Supporting Children and Families: Lessons from Sure Start for Evidence-Based Practice in Health, Social Care and Education

Supporting Children and Families gathers together the lessons learned from perhaps the largest scale social experiment ever undertaken in England - Sure Start, the programme designed to improve the emotional development, health and education of children.

It boils down the huge amount of knowledge and experience generated by the Sure Start programmes and local evaluation studies, with chapters encompassing child development and healthcare, partnership working with existing local services, parental employment and supporting families with young children, reaching out to marginalised groups and strengthening communities. In addition to summarizing the findings of numerous innovative projects, contributors draw on their experiences of the successes and challenges to offer advice for those engaged in current and future practice. Each chapter concludes with `three lessons for Children's Centres'.

With its strong focus on practice implications, this book is indispensable reading for practitioners working in health, social and educational services for children and families, as well as students or researchers, and policymakers in these fields.

Justine Schneider is Professor of Mental Health and Social Care at the School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham, and Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, UK. From 2000-2005 she was a member of the Durham University Sure Start evaluation team. Mark Avis is currently Professor of Social Contexts of Health at the School of Nursing, University of Nottingham, UK. He has led a number of local evaluations of Sure Start programmes in the East Midlands, UK. Paul Leighton is a Research Fellow based in the Trent RDSU at the University of Nottingham, UK. From 2002-2007 he was based at the School of Nursing, University of Nottingham, UK, where he was involved in a number of Sure Start local programme evaluations.