Research and Contributions
Published Research from the Centre for Early Child Development
In December 2017, the Centre for Early Child Development had its first piece of published research. Dr Emma Lowrie and Dr Rachel Tyrrell-Smith’s paper on “Using a Community-Engaged Research approach to develop and pilot a photo grid method to gain insights into early child health and development in a socio-economic disadvantaged community” was published by the Journal of Research Engagement and Involvement as an open access article.
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In December 2018, the Centre for Early Child Development (CECD) submitted the Community Connector (CCx) programme to the Frontier of Innovation (FOI) portfolio – the Center on the Developing Child at Harvard University Research and Development platform. The CECD’s Community Connector (CCx) programme employs residents to directly engage caregivers of children, in seven of Blackpool’s most socio-economically deprived wards to deliver key messages around early child health and development, and encourage participation in early years activities. The Community Connector programme was, at the time of the study, led and developed by Sharon Mather with support of the Community Development Officers (Colin Smy and Jo Smith).
The presented paper “Community Connectors (CCx): the strategies employed by peer to peer connectors to foster relationships with early years caregivers to improve universal early child health and development” was completed by Dr Claire Mills, Dr Emma Lowrie, Dr Karen Kinloch and Erin Hall with support from the Community Development team, Blackpool Council Children’s Centre staff and with thanks to the FOI team, especially Jimena Santillan and through the wider support of the CECD team.
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CECD Contributions
The Centre for Early Child Development is at the forefront of ground-breaking early intervention service development and delivery. Click on a link below to view our recent contributions, including Parliamentary inquiries, local government association reviews and evaluation reports.
First 1000 Days of Life Inquiry – Health & Social Care Committee – UK Parliament
Evidence Based Early Years Intervention Inquiry – Science & Technology Committee – UK Parliament
Blackpool’s integrated Children’s Oral Health Improvement System – Local Government Association
The Impact and Economic Evaluation of A Better Start – The Warwick Consortium Evaluation
Better Start: The Blackpool Universal Health Visiting Service – Journal of Health Visiting
Delivering Children’s Centre Services – Local Government Association
Growing Up North: Ensuring a Better Start – Children’s Commissioner
Current Research Projects from the Centre for Early Child Development
National Evaluation of A Better Start
A Better Start (ABS, for short) is a programme funded by the National Lottery Community Fund to help babies and young children to have the best possible start in life. The programme is funded in five sites across the UK, Blackpool being one of them.
NatCen Social Research are undertaking a national evaluation of the programme on behalf of the National Lottery Community Fund, to understand if the funded work is making a positive difference to families and children.
Participants are recruited from some of the activities and services delivered through Blackpool Better Start. Once you have consented to the evaluation you will not be contacted by anyone. Your consent will allow some of you and your child’s health and education records to be included in the National Evaluation. Your data will be looked at in a group with other individuals that have accessed the same services, NatCen will not know your personal details, and your health and education records will not be shared back with the service you are attending.
This Participant Information Sheet has more information about the evaluation and what information about you and your children would be requested from health and education records.
Blackpool Children and Families Network – Data Linkage
A range of information is kept routinely by organisations like the NHS and providers of other services. We will be comparing some of the information held in these records about you and your baby so we can understand how health and other life events are related. This is called ‘information linkage’. We will only be linking information from records which are related to you or your child’s health and well-being.
Better Start will link information from health records to other routinely collected information and service provision information to give insight into outcomes for babies and children. This linkage will be from your pregnancy through to your child starting school
For full information click here.