Pointers for Practice: Identifying Effective Interventions for Children on The Child Protection Register

Core group members should take ‘what works’ into account when developing the working plan.

Drawing on the literature, the following have been found to be significant:

establishing a quality relationship between the child, family and practitioners;
recognising strengths whilst acknowledging difficulties is more likely to lead to family engagement rather than a focus on issues and concerns alone;
parent focused interventions designed to improve parent-child interactions and reduce challenging behaviour by children can be effective provided they make sense to the parents;
ensuring both parents are involved in addressing concerns about significant harm;
being mindful multi-faceted problems require multi-faceted solutions;
interventions should be appropriate for identified needs rather than an ‘its all we have so it will have to do’ approach;
the enormity of some of the changes required should be recognised with milestones set and progress measured incrementally;
families need ongoing support to maintain change.

(Early Intervention Foundation)

Further information: