Birth to age 1

The Swedish approach to infancy and early childhood consciously puts a strong emphasis on prevention and ensuring the best possible support to parents at the beginning of a child’s life, from having 100% of hospitals qualify for UNICEF baby-friendly status, through 98% of mothers initiating breastfeeding, to high levels of parenting education and support in the early years. Sweden has among the lowest rates of infant mortality and teen pregnancy in Europe. Lifetime health outcomes on measures such as deaths from circulatory disease, liver, cancer and smoking-related illnesses are strikingly better than in the UK.

Nurse Family Partnership is the most thoroughly researched and recommended early intervention in the world and since WAVE worked with its originator, David Olds, between 2004 and 2006 to bring it to the UK, it now runs in this country as the Family Nurse Partnership.

The Community Mothers Programme (CMP) in Dublin trains experienced, volunteer mothers from the local community to visit families to provide necessary child-rearing support from the birth of a child until its second birthday. Research on the children and families at age 8 showed superior parenting skills among the programme families, children who are more likely to read books regularly, visit the dentist and have better nutritional intake.

It is commonly said that the peak age for violent behaviour is mid-adolescence. Four decades of research by Professor Richard Tremblay demonstrate that a more accurate statement would be that while the visible consequences of violence are greatest in mid-adolescence, the peak age for aggression and violence in children is 2-3, with those children destined to be the most troublesome offenders in teenage years already distinguished at age 3 by levels of aggression 10 times higher than the most peaceable 30% of toddlers. Tremblay’s research is summarised and has an important message for the most effective age of intervention to reduce violence in society.