Children
Research Topic
Language: English
This is a research topic created to provide authors with a place to attach new problem publications.
Research problems linked to this topic
- What types of harmful content exist online, and what is the impact to children’s offline behaviour?
- What are the characteristics of the specialist care workforce (e.g. social workers, children's homes, and early help providers)? What are the barriers to specialist staff recruitment and retention, and how can we overcome these?
- How can we best identify and intervene early to support vulnerable children and their families before they enter the social care system?
- How effective are the key reforms set out in ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ in response to the Care Review that seek to improve the provision of children's social care across Local Authorities? These include recruitment of foster carers, support for kinship carers and provision of children's care placements.
- How do we best support children, young people and their families within the social care system and prevent poor outcomes, including recruiting, retaining and training our workforce?
- How does a child’s journey through different systems of support, and the different qualities of the experiences along the way, serve to protect or expose them to involvement in serious youth violence?
- What are the risk factors for children’s involvement in serious violence and what interventions and approaches are most effective in reducing it?
- What are the characteristics of additional needs for children in the early years, with specific consideration of neurodiversity, speech and language, and mental health interventions?
- How can high quality training and support for the early years workforce improve child outcomes?
- How effective are the Family Hubs pilots in improving outcomes for young children and their families? What works best to engage families and deliver services?
- What can we do to support children and their families develop well from birth before entering formal education (and to the start of adulthood for those with SEND)?
- Which parenting programmes are most effective?
- Which services, programmes and interventions are effective for improving parenting capacity and quality and the early years home learning environment?
- What are the different ways that outdoor learning can affect young people and how can they be measured?
- Which school-wide (or school trust-wide) systems, processes, and interventions improve pupil attainment and narrow disadvantage attainment gaps? Applied research might explore, for instance, how leaders use behaviour systems, pupil setting, the length of the school day, and whole-school enrichment interventions.
- How do schools use in-school units such as SEN Units, Resourced Provision and in-school Alternative Provision to improve pupil outcomes?
- How effective are child maintenance and associated policies at supporting separated families, encouraging family-based arrangements, reducing conflict and helping children and adults achieve better outcomes? And how does this differ by group?
- What are the most effective ways of improving the safety (and perceptions of safety) of cyclists and pedestrians (particularly, child and older adult pedestrians who are at greater risk)? How should DfT work with external organisations to support these interventions?
- What types of approaches lead to better outcomes for condition-specific learning needs in mainstream schooling? What works for SEND outreach work, for example from special schools to support learners in mainstream schools?
- How can we better quantify and measure the benefits of social work assessment, training and development in terms of child outcomes such as wellbeing and educational achievement?
- How do experiences of advertising harm differ across demographics, including across adults and young people?
- What are the benefits of and opportunities to improve youth outcomes?
- What are the challenges and issues facing young people? What are the costs of not addressing these issues/risks, or improving youth outcomes?
- What support do children and victims of domestic abuse living in temporary accommodation and domestic abuse safe accommodation need and to what extent is this being delivered?
- What are the most cost-effective ways to help where children are at risk as victims or perpetrators of crime? Does this vary for different groups of children, such as children with care experience, and by place?
- What family focused solutions work to ensure that children and their parents have the support needed to meet their basic needs for housing security and quality of life?
- How can we ensure that multi-agency responses are coordinated effectively to reduce, and ideally prevent, young people’s exposure to and experience of harm? • How do we ensure that front line staff have access to all the relevant information from across systems and agencies, to ensure effective decision making in provision of support?
- • How can we ensure staff maintain stable relationships with the children and families that they work with where appropriate to counter disruption in other aspects of their lives?
- • How effective are changes to the (children's) residential care market in ensuring the right number and types of good quality, stable registered places across the country, which provide good value for public money?
- How can we better support families and children to keep children safe and, where possible, with their birth families?
- What works best to identify and intervene early to support vulnerable children and their families before they enter the social care system?
- What factors influence children’s brain development from birth to the early 20s, and what works in supporting healthy brain development to enable learning? (See also our Areas of Research Interest in relation to the ‘Every child achieving and thriving’ pillar of the Opportunity Mission)
- How can we work most effectively in partnership with others to ensure that additional needs (especially regarding Special Education Needs and Disabilities and mental health) are identified and addressed as early as possible?
- How can we work most effectively in partnership with others to ensure that additional needs (especially regarding Special Education Needs and Disabilities and mental health) are identified and addressed as early as possible?
- • What approaches would enable the best (most consistent and reliable) identification of additional need, how early can they be used, how cost-effective are they, and how can they be used at scale?
- • What are the characteristics of additional needs for children in the early years, with specific consideration of neurodiversity, speech and language, and mental health interventions?
- • What are the links between genomics and SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) conditions, and how might we best prepare educators, care-providers, parents, and children for increased genomics data?
- What are the most cost-effective ways to support parents and carers to help their children to learn and develop (from early years through to adulthood), including through play?
- How do children’s home lives influence whether they can thrive and achieve throughout their lives? How do both their material and non-material living conditions affect their later outcomes?
- How can education and other services best support parents and carers to help their children learn outside formal education settings (including in other locations beyond the home when the home learning environment is not conducive to learning)?
- How well-used are available family services (such as family hubs and children’s centres services) and how representative are these users? How can we make these services more attractive and easier to access for those parents and carers whose children stand to benefit the most?
- How do we improve connections and relationships between parents and professionals (e.g. through parental networks)?
- Which parenting programmes are most effective, especially in engaging disadvantaged parents and families with a social worker? Are they equally accessible to all families, including those that are hard to reach, and easily scalable?
- What more can be done to best support families with children under the age of 2, to give those children, particularly the most disadvantaged, the best start in life?
- Which early childhood services, or combinations of services, are most effective in improving the (health, cognitive, socio-emotional, and educational) development of disadvantaged children before age 5? How does this vary by children’s age (for example 0-2 and 3-5) and for different domains of learning (such as literacy and maths)?
- How can we identify those who will not achieve a good level of development at age 5, to help target early childhood services before school entry?
- How can we best develop tools to assess development before school-age, so we can measure important changes in educational outcomes over time and understand the relative impact of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) and home learning environment?
- Which interventions in early years settings are most effective in supporting child development, for whom, when, where and why?
- How do we ensure that all children, particularly those in most need, can access and participate in good quality early learning?
- What can we do to reduce barriers to take-up of childcare and to work, particularly for parents from disadvantaged communities?
- How can parental engagement in their children's early education best be enhanced, especially for those parents in disadvantaged households, and how does this vary for mothers and fathers?
- What is the optimal amount and type of early education in formal settings? How does this vary for different groups of children?
- "• What are the most cost-effective school and classroom practices to help children develop positive relationships and pro-social behaviour at school and increase school attendance – especially for those children with challenging behaviour? How do these vary for different groups (and for those students with SEND, for different types of need)? "
- • How can childcare for school aged children better support disadvantaged children and children with SEND?
- • What enrichment activities (such as arts, cultural and sports activities) are available through childcare for school aged children? How and why does this vary (e.g. by place and age group) and how can we boost these opportunities for those most need them?
- How do we ensure access to rich and engaging opportunities in and outside of pre-school and school settings, particularly for disadvantaged children? Which are the most cost-effective in helping children to achieve and thrive?
- • What opportunities do children have at present for enrichment activities (including opportunities for play, especially outdoor play, breaks, and engagement with nature) and how does this vary by place, family, and personal characteristics? What are the barriers to take-up?
- • How are different careers portrayed to children? What careers advice is available, who engages with it, and what difference does the best possible careers advice make to the career paths they choose? How does this vary for different groups (such as by age and background)?
- Where children cannot live with their birth parents, how do we support and enable others (including wider family networks) to provide good quality care which leads to better life outcomes? • How does this vary for different family types, including both formal and informal kinship carers, foster carers, and children who leave care under an adoption order or special guardianship order?
- • What impacts does social media use and screen time have on brain development, behaviour (including engagement in other activity), attainment, and health? How does this vary for different groups (including by age) and for different types of use?
- • What factors and characteristics support healthy use of technology (such as mobile phones and tablets) by children of different ages, and what impact do they have?
- • How can we equip parents, families, and carers to support children through safe access and use of technology outside educational settings?