# Transcript

Shelley Davies

Early intervention helps support individuals, families to have better outcomes, better life chances, achieve their potential in life. If we don’t get in early and help with those little additional needs, they can escalate into something else and escalate into something else, by which time we’re up against statutory services which, yes, are high-cost, but also that doesn’t deliver the best outcomes for that individual because they’re having to have much more intrusive intervention.

Andrea Jones

Early interventions are really important with families, particularly from a health visiting perspective really, because we’re working with under-fives. So one of the main changes, really, in the last ten years is the recognition of brain development and the importance of interacting with families to enable them to understand the process of the brain development within the baby and child. And that we know that brain development occurs really rapidly in the first year of life, therefore a lot of our work is done in the first year of life to engage the parents in that process.

Wendy Moss

For me, when I look at early intervention I suppose I’m thinking antenatally, where the baby is developing within the womb, because there’s so much that can be done there around the mother’s health and that impacting on the baby in early life. And where you may have a parent with a mental health issue or postnatal depression, perinatal mental health has a huge impact on that baby in early life. The more that you can do in those very early years to make it the so-called ‘normal’ ... so that any of the public health, healthy-child issues that we’re looking at – maybe childhood obesity – but through weaning parties, giving information to families, so that they can make the best possible choices for their children. More activity – so buggy walks, swimming, whatever, becomes normal everyday life, then provides a healthier outcome for those children as they grow up. And they maybe become used to having activity, used to eating healthily. So as they become adults they make those choices for themselves, as well.

Shelley Davies

It’s no good working with just the child if you’re not working with their environments – their family, their friends. Looking at how we shape the environment to deliver those better outcomes. And then that moves out into the community – again, a family exists within the community, so we need to make sure that our community are focusing on the right things. That it’s a positive place to be. That there’s good opportunities for them to be able to have choices, take the right path. And so we very much do try to take a whole-system, whole-community, approach to early intervention prevention.