UCL-led unit providing evidence to shape policy to improve child and family health

The Children and Families Policy Research Unit provides high-quality evidence to guide wide-ranging policy decisions that have implications for the health and wellbeing of children and their families.

The Children and Families Policy Research Unit (CPRU) provides high-quality evidence to guide the government and public bodies in making informed decisions about issues that have consequences for the health and wellbeing of children and their families. 

CPRU is led by Professor Ruth Gilbert (UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health) and Dr Jenny Woodman (IOE, UCL’s Faculty of Education and Society), in partnership with a multi-institutional team of researchers and experts. The programme of work comprises core projects relevant to policy as well as rapid responsive work to meet emerging or urgent policy needs.

We research what makes children healthier, taking into account the environments in which they live, the places they spend time, the health of their parents,  carers and siblings and the health, education and other services they and their families use" — Dr Jenny Woodman.

Early work

The unit has been active at UCL’s Institute of Child Health since 2011 and came under Dr Jenny Woodman's co-directorship at IOE in 2019. Early work of the CPRU has spanned a broad cross-cutting range of research areas motivated by social care, health inequalities and mental health needs.

Research is grounded around three themes:

1. Reducing and preventing health and social inequalities through early interventions in a child's life, to reduce the impacts of early disadvantages. 

2. Improving the identification of vulnerable children and families who are more likely to experience maltreatment, domestic violence, or abuse, and to be able to target interventions to respond to their needs, to prevent adverse health consequences in the long term. 

3. Informing decisions about services for children and families who are affected by long-term conditions and disability, to improve quality of care and wellbeing for those affected while containing costs across education, health and social care services. 

Boosted by £5.5m

In January 2024 the unit's work was secured for a further 5 years by £5.5m in funding from the National Institute of Health and Care Research (NIHR). This makes it one of 20 policy research units (PRUs) - four more of which are also led by UCL - to receive major funding from the latest NIHR package totalling over £100m. 

The CPRU is now conducting research on priority policy areas for child and family health for the Department of Health and Social Care, covering inter-related child and family health, including mental health, child safeguarding and domestic violence. The research team will also develop methods and data resources to improve the quality and timeliness of evidence to fit with policy decision timelines and improve policy effectiveness. 

A key part of the unit's work is helping policy colleagues understand how health services, schools and children’s social care services are currently working and how they can improve, for the benefit of child and family health and wellbeing. For example, the ECHILD database, containing linked health, education and social care records of 20 million children and their mothers across England, is being used to understand how health and other problems cluster. 

By Sarah-Jane Gregori.

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Credit: Cavan via Adobe.

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