World Class Education Systems

The Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) commissioned McKinsey & Company to develop a comparative fact-base for an analysis of the performance of England’s education system and high-performing systems overseas, drawing on its international benchmarking framework.

Key points:
- The world’s highest-performing education systems share three mutually reinforcing attributes:
1. high challenge: high expectations of pupils and fair evaluation of schools and other parts of the system
2. high support: enough resource and capacity-building to meet those high expectations
3. aligned incentives: incentives and consequences that induce schools and other parts of the system to meet expectations

When benchmarked against international comparators, many school reforms implemented in England are shown to be world-leading. However, they are not yet delivering consistently world-class teaching for every student, in every classroom in every school. Following significant improvements attainment can be seen to be levelling off, and evidence suggests performance still has a stronger link to socio-economic background than is the case in the world’s best systems.

Most aspects of England’s schooling system can be rated as ‘good’, or ‘world-class’. One exception to this pattern is high expectations for student achievement - a key attribute of high performing systems – which is rated as ‘fair’.

There is also evidence that academic content and standards are not fully meeting the demands of employers and universities.

Strengths identified in the English system include:
- Devolution of resources to schools and three year budgets
- A focus on turning round or closing failing schools
- Intervening in poorly performing local authorities
- Reform of teacher training and best practice marketing of teaching as a profession

The analysis identified scope to strengthen performance in other areas, including the consistency of classroom teaching and the quality of professional development, and the ability to codify and scale up best practice.

Jobs for youth, OECD

This OECD paper on youth employment offers an objective critique of recent government initiatives and policy.

Key points:
- Measures of youth labour market performance and indicators describing the transition from education to work over the past 15 years paint a mixed picture. On the one hand, there is evidence that youth labour market integration and career progression have improved considerably since the mid-1990s, however, other indicators paint a less rosy picture.
- In 2007, the youth unemployment rate was 14%, slightly above the OECD average, compared with just 11% in 2004. These figures hide significant differences between teenagers (16-19-year olds) and young adults (20-24-year olds).
- 13% of 16-24-year olds were neither in employment nor in education or training (NEET) in 2005 (the latest year for which comparable data are available), and many youth in this group are at high risk of poor labour market outcomes and social exclusion. This rate is just above the OECD average of 12% and has increased slightly over the past decade.
- The New Deal for Young People – has helped many youth return to work, sustainable employment outcomes have proved difficult to achieve and there are signs that the programme is no longer as effective as in the early days.
- In terms of the education system, the priority is to reduce early leaving from education and training.
- Provision of free early childhood education, which helps reduce early leaving from education and training particularly when interventions are sustained beyond the pre-school period, is lower in England than in many OECD countries.
- Raising the age of compulsory participation in education and training to 18 by 2015 has the potential to ensure that youth enter the labour market better prepared for work. However, the part-time learning participation option may bring in its wake some enforcement problems when job separation occurs.

The report provides a good, objective, introduction to recent policy in this area and the current planned changes to the 14-19 agenda.

Family Nurse Partnership programme

This report commissioned by the DCSF and Department for Health examined the first year effects of the pilot Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) programme found that the scheme can be successful but further development is needed.

The pilot is based on a model developed in the USA by Professor David Olds, it is an evidence-based nurse home-visiting programme designed to improve the health, well-being and self-sufficiency of young first-time parents and their children. It involves weekly or fortnightly structured home visits by a specially trained nurse from early pregnancy until children are 24 months old. The curriculum is well specified and detailed with a plan for the number, timing and content of visits. Supervision is ongoing and careful records of visits are maintained. The programme has strong theoretical underpinnings, with the formation of a strong therapeutic relationship between nurse and mother at its heart. The programme is designed for low-income mothers who have had no previous live births and starts in the second trimester of pregnancy.

Key points:
- The conditions of being a test site, learning the programme and demands of the tight set up timetable i.e. birth clustered around same time.
- There were wider demands on Family Nurses’ time from organisation and multi-agency working.
- There were challenges in providing this service within the UK context, with national health care, compared to the USA.
- There was a lack of integration between maternity and child health services.
- The FNP reached those who are likely to benefit most and the current eligibility criteria of all 19 years and under first time births should continue. Any further testing of the FNP with non-teenage mothers should focus on 20 to 22 year olds.
- The FNP is acceptable to first-time, young mothers but attrition during pregnancy exceeded the fidelity target in some sites. Further work is needed to understand why clients refuse or leave the programme.
- The FNP seems acceptable to fathers. The evaluation found that fathers:
• Participated in visits;
• Used programme activities;
• Valued the learning on prenatal development, diet and smoking, and preparation for labour and delivery; and
• FNs reported that many clients requested materials for fathers who could not be present, and conveyed questions that fathers had asked about the FNP programme.
- FNs recognised the benefits of using a structured programme, developing a different kind of relationship with clients, using new skills and reaching real need.

Parenting in ordinary families

This JRF report examined the literature around parenting.

Key points:
- Research into cultural differences and similarities in parenting indicates that aspects of parenting relevant to all cultures include parental sensitivity to the child’s needs, socialisation towards cultural norms and support for the child’s need for autonomy across time. The parenting to which a child is exposed may act as a buffer against adversity if it is warm and supportive or, alternatively, it may increase the risk of poor child outcomes if it is hostile or rejecting.
- Within the literature, a variety of parenting themes have emerged but those which recur consistently include sensitivity towards the needs of the child, management of the child’s behaviour and qualities of the parent–child relationship, including warmth and support, hostility and rejection.
- There is evidence that childhood anti-social behaviour increases in conjunction with increases in physical punishment but another school of thought proposes that, as long as its use is rare and only backs up other types of discipline, the effects of physical punishment may be beneficial.
- Much of the literature has focused on the parenting undertaken by mothers but it is important that paternal parenting is also examined.
- Although there were some aspects of parenting which were affected by factors which are immutable (maternal age, education and ethnic group), these were few and far between. Younger parents were more likely to be ambivalent about the timing of the child’s arrival but older mothers were more likely to report that they felt less fulfilled and that they had less time for themselves.
- Mothers who had spent fewer years in formal education reported that, on the whole, they felt less confident in caring for the child and they were less likely to report that they spent time teaching the child. It is difficult to draw any firm conclusions with respect to the effects of ethnic group on parenting.
- Parenting varies little by ethnic group, maternal age or education and that on the whole parenting is warm and supportive in all groups.
- There was a large amount of variation in parenting across time: parenting remained stable for fewer than one in five families. In part, this is likely to be a function of the increasing age of the child.
- The factors which had the most influence regarding changes in parenting score were mother’s mental and physical health. Deteriorations in health were associated with reduced parenting scores and, in contrast to all other variables, improvements in health predicted increased scores.

Supporting children in families affected by mental illness

This Barnardo's report "Family Minded" is based on the experiences of a number of Barnardo’s services that work with children whose lives are affected by parental mental ill-health. It is informed by the academic literature in this field. The authors explore the challenges of parental mental illness for both policy and practice, addressing mental health policy and practice in all four nations of the UK.

The report makes the following recommendations:

Improve understanding of how mental illness affects parents
- Recognise that patients are often also parents and offer opportunities to discuss concerns they have about the impact of their illness on the family.
- Provide better information about the support available to families and if needed, help to access such services.
- Offer advice and support with parenting.
- Continue to raise awareness of the stigma that can surround mental illness and how this can prevent some families from asking for help.
- A named lead professional (or key-worker) to act as the main point of contact for the family, sharing information and advocating on their behalf.

Work in partnership with children to sustain the whole family
- Offer age-appropriate information to help children understand and cope with their parent’s mental illness.
- Provide the opportunity for children to be involved in planning support for themselves and for their parents.
- Work with schools and other children’s agencies so that, if necessary, social, emotional and practical support can be given.
- Make child-friendly visiting facilities available when parents are treated as hospital in-patients.

Put services and practitioners in the best position to ‘think family’
- Develop strategic commissioning and service design which ensures that children’s and adults’ services can work together.
- Offer ongoing professional development and training that raises awareness of the needs of parents with mental illness and their children.
- Disseminate best practice about how to ‘think family’ – such as how to communicate with children.
- Professional guidance, processes and protocols must contain clear expectations about the need to take children into account when treating parents.

HE; Academies; State Boarding Schools & New Schools

The DCSF are on a mission to have every university in the country supporting a local academy school. Currently more than half of the 88 universities are committed and a further 20 are developing towards supporting an academy.

For more and a full list of which academies and universities are involved click here.

The hope is that with the raising of the educational age to 17 by 2013 and 18 by 2015, that links to universities will encourage young people who had never considered a university education to stay on post 18.

The academic year 2008 witnessed the opening of over 180 new schools, including 51 new Academies (taking the total number of academies to 134). Many opened as part of the "Building Schools for the Future" programme, including a purpose-built multi-faith centre which will be used by all members of the community at Allerton High in Leeds.

These new schools includes 5 new "all through" academies, schools which provide a seamless primary and secondary education, taking the total of such schools to 14, with a further 5 in development.

Additionally, the DCSF have announced two new academies will eventually take boarding students, with a focus on those students from the armed services in Lincoln and Salisbury Plain.
This comes on top of additional funds aimed to expand the places at state boarding schools aimed at vulnerable children, such as those looked after by the local authorities.

Family Intervention Projects Evaluation

This evaluation by the DCSF and the Department for Communities and Local Government examines the national network of Family Intervention Projects (FIPs) which were set up as part of the Respect Action Plan, launched in January 2006. These projects aimed to reduce anti-social behaviour (ASB) perpetrated by the most anti-social and challenging families, prevent cycles of homelessness due to ASB and achieve the five Every Child Matters outcomes for children and young people. FIPs use an ‘assertive’ and ‘persistent’ style of working to challenge and support families to address the root causes of their ASB.

Key findings:
- 53 FIPs were set up during 2006 and 2007. Of these 34 were effectively set up from scratch and the remaining 19 projects existed prior to 2006 and were not making fundamental changes when they became a FIP. Typically FIPs were working with families in their own homes for between six to 12 months. Most projects were either being run by a team within the Local Authority (LA) or a voluntary sector provider.
- 885 families were referred to a FIP between February and October 2007, of these 78% met the referral criteria and agreed to work with a FIP. FIPs appeared to be working with their intended beneficiaries as families had high levels of ASB and criminal activities and were homeless or at risk of becoming homeless because of their ASB. These families were also well known in the area for causing ASB.
- The early outcomes reported by FIP staff for 90 families who completed the FIP intervention displayed considerable improvements in all key areas of the FIPs’ work. ASB and criminal activities had declined considerably at the point families exited from a FIP, as had the risk of families engaging in ASB. The risk of families being evicted had also considerably reduced. The outcomes for children and young people were also reported to have improved.
- Eight features of the FIP model appeared to be critical to its success: recruitment and retention of high quality staff, small caseloads, having a dedicated key worker who manages a family and works intensively with them, a whole-family approach, staying involved with a family for as long as necessary, scope to use resources creatively, using sanctions with support, and effective multi-agency relationships.

Parenting Early Intervention Pathfinder Evalaution

This report builds on earlier papers by the DCSF and presents the evidence of the evaluation of the Parenting Early Intervention Pathfinder (PEIP). The PEIP was a DCSF funded programme over the period September 2006 – March 2008 at a cost of £7.6 million in DCSF grant payments to LAs. PEIP funded 18 local authorities (LAs) to implement one of three selected parenting programmes with parents of children aged 8 – 13 years: Incredible Years, Triple P and Strengthening Families, Strengthening Communities, selected as having a sound evidence base for their effectiveness. The main aim of the study was to explore the roll out of these three programmes on a large scale across a substantial number of LAs: to examine parent and child outcomes, cost-effectiveness and the processes that optimise (or impair) the delivery of parenting programmes.

Key findings:
- The Parenting Early Intervention Pathfinder has been successful in rolling out three evidence-based parenting programmes across 18 LAs with high levels of positive gains for parents and their children.
- The PEIP increased the pool of trained facilitators: approximately 1100 additional trained staff.
- PEIP provided parenting training for 3575 parents on 425 courses of which 338 courses finished by the end of the PEIP and 87 were continuing.
- Parental course completion rate was good and similar across programmes: 73% of parents overall.
- The training was very successful as measured by improvements in the parents’ mental well-being, their parenting skills, their sense of being a parent, and also in the behaviour of the child about whom they were concerned.
- The three programmes produced comparable outcomes on all measures of improvement.
- Cost effectiveness varied greatly between LAs using the same programme indicating the importance of local policy and organisational factors.
- Cost effectiveness also varied between the three programmes: the average cost per parent completing was £2955, with Incredible Years courses being the most costly.

Reaching the hardest in Children's Centres

A report by Capacity was carried out to look at the effectiveness of children’s centres in reaching the most highly disadvantaged families, the ways in which they meet the needs of those families and the outcomes achieved.

Ket findings:
- The study revolved around four “exemplar” children’s centre case studies, examining their work within the context of current government policies, best practice and a wide range of research perspectives.
- The centres within the study were found to be highly effective in delivering multi-agency services to and for children and families. Each has been successful in reaching a number of families who would be considered “difficult to include”, giving thought to and overcoming the practical and other barriers which might prevent those families using the various services on offer.
- It is possible that more resources than are currently allocated for the children’s centre programme are needed to ensure that it can meet its objectives. In acknowledgement of this, the DCSF has recently announced a cash injection of more than £4billion to children’s
centres which will include additional funds for outreach workers.
- The reach strategies adopted by successful centres have been implemented in a particularly thorough way. Some of the community consultations, for example, have been extensive and highly structured, utilising focus groups, outreach and public information campaigns, as opposed to more limited consultations and surveys.
- If children’s centres are to achieve their objectives, they need to capture detailed information about their users, both at the point of first contact and at subsequent intervals.
- In all four centres, the expertise and depth of experience of those leading the work was very considerable and this was a critical factor in their extensive achievements.

Safeguarding children report 2008

This report by Ofsted (on behalf of 8 inspectorates) examines arrangements for safeguarding children, is the 3rd such report and assesses arrangements for safeguarding children and young people in four key areas:

1. the effectiveness of the overall safeguarding systems and frameworks that are in place
2. the wider safeguarding role of public services
3. the targeted activity carried out to safeguard vulnerable groups of children. This includes updated evidence on the groups considered in the previous report, including asylum-seeking children, children in secure settings, looked after children and children treated by health services
4. the identification of and response to child protection concerns by relevant agencies.

Some key points:
- Local Safeguarding Children Boards have grown in independence but are still not fully developed.
- Strategic Partnerships are developed in all areas, but still need to improve joint commissioning and the management of high risk offenders.
- CRB checking is standardised, but good practice is not always followed.
- Inspections found evidence of a strong commitment by agencies to focus on the wider safeguarding needs of children and young people in addition to child protection.
- A shared, consistent understanding of safeguarding is still lacking, particularly between social care services and the criminal justice system.
- Some children and young people continue to express significant levels of concern about their personal safety and about being bullied, particularly in institutional and secure settings.
- There is better identification of needs at an early stage and increasingly effective provision of preventive and earlier intervention services.
- Many areas have identified domestic violence as a high priority area for action.
- Most areas are making good progress in developing the Common Assessment Framework.

The report goes onto make a series of recommendations, relevant at national and local level.

Danish model reduces youth crime in Scotland

In 2005 East Renfrewshire Council (ERC) made a commitment to implement an approach to preventing and addressing youth crime and anti social behaviour, based on Danish principles. The resulting project, School, Social Work, Police and Community (SSPC) is led by Social Work.

This report examines the funding, delivery of outcomes and output of the programme.

Some key points:
- An integrated response is the most effective and beneficial approach to dealing positively with vulnerable, damaged or difficult young people.
- Shared aims, practice, and ethos are at the core of what is making the approach operate successfully.
- It is a key strength of the Group, and exemplary practice that members do not say "this is not my remit". If something needs to be done they are in a position to do it then they do so.
- The approach fits with the relevant standards for the quality of the youth justice process and fits with the standards for the range and availability of programmes.
- We recommend, as a preventative measure, targeting resources on the transition from primary to secondary education, and in the first term of the first year at high school.

Youth Crime Action Plan

The UK Government have published their Youth Crime Action Plan, a joint plan between the Ministry for Justice, DCSF and Home Office. The plan which has a focus on early intervention and none-negotiable challenge and support.

Key points:

- Extension of family intervention projects.

- More use of ASBO's and Parenting Orders and sanctions for those parents who do not engage.

- More "community" work for offenders, overseen by new citizen's panels.

- More support for young offenders on release of custody.

- Local Authorities to take responsibility for education and training of young people in custody.

- Everyone over 16 found to be carrying a knife can expect prosecution.

- Increasing the provision of youth services at times when offending is likely.

- Making permanent exclusion from school an automatic trigger for Common Assessment Framework assessment of needs.

- Expanding Safer School Partnerships.

- Working closer with Local Authorities to improve family support which will help ensure problems are addressed early.

- Plus a series of longer term changes to legal processes for the most serious offenders.

See BBC news article

Innovative school system

Charles Leadbeater has produced this report, having examined activities undertaken by schools supported by the DCSF Innovation Unit.

Key points:
- A national peer-learner programme should allow children to become learning mentors to other children and in the process gain credits towards their qualifications.
- Mass secondary schools should be broken up – if not physically then at least organisationally, into units of no more than 450, so that even large schools feel small allowing more different learning environments – vocational, specialist, academic, catch-up – to co-exist.
- Families in which children are at significant risk of early drop out, school exclusion, teenage conception, drug and alcohol abuse should be allocated personal support workers with an integrated ‘family support budget’ to devise self-directed support plans.
- Young people clearly at serious risk of leaving school with no qualifications should be given an individual learning mentor and an individual budget to devise learning programmes in Years 10 and 11.
- All young people should have an electronic Personal Learning Plan and Portfolio which would record their work, achievements and set targets and goals.
- All pupils in Years 7, 8 and 9 should spend at least part of the summer term engaged in a personal challenge which they choose, collaborate with others to undertake and gives them the opportunity to learn outside school.
- The standard school day should become a thing of the past: children should be able to opt to learn early – 7.30 am till 1 pm – or late 1 pm till 6.30 pm – so they are better able to make learning part of their lifestyle.
- All children at age 11 should be given the opportunity to acquire skills of emotional resilience.
- All schools should be the base for a productive, social enterprise – such as a recycling centre – so that children associate learning with work, get pleasure from working productively together and contributing to a business.
- Instead of seeing schooling as a system of years and grades, with key stages and examinations, it should be seen as a set of relationships between teachers, pupils, parents and the wider community. Children need to be able to rely on ‘relationships for learning’ at school, home and in the community.

Children's Centres - reaching the hardest

This study was carried out to look at the effectiveness of children’s centres in reaching the most highly disadvantaged families, the ways in which they meet the needs of those families and the outcomes achieved. The study revolved around four “exemplar” children’s centre case studies, examining their work within the context of current government policies, best practice and a wide range of research perspectives.

Key points:
- There might be a case for additional resources if children's centres are to achieve their objectives, this is more likely as children's centres attract middle class parents who can afford to pay for services.
- The reach strategies adopted by successful centres have been implemented in a particularly
thorough way. Some of the community consultations, for example, have been extensive and highly structured, utilising focus groups, outreach and public information campaigns, as opposed to more limited consultations and surveys.
- Achieving high visibility for the work and value of children's centres, particularly among those who are most remote from services, requires motivation, painstaking research, rigorous planning, effective communication and a range of professional skills and expertise. Children’s centres which have not yet formulated their strategies may not have ready access to this range of skills and expertise.
- If children’s centres are to achieve their objectives, they need to capture detailed information about their users, both at the point of first contact and at subsequent intervals. Only by this can they demonstrate both that they are engaging the most “difficult to include” and offering them services of value.
- Best practice involved highly differentiated and personalised planning for individual parents, built around their specific circumstances and needs, whether in relation to support for particular family difficulties, or involvement in centre activities, learning or volunteering opportunities. The concept of progression was very evident, each parent moving through a continuum of involvement at the pace which was most appropriate.
- In all four centres, the expertise and depth of experience of those leading the work was very
considerable and this was a critical factor in their extensive achievements. It would be difficult for any qualification to provide benefits comparable to this level of experience.
- On the evidence of the studies, a critical requirement for reaching the most disadvantaged families is an understanding of poverty and disadvantage. Training to provide skills and knowledge in this area should be part of the updated strategy for the children’s workforce.

"On Track" evaluation - reducing youth crime and anti-social behaviour

This is the final report from the second phase (March 2003-April 2006) of the national evaluation of On Track, a multi-component initiative which operated in 24 areas of high crime and high deprivation in England and Wales (including Bradford, Scarborough and Sheffield in Yorkshire & Humber region). The aim of the programme was to reduce the propensity of youth crime and anti-social behaviour for children aged 4-12 and their families. The evaluation included monitoring and tracking of 1,100 On Track services and 17,000 service users, longitudinal surveys of primary and secondary school staff and pupils in On Track areas, as well as a longitudinal cohort study which compared On Track area residents with similar families in non-On Track areas.

Key points:
- On Track was primarily a multi-agency, cross-sector programme with partners drawn from education, social services, youth offending services, health and local councils.
- Overall, home-school partnerships accounted for the greatest proportion of On Track services (33%), and by the second phase of the evaluation in some areas On Track was almost entirely school-based.
- Referrals to On Track projects came from a variety of routes, and overall education agencies were the largest single source of referrals comprising 35% of all referrals.
- Three quarters of all service users were children (53% girls), and almost a quarter were parents (mostly mothers – 88%).
- Across the programme as a whole, nearly seventeen thousand children and parents were recorded as users of On track in the second phase of the evaluation.
- Children in On Track areas and those using On Track services reported increasing warmth and praise from parents over time, and a decrease in hostility and criticism. Primary aged children were most likely to report these findings.
- In the primary school range, both children and their parents reported increased communication over time, and younger children were reported as reading more often with parents.
- Overall, there was no clear impact of On Track on school truancy and exclusions rates. However, there was some indication that for primary school children and for children and young people in a booster sample of high-need families that temporary exclusions had dropped over time. Results were also mixed for the impact of On Track on bad behaviour and bullying at school.
- Older children’s attachment and enjoyment of school showed significant positive changes over time including increased involvement and participation at school.

External factors for school success

This Audit Commission report from November 2006 focuses on the external factors to school success, rather than the internal ones. It also offers examples of practice and tools to assess effectiveness. Drawing on research from 12 councils, serving deprived areas, the authors concentrate on regeneration and renewal; social housing; community safety; arts, sports and recreation; and youth services.

Key points:
- School improvement and renewal are inseparable issues from neighbourhood improvement and renewal, particularly in the most disadvantaged areas.
- Community safety partnerships and agencies can work with schools to help tackle crime and antisocial behaviour, both in and out of school, thus contributing to neighbourhood renewal and supporting high aspirations and educational achievement in school.
- Housing conditions affect children’s health and ability to learn; and the profile of housing stock in an area affects the intake of a whole school and very often the performance of its pupils.
- Arts, sports and recreation services can support schools in many ways. They may provide additional facilities or resources to deliver the curriculum. They may help build children’s confidence and self esteem in a different context from the classroom, and give disaffected young people a more constructive alternative to crime and antisocial behaviour.
- Making effective use of both universal and targeted youth services can help to foster more successful schools, through linking young people to wider opportunities for personal and social development, and helping to tackle the root causes of underachievement and disaffection through individual support.

Australian - Brighter Futures Intervention programme

Brighter Futures is an Australian voluntary program that provides targeted support tailored to meet the needs of vulnerable families with children aged under nine years or who are expecting a child. Brighter Futures provides families with the necessary services and resources to help prevent an escalation of emerging child protection issues. It aims to strengthen parenting and other skills to promote the necessary conditions for healthy child development and well being. This report provides a baseline of activity in the Program up to September 2007.

Key points:
- The Brighter Futures children are typically under the age of six with a strong representation in the age group of two to four years. More than a third of the children had a medical condition and half of the children had a development delay.
- Nearly half of the children were identified to require intervention for behavior problems. Most of the children also had socio-emotional problems.
- Warmth, hostile parenting and consistency were three dimensions of parenting that had been identified in previous research as having an important impact on children’s subsequent health and development. Parental warmth was identified to significantly correlate with children’s behavior score. On average, the Brighter Futures parents scored slightly higher on the hostile parenting measure than the Australian population as a whole.
- On average, the primary carers assessed themselves as a ‘better than average parent’. However 13 per cent of participants stated that they had some trouble or were not very good at being a parent, compared to less than two per cent of the overall Australian population.
- More than half of the primary carers stated that they sometimes felt that they needed support but could not get it from anyone and 37 % stated that they often or very often felt that way.
- Primary carers demonstrated high levels of satisfaction with the services and the amount of service they received from the Brighter Futures program.

Children in need

This study commissioned by the DCSF explored whether data on the delivery and use of services for children in need is available, is recorded, can be accessed and could feasibly be systematically collected for the children in need census. It examined the likely quality and completeness of such data, the practical difficulties of extracting it from various management information systems (MIS) and the constraints of consent, confidentiality and data protection.

The Children in Need (CIN) Census aims to collect data on all children receiving support from Children’s Social Care Services, including children looked after, those supported in their families or independently and children subject to a Child Protection Plan. The Census provides evidence on which the DCSF can develop policy, make Spending Review bids, allocate resources to Local Authorities, understand the growth in spending on children’s services and measure their output in the National Accounts.

The CIN Census was suspended after 2005 but is being reintroduced in 2008-09. The present research was commissioned to discover whether the scope of the Census could be extended after 2009 to include some of the numerous additional services used by Children in Need, including those provided by or in partnership with education, youth justice, Connexions, health services and the voluntary sector.

Key points:
- This study identified and drew up working definitions for 11 additional services accessed by children in need, five of which are recommended to be included in the CIN census as a priority: Children with Disabilities; Family Support; Early Years; Special educational Need and Youth Justice.
- The principal problem is not the definitions of the services, but the myriad different ways in which the services may be named, commissioned, paid for and delivered, even within the same authority, and hence the lack of uniform recording and storage of data.
- Issues of consent and confidentiality will significantly impede most data collection from outside Children’s Social Care, but especially from health-related services such as CAMHS.
- It will not be easy to collect uniform child-level census data on most additional services and it may be necessary to consider alternative ways of collecting data to explain expenditure on these services.
- It is possible to determine that a service was provided, but very difficult to obtain an accurate measure of the volume of service provided and the cost incurred.
- The census definition of ‘Children in Need’ may need to be revised, in line with the Children Act 1989, to include the increasing number of vulnerable children accessing additional services from local authorities without a formal referral to Children’s Social Care, sometimes as a result of assessment under the Common Assessment Framework. An even wider population of children access preventive services partly or wholly funded by Children’s Social Care. The question is: should these services and these children be included in the CIN Census?
- Changes to the CIN Census after 2008-09 should be phased in gradually, giving time for consultation and for small-scale pilots to test the new provisions. Experience of implementing electronic data collections suggests that those which require changes to MIS require at least two years to implement.

Child poverty and maltreatement

This NSPCC report draws on incidence studies (number of new cases within a time period) and prevalence studies (proportion of the population affected by maltreatement). The authors are keen to note that poverty does not cause maltreatment and that many parents in poverty do excellent jobs at raising their children, however the evidence is clear that a link between poverty and maltreatement exists:

"We have found that different measures of material deprivation remain independently predictive of child maltreatment. This includes factors that may refer to neighbourhood characteristics, such as the housing tenure, or overcrowding in the home, as well as more individual measures such as car ownership. Poverty in all its manifestations is damaging to children’s well-being”

Key points:
- There is an association between socio-economic status, financial problems in the family and parental child maltreatment, though it is much stronger with physical and emotional maltreatment and absence of physical care than with either sexual abuse outside the family or absence of supervision.
- Compared to young professional respondents, young people working in semi-skilled or unskilled jobs were three times more likely to have suffered serious physical abuse, and ten times more likely to have experienced a serious absence of care in childhood; compared to respondents in higher education, they were twice as likely to have experienced such neglect.
- There is a ‘clustering’ of children on child protection registers in deprived areas of cities.
- Generally, stronger links are found with neglect and physical abuse, while the link with sexual and emotional abuse is much weaker.
- Correlation does not establish cause. There are specific problems in attributing cause in child abuse. The causative pathways are complex with many inter-related variables at work and disentangling the relative influence of different variables is problematic.
- The most widely used and accepted theoretical perspective for explaining the relationship between poverty and maltreatment focuses on stress. It is argued that the multitude of factors associated with poverty and social deprivation, especially when compounded by drug misuse or mental health problems, negatively impact on parenting by increasing vulnerability to stress.
- In order to better safeguard and support children and families living in poverty, more awareness and understanding of the impacts of financial hardship and the different forms of adversity that families are living in need to be recognised if their needs are to be effectively met.

School bullying

This paper examines bullying and its impact on young people’s health and well being, and the significance of family relationships in dealing with bullying behaviour. Created by the Australian government it is a short summary of major research on this subject.

Key points:
- The paper explores school based bullying, peer bystanders, the importance of the family as well as suggesting anti-bullying strategies, building well-being and building positive relationships with families.