ESRI Research & Policy Seminar: "The Impact of Childhood Adversity Across the Life Course: Challenges for Policy Makers and Professionals"

Venue: ESRI, Whitaker Square, Sir John Rogerson's Quay, Dublin 2

Speaker: Professor Trevor Spratt AIB Professor in Childhood Research and Director of the Children's Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin.

Abstract:
The public response to difficult child and family circumstances has largely moved from longer term institutional based provision to shorter term interventions designed to maintain children in their own homes. Attempts, however, to develop in-home supportive services may be subverted when concerns to protect children from maltreatment direct the attentions of professionals to pressing child protection risks. Research undertaken in Northern Ireland demonstrates that performance of professionals may, as a consequence of immediate risk management, subvert legislative and policy intentions, whilst official output measures may indicate the opposite. The patterns of practice that pertain may largely be explained by the distortions created in the system where a need to manage immediate risk is demanded by public, press and politicians. Such current practices, however, may have the effect of masking the needs of those children whose experience of multiple adversities in childhood leads to increased probability of realising poor health and social outcomes over the life-course. Drawing on research, it is possible to develop new ways of assessment to identify those children at greatest risk in the longer term, thus adding a counterbalance to preoccupation with immediate risk and stimulating the creation of policies and practices built on the concept of chronicity, directing professionals towards longer term cross disciplinary service delivery.