Monday 15th April is a red letter day for the Early Intervention Foundation. We celebrate the launch of the Foundation and our ambitious campaign to improve the lives of children and families for generations to come.

The importance of early intervention and the work that will be carried out by the Foundation has been recognised across the political spectrum – both at the national and local level – and I am delighted that the Prime Minister and other senior politicians have thrown their weight behind the proposal to set up the Early Intervention Foundation.

And we’ve made a good start.

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The Foundation has been designated by Government as the What Works lead body on early intervention, working alongside the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the Education Endowment Foundation.

We have written to local authority leaders, Clinical Commissioning Groups and Police and Crime Commissioners asking them to be part of the first wave of Early Intervention Places. We will identify 20 places which are doing advanced work in early intervention and will work with us to champion, test and expand the delivery of early intervention measures. We will announce these pioneering places at the end of June, but are also committed to working with all those areas which are developing early intervention measures and with those starting out on their early intervention journey.

Next month will see the first meetings of the new Evidence Panel and Evidence Forum. Professor Leon Feinstein, Interim Head of Evidence will invite academics and other experts in the study and science of early intervention, including international experts from a range of relevant disciplines to provide academic rigour to the development of the Foundation’s evidence and research framework.

The Forum will be a wider network from which we will draw expertise, broker collaboration and garner analytical challenge to enhance the Foundation’s work on the evidence. We would very much welcome expressions of interest to join the Forum.

I hope you will agree with me that we have made giant steps in laying the foundation for the work ahead. And I hope you will join with me to celebrate that start of our ambitious work to support the social and emotional bedrock in babies, children and young people upon which their future life chances crucially depend.

Graham Allen MP
Chair of the Early Intervention Foundation

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The Early Intervention Foundation will champion and support the greater use of early intervention measures to tackle the root causes of social problems amongst children and young people, from 0-18 years old.

The Foundation will:
Advocate for early intervention as a serious alternative to the more widespread expensive and ineffective late intervention;
Assess what programmes work – to determine both the best early interventions available and their relative value for money;
Advise local commissioners, service providers and potential investors on the best practical, evidence -based measures, enabling them to make the best choices for supporting children and families.

The Foundation will focus initially on programmes in England but will also engage with partners across the UK, and internationally, who share the objective of promoting early intervention.

It will work in partnership, building on but not replacing the work of existing agencies that have a track record in the field. It will be an enabler and knowledge hub and will not give grants or directly manage programmes.