Promoting the social and emotional wellbeing of vulnerable pre-school children (0-5 yrs): UK evidence review.

Blank et al., (2012)

National Institute of Health and Care Excellence - n/a

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Evidence Categories

• Care setting: Family/Home Setting
• Care setting: Early education and childcare settings
• Population group: Preschool age (under 5s)
• Population group: At risk Children & Young People
• Intervention: Family partnership programmes or home visit progra
• Intervention: Early education and childcare interventions
• Intervention: Caregiver training/ parenting skills training
• Outcome: Social, emotional and mental wellbeing outcomes
• Outcome: Acceptability of interventions

Type of Evidence

NICE Underpinning Review

Overview

The authors state:

"This review was undertaken to support the development of guidance on two related NICE intervention topics promoting the social and emotional wellbeing of vulnerable pre-school children aged 0-5. The intervention guidance will focus on the effectiveness of specific progressive interventions: home visiting and family based interventions; and early education and child care interventions."

Recommendations

The authors state:

"Implications of the review findings

Inconsistency in the use of key terms relevant to this review may be problematic. There are several recognised definitions of both vulnerability and wellbeing and authors use a variety of measures to define both. Vulnerability in particular is a problematic term and is defined inconsistently by a variety of measures including areas of residence and parent related socioeconomic factors such as employment status, education level and relationships status. Very few of the papers used the term vulnerability, therefore proxy terms such as at risk of educational failure, low socioeconomic status, women at risk of postnatal depression were used to determine inclusion and exclusion. The review included papers which were answering different research questions to the target of this work, requiring selective extraction of data. A lack of information in some of the papers made this challenging with the potential for error in omission or inclusion. Many authors highlighted the multi-faceted nature of the interventions considered here. While endeavouring to divide the evidence into home-based versus centrebased provision it should be recognised that in many programmes there are elements of both. The complex nature of the interventions precludes identification of elements which may lead to more successful programmes. The evidence presented here is limited in terms of the quality of some of the papers. There is some disparity in the evidence regarding who should deliver the programme, programme length and intensity. As a result, these limitations should be considered when making recommendations based on these studies."