of a physical disability, and it provides the basis for positive development in all other areas.

What can early intervention achieve?Įarly intervention approaches often focus on supporting four key aspects of child development – their physical, cognitive, behavioural, and social and emotional development – where it has the potential to make the biggest difference and provide benefits throughout a person’s life. In these cases, early intervention can no longer prevent problems from occurring, but has the potential to help in treating the problems and minimising or reversing long-term impacts on a child’s development.Īs early intervention moves up the scale from universal to targeted selective to targeted indicated, interventions become more intensive, and are offered to a smaller group of families.

Targeted indicated interventions are offered to families who have been identified as having a specific or diagnosed problem requiring more intensive support.

Although children growing up in these circumstances may not be suffering any specific problems, interventions that select families on the basis of these kinds of risks have the potential to keep more serious problems from occurring.

Targeted selective interventions are offered to families on the basis of broad demographic risks, such as low family income, single parenthood, adolescent parenthood or ethnic minority status.

Early intervention works best when it targets particular families or individuals, on a selective or indicated basis. Many families need more support than is available through universal services, such as schools and GPs. But they can help us to identify children who are vulnerable and who may need extra support. Studies show that early intervention works best when it is made available to children on the basis of pre-identified risks. These risk factors are not deterministic or predictive at an individual level: they cannot tell us exactly which child or young person will need help. In many cases, risk and protective factors are two sides of the same coin: for example, poor parental mental health may pose a risk to a child’s healthy development, while good parental mental health may provide a protective factor against other negative outcomes, such as behavioural problems or poor academic attainment. Protective factors are the characteristics or conditions of individuals, families, communities and society that can mitigate these risks and increase the health and wellbeing of children and families. These factors exist at different levels within the child’s environment – at the individual, family, community and society level – and interact in complex ways.

We have a good understanding of the risk factors that can threaten children’s development, limit future social and economic opportunities, and increase the likelihood of mental and physical health problems, criminal involvement, substance misuse, or exploitation or abuse in later life. Early intervention works to reduce the risk factors and increase the protective factors in a child’s life.

Early reflection definition