Effective early intervention works to prevent problems from occurring or to tackle them head-on when they do before problems get worse. It also helps to foster a whole set of personal strengths and skills that prepare a child for adult life.
Early intervention can take different forms, from home visiting programs to support vulnerable parents to school-based programs to improve children’s social and emotional skills, to mentoring schemes for young people who are vulnerable to involvement in crime. While some have argued that early intervention may have its strongest impact when offered during the first few years of life, the best evidence shows that effective interventions can improve children’s life chances at any point during childhood and adolescence.
How Does It Work?
Early intervention services work to reduce the risk factors and increase the protective factors in a child’s life. 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. These factors exist at different levels within the child’s environment – at the individual, family, community, and society level – and interact in complex ways.
Protective factors are the characteristics or conditions of individuals, families, communities, and society that can mitigate these risks and increase the health and well-being of children and families. 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 behavioral problems or poor academic attainment.
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. 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 based on pre-identified risks.
Universal Or Targeted?
Many families need more support than is available through universal services, such as schools and GPs. Early intervention works best when it targets particular families or individuals, on a selective or indicated basis.
Targeted selective interventions are offered to families based on broad demographic risks, such as low family income, single parenthood, adolescent parenthood, or ethnic minority status. Although children growing up in these circumstances may not be suffering any specific problems, interventions that select families based on these kinds of risks have the potential to keep more serious problems from occurring.
Targeted indicated interventions are offered to families who have been identified as having a specific or diagnosed problem requiring more intensive support. In these cases, early intervention can no longer prevent problems from occurring but has the potential to help in treating the problems and minimizing or reversing long-term impacts on a child’s development.
As 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.
What Can Early Intervention Achieve?
Early intervention approaches often focus on supporting four key aspects of child development – their physical, cognitive, behavioral, and social and emotional development – where it has the potential to make the biggest difference and provide benefits throughout a person’s life.