Early Intervention is about addressing the root causes of social disadvantage, ensuring that everyone is able to realise their full potential by developing the range of skills we all need to thrive. It is about getting extra, effective and timely interventions to all babies, children and young people who need them, allowing them to flourish and preventing harmful and costly long-term consequences. (EIF, 2013)
This definition resonates strongly with Labour’s definition of social exclusion, as do the solutions focusing on a model of social investment. However, this definition places greater emphasis upon early intervention in terms of both risk factors and age of children. The Munro Report (Munro, 2011), highlighted the term ‘early help’ as a positive replacement for the term ‘early intervention’. Munro (2011) identified this as a term that suggested a working together of professional services and families, rather than professional services intervening and ‘doing to’ families as implied by early intervention. Considered as a more positive and progressive term than ‘early intervention’ (Frost et al, 2015), early help is defined as ‘an ambiguous term, referring both to help in the early years of a child or young person’s life and early in the emergence of any stage in their lives’ (Munro, 2011: 69). What is important here is that Munro argued that early help was a societal ‘moral imperative’ (Munro, 2011) to minimise suffering and would help achieve cost savings by preventing problems rather than trying to reverse damage later on in individuals’ lives. What is important is that the Munro Report reinforced the role of the voluntary sector, suggesting that engagement of families was central to their work.
In a period of economic decline, however, long-term preventative services moved down the list of priorities in favour of more targeted intervention. For example, through continued commitment to early intervention, Waldegrave (2013) highlighted the fact that children’s centres, a statutory provision to provide universal and early support to families, experienced on average a 28% decrease in their funding between 2010 and 2012, with more significant cuts to follow. Indeed by 2018, over 1,000 children’s centres had closed because of funding shortages.
Funding cuts inevitably result in fewer services and a more targeted approach being adopted (Waldegrave, 2013). The ideological notion that the voluntary sector will be able to attract other funding to achieve this then becomes increasingly important. To put this risk into perspective, in 2015 the National Children’s Bureau reported an overall 55% reduction in early intervention funding under the Coalition government (2010–2015), which equates to cuts of £1.8 billion per year. By 2018, this funding slump had deepened, with figures from the National Audit Office showing a £763 million slump in funding for children and family support since the Coalition government was first elected in 2010, while funding for services for young people has fallen by £855 million. Alongside this, according to the Institute of Fiscal Studies (IFS) (2018), since 2010 schools have experienced an 8% decline per pupil funding, coupled with rising costs.
The assumption that the voluntary and private sectors could replace this funding was crucial to the success of the Big Society and the subsequent Civil Society strategy. Indeed, despite widespread protest, the current Conservative government insisted that no more funding was available for children and education services. Therefore, the voluntary sector becomes a critical partner in its assumed ability to attract, recruit and retain volunteers over that of public and private sector organisations. Coote (2011) argues that this key premise, that voluntary organisations can replace paid labour with unpaid labour through voluntarism, is fundamentally flawed. Furthermore, the assumption that withdrawal of state funding from voluntary organisations will be replaced by philanthropy, donations and voluntarism action is unproven (Albrow, 2012). Additionally, this risks the exploitation of the fundamental concept of voluntary action which is the giving of one’s skills, money and time as a gift and risked reinvigorating a postcode lottery, as areas within which people have the time and means to ‘gift’ do not correspond areas of ‘need’ (Evans, 2011).
The evolving discourse of prevention
Considering the challenges posed by the ongoing political shifts about who should support vulnerable groups in society, the discourse of prevention has also experienced changes. Though welcomed overall across children’s services, Labour’s recognition and definition of social exclusion and thus their concern with child poverty has been widely debated. Labour clearly located the concept of prevention within the context of social exclusion. With this came the conceptualisation of children deemed to be ‘at risk’ and factors associated with the ‘at risk’ child. Labour started from the premise of concern for all children and young people’s wellbeing. The repeated emphasis within this framework was upon children who were considered to be particularly at risk of social exclusion and poor outcomes. Morris et al (2008) suggested ‘these children are seen to present real challenges to the political aspirations for socially and economically viable citizens, and as such, additional interventions have been proposed as necessary to ensure that the investment in childhood does deliver later benefits’ (p 30). This social investment model requires early intervention in order to prevent future burdens on the state constructs children as future ‘investments’. Critics of this approach (for example, Prout, 2000; Lister, 2003) have suggested that the model adopted by Labour focused too much on a model of social investment, constructing children as an investment for our future. Rather than focusing upon tackling inequality and redistribution of wealth and opportunity, a social investment model focuses upon a political version of social inclusion and draws upon education as the means and vehicle into future employability. Such an approach not only suggests the perceived inter-changeability between social exclusion and poverty but also, as critics argue (for example, Fawcett et al, 2004), neglects the wellbeing of a child. Perversely, by targeting groups identified as at risk, children may suffer from stigmatisation that could heighten their risk of social exclusion in the future (Fawcett et al, 2004).
Interpretation of the discourse surrounding the issue of ‘risk’ presents several challenging concepts that are not helpful to the development of a child. Therefore, many academics and practitioners favour the concept of ‘resilience’ as a term that focuses more directly on the wellbeing of the child and the development of skills and attributes that help them cope with difficult circumstances. Broadly speaking, the concept of resilience focuses on an on-going process between the individual and the social context within which they exist (Howard et al, 1999). Defined by Fonagy et al (1994) as ‘normal development under difficult circumstances’ (p 233), resilience stresses the importance of the relationship between the child and their family, and the child’s ability to engage with protective factors, with their family’s support, to offset the risks. Throughout the Labour term there was a growing pool of evidence that suggested the importance of focusing upon the resilience of the community or family, as well as the individual (Mackey, 2003). For example, Gilligan (1999) highlighted the role of communities and peer groups in providing children with social support networks, helping to establish resilience factors. Therefore, Labour’s focus on child welfare policy, social exclusion and resilience led to a framework of interventions that aimed to take a more holistic approach. Communities and service providers aimed to provide community-based interventions, which were integrated and involved children, young people and their families in a participative approach (Evans and Pinnock, 2007). The ‘risk, resilience and protection-focused prevention paradigm’ (France and Utting, 2005)