Prevention and
Early Intervention Programme
Presentation to the Trinity College Summer School,
August 2012.
Presentation Overview:
• What is the Prevention and Early Intervention
Programme (PEIP)?
• Why was PEIP needed?
• What does the PEIP do?
• What have we learned?
What is Prevention and Early Intervention?
• Strategies aimed at realising the full potential
of children, families and communities;
• Building skills and capacities to prevent the
occurrence of problems, or prevention of a
problem getting worse;
• Intervening at a young age or early on in the
development of a difficulty.
Why Prevention and Early Intervention?
• Despite investment, historically poor outcomes in areas
of disadvantage;
• Minimal resources targeted at beginning of life cycle;
• Focus on crisis response at expense of promotion,
prevention and early intervention;
• Absence of evidence-informed, integrated service design;
• Lack of community and parental engagement and trust in
services.
Integrated prevention and early intervention
• Costly and intractable educational, health and mental health
problems occur because children families don’t have appropriate
and/or sufficient services, early enough
• Prevention and early intervention can improve outcomes for
children at risk of poverty
• Integrated Prevention and Early Intervention promotes
– secure attachment
– age-appropriate social and emotional development and pro social
behaviour
– positive protective relationships
– language and literacy skills
– mental health.
• Prevention and Early Intervention has a critical role to play in
preventing tragic and costly consequences for children and families
Prevention and Early Intervention Programme
• 3 area-based prevention and early intervention sites
– Ballymun: youngballymun
– Dublin 17: Preparing for Life
– Tallaght West: Childhood Development Initiative (CDI)
Identified due to:
– Leadership in the communities;
– Willingness to engage in new approaches;
– High levels of disadvantage on a range of indicators;
– High child populations.
Common Statistics (2005):
• Unemployment
• 14.5% (three times the
national average)
• House hold headed by
lone parent
• Educational attainment
• 50%
• Mental health needs
• Behaviour
• Twice national average of
early school leaving
• 30% + adults receiving
treatment for depression
• 25% 4 year olds displayed
behavioural difficulty.
Common Features:
• Jointly funded by Atlantic Philanthropies and
Department of Children and Youth Affairs –
total investment of €36m over 5 years;
• Driving evidence-based, outcomes-focused
prevention and early intervention approaches
in children’s services;
• Innovative delivery;
• Rigorous evaluation.
Programme Themes
•
A life cycle approach
–
–
•
Evidence of what works
–
•
Needs-led strategies, drawing on evidence-based approaches
Integrated services model
–
–
•
Starts pre birth, continues through infancy, early childhood, school years
and community wide
Focus on 0-6 years period, particularly essential 0-3 foundation stage
Fostering widespread engagement, collective identification of issues,
development of responses and ownership of strategy
Collective realignment of capacity to deliver evidence-based services
A focus on implementation
–
Rigorous attention to practice detail, regular review of delivery,
culture of continuous improvement
Practice themes
•
•
•
•
Activate health and community services to build and
mobilise parental resources from pregnancy, infancy and
throughout children’s lives
Develop high quality early years care and education services
Engage with schools to implement balanced literacy
frameworks and social and emotional development
initiatives
Work with community providers to amplify capacity in
youth mental health, restorative practice and community
safety
Overarching messages for
improving children’s lives
1: Mandate integrated prevention and early
intervention in service provision for children and
families
2: Drive the implementation of area-based approaches
to tackle child poverty
3: Build requirements for evidence-based practice into
funding conditions
What have we learned about
evidence-based practice?
•
•
•
•
It is a new approach to children’s services
It values evidence and mandates accountability
Requires a strong information base
Investing in evidence-based approaches has the greatest
chance of being effective
• Services must be developed in response to identified need
• Initiatives aimed at improving outcomes for children need to
be strongly based on evidence, rigorously implemented and
evaluated.
Thank You
For further information visit our websites:
www.youngballymun.org
www.preparingforlife.ie
www.twcdi.ie
The Prevention and Early Intervention Programme is jointly funded by
The Atlantic Philanthropies and
The Department of Children and Youth Affairs