Interview - Dr Jo Casebourne, Early Intervention Foundation

Covid-19 and early intervention: Understanding the impact, preparing for recovery predicts a huge surge in demand.

WHAT’S THE BACKGROUND TO THE RESEARCH?

It was a quick temperature test of what was happening in different kinds of services from head teachers to Children’s Centre managers, to early help, to understand from them what they were doing in the immediate crisis, what they were thinking in terms of the recovery and what they needed from us as a charity – alongside some other work we’ve been doing on Covid-19, as well on virtual and digital services, because we realise so many things were going online almost overnight and we wanted to know about their effectiveness.

HOW DO YOU ENVISAGE EARLY INTERVENTION AND EARLY HELP SERVICES WORKING AS PART OF THE RECOVERY FROM CORONAVIRUS, AS THE LOCKDOWN EASES?

We’ve been thinking about what happens after lockdown, in the recovery period from coronavirus, how will services work in that context. We know that the full impact of Covid-19 on children and families is only going to start becoming apparent once lockdown is eased. The professionals we spoke to were all really concerned about the impact of the pandemic on children, and this research predicts a surge in demand for services. National government, local government, services, need to come together to really make sure we do what we can to prevent longer-term harm.

We know that children and young people’s services have been under pressure at a time when demand has been rising already, before the pandemic happened. What we’re focused on is making sure that local authorities and others have proper funding for increased demand.

We’re likely to see an increase in referrals for children’s social care and specialist services, but that’s not always the answer for all families.

That’s where early help services come in, targeted at the most vulnerable – they are needed now more than ever in identifying children and providing support. They play a crucial role in helping children and families bounce back; they need to be preparing, and the funding needs to be there.

That’s one of our key messages, that early help is vital to helping families get back on their feet, a key part of the nation’s recovery from Covid-19.

YOUR INTERVIEWS HAVE ALSO REVEALED SOME POSITIVES FROM HOW SERVICES HAVE ADAPTED DURING LOCKDOWN…

There are some positives in this research that we really want to hold on to – let’s not go back exactly to the way things were.

What we found is that all the local responses to Covid-19 were really characterised by innovation and really rapid adaptation, and actually very nimble partnership working, that’s the kind of rapid progress that we’ve got to retain after lockdown.

Lots of agencies were working better together. Schools working more closely with early help services, that’s one example. Health visitors, Children’s Centres and early help coming together locally to create single lists of families, so there’s a shared assessment of who needs what, the level of risk these families face, the type of support they need. That’s a brilliant innovation and one we should definitely continue.

We saw some services that had moved referral and assessment almost entirely online, joint referral between health visitors and Children’s Centres, and early help.

Areas have created parenting online hubs, and in some places the crisis had unblocked longstanding data-sharing issues. There’s something in the speed that people needed to react that means some barriers have been overcome.

WHAT ABOUT VIRTUAL SERVICES? DO YOU THINK THIS WILL CONTINUE AS A NEW WAY OF WORKING – WHAT ARE THE PROS AND CONS?

In April, we published a survey of services that were delivering online. We found that online services were not necessarily worse than face-to-face, but we didn’t know how effective. So we followed this up in this new research and found quite a range of different digital services emerging.

Some services were focused on one-to-one check-in via video. Some parents might feel more comfortable opening up over the phone or by video than in a face-to-face setting. It also means you can reach more vulnerable families. For example, somewhere like the South-West, where you’re [usually] travelling long distances across Cornwall to reach families.

There are downsides. For example, the most vulnerable children may not have access [online], or the only internet access they have is their mum’s phone or on an Xbox.

It might also be difficult to deliver group work, if you’re on Zoom, for example. There might be high levels of drop-out. So, when people are thinking about switching to digital, it’s really important that they think about how they engage the most vulnerable children.

The key thing is we now need to find out which digital services work and spread those across the country. We’re going to be working with local services to evaluate what works, what should be kept post-lockdown when we return to some kind of new normal.

In a way this has been a great experiment that everyone’s had to do.

YOU PREDICT A SHARP RISE IN THE NEED FOR SUPPORT FROM FAMILIES WHO MAY NOT HAVE ACCESSED SERVICES BEFORE. HOW CAN SERVICES PREPARE TO SUPPORT THESE FAMILIES?

We’re going to see new needs emerging just at the time when normal services like schools and nurseries that would spot those needs aren’t happening. That window has been shut. That’s why people we spoke to are so concerned about this hidden demand that will only appear when services are ramping up again. Reduced contact has made it so much more difficult to identify those children.

Some children going back to nursery will struggle to settle back into a routine, sitting down at mealtimes, learning to play with other children again.

Nurseries and schools need to plan for how they can help the most disadvantaged children catch up and have that extra support ready for when children return at scale.