An Examination of the Preventive Process: Comparison of Behaviour and Education Support Team Work with Children's Services.

WALES; ENGLAND

Behaviour and Education Support Teams (BESTs) were developed as a significant element of the Every Child Matters programme. Although varying in composition, they were generally designed to provide support for groups of schools in relation to behavioural, emotional and educational issues. They have not been subject, however, to a great deal of published research and their development, furthermore, raised significant issues about prevention and the preventive process, in particular the capacity to reach vulnerable children and families where thresholds for mainstream services were high. This paper, comparing a BEST with a children's services team, examines the nature of work undertaken. It shows the 'service on offer' from the two agencies differed markedly, with BESTs undertaking a more child-focused approach. The implications of the development of additional services for prevention and the preventive process are discussed Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Key Practitioner Message Social intervention teams closely related to schools can provide an alternative to conventional children's services, They work with groups different from children's services and at an earlier stage of prevention and hence have added value, particularly where children's services thresholds are high., They work differently from children's services with a characteristically more individualised child-focus rather than parenting and family-focused modus operandi. Which approach is more beneficial, however, is as yet unclear. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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