Prevention and early intervention with children in need

Abstract

First of all, I would like to pay tribute to Miranda Davies who retired in March after 27 years as our Journal Manager. Her publishing acumen, sensitivity to readers’ needs and intellectual insights were major factors in maintaining the standard of the journal and hundreds of people benefitted from her help and advice. She has been replaced by Victoria Walker who brings to the journal considerable experience of producing research publications. My time as Commissioning Editor is also coming to a close after 19 years and the advertisement for my successor appeared in the March edition (2022). Having been involved in child welfare research for nearly 60 years, I have been thinking about suitable swansongs for the final editorials. In the past, I tried to use editorials to comment on current affairs and draw out the relevance of articles in each edition. But as we move to thinking about what a post-Covid, post-Brexit welfare state should look like, it seems most fruitful to focus on fundamental principles rather than service details. So, following St Paul’s advice, my final editorials will dwell on the things eternal that are not seen rather than the things temporal that are. In the March edition, this process started with a framework seeking to help fashion a more effective service for adolescents who now form a large proportion of looked after children but seem to have been overlooked in recent years. This time, the topic is the enduring concept of ‘prevention’ and what its role might be in future children’s services. In the following discussion, several references are cited that are quite old. This is deliberate as I wish to show that pioneers were seeking answers to difficult questions half a century ago and there is a body of high-quality research available that has passed into history. It would be a pity if the new generation simply reinvented the wheel.