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

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.

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. 

Watch recordings from 6 talks featuring research highlights from the past 5 years of the CPRU’s activity.

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. 

2024-2028

The new programme of research is structured around three core projects:

1. Young adolescent carers: recognition and support

This project focuses on the estimated 20% of adolescents who have some type of caring role for a parent, sibling or someone else they live with, due to a physical or mental health issues, violence or addiction-related issues or a combination. Led by Dr Jenny Woodman and Dr Claire Powell, researchers will investigate how GPs, schools and social workers recognise and respond to adolescents whose health or wellbeing is impacted by caring for a family member. This is the first study to take a system-level view and look at recognition and response (including recording) of Young Carers across health, education, and children’s social care in England.

2. Access to services related to adolescent mental health

Most adult mental health problems start in adolescence, with half established by age 14 and with increasing numbers of young people affected by mental health problems. This study investigates ethnic disparities in who receives specialist adolescent mental health service support, and which other healthcare services they use. Led by Dan Lewer and  John Wright (Bradford Institute of Health Research) and Ruth Blackburn (UCL), it uses data from Bradford and contextualises local disparities in the national picture using the ECHILD database.

3. Health, education and social care utilisation and costs across the life course for children with high needs

In 2022, the English government spent approximately £30 billion per year on services for children across healthcare, children’s social care and special educational needs and disability. In the US, a small group of children with high needs account for a substantial proportion of healthcare costs. This project will investigate how costs across the sectors of health, education and social care are concentrated on a small group of children to inform better integration of high cost services across childhood. Led by Matt Sutton (Manchester University) and Ruth Gilbert (UCL) and also drawing on the ECHILD database, this study will find out how much money is spent on proactive compared to ‘emergency’ or rescue services. Better information on how money is spent will help identify opportunities for early support of children and young people. 

Key information

• Children and Families Policy Research Unit
• Dates: 2011-2028
• Co-Directors: Professor Ruth Gilbert and Dr Jenny Woodman (View full CPRU team)
• Partners: Bradford Institute for Health Research, the Anna Freud Centre, King’s College London, Institute for Fiscal Studies and the Universities of Manchester, Newcastle, Oxford and Bristol.
• Funder: National Institute for Health and Care Research

By Sarah-Jane Gregori.

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Credit: Cavan via Adobe.