Our research

We draw on our own evidence about ‘framing and taming’ for this discussion: the ‘Brain Science and Early Intervention’ research project.Footnote ³ This study looks at how accounts of the formative impact of early experience on brain development have come to shape politics, key social policy legislation, and early intervention initiatives and practice, as well as the consequences for everyday practices among health care providers and early years educatorsFootnote ⁴ (Edwards et al. Reference Edwards, Gillies and Horsley2016, forthcoming).

Towards this aim, our research process included:

1. (i) A review of key literature, including policy reports and talks by key advocates in the field that have been influential in shaping and defining political and policy engagement with brain science ideas, especially in relation to early years childrearing and intervention;

2. (ii) semi-structured interviews with four influential public figures who have promoted the application of neuroscientific concepts in intervention policy and practice, about their understandings of brain science processes, parenting practices and their consequences for policy interventions; and

3. (iii) interviews with seventeen early years practitioners in the south east of England, asked about their understandings of brain science processes, parenting practices and the consequences for practice interventions.

The literature and transcripts of talks and interviews were subject to an in-depth discourse analysis, broadly involving close reading of the written text to identify recurring terms, metaphors and references that create and constitute understanding of an issue or set of issues (Gee, Reference Gee2012). We draw on analyses of all these materials in our discussion here.

Framing the evidence in the early years field

Early years policy and service provision in the UK are now characterised by an emphasis on early intervention in the belief that pregnancy and the earliest years of life are most important for development. The idea is to pre-empt rather than react to social, educational and behaviour ‘problems’, using evidence-based interventions (for example, Allen, Reference Allen2011a, Reference Allenb). The spotlight has alighted not on the unequal material and social conditions in which children live and are brought up as causal, but on parents and how they rear their children. This is as distinct from support as an offer for parents who are going through difficulties, embedded in universal services (Featherstone et al., Reference Featherstone, Morris, White, Wastell, White and Lorek2013). Evidence from social indicators is used to identify particular categorical groups in which ‘poor parenting’ is said to be leading to ‘poor outcomes’ for children, so that services and evidence-based interventions can be targeted at those groups (for example, ‘Better Start’ area wellbeing profilesFootnote ⁵).

Evidence-based intervention in the early years field has been bolstered by a What Works centre based at an independent organisation, the Early Intervention Foundation.Footnote ⁶ A few months after its launch, an event was organised by Westminster Forum Projects (a private company with strong parliamentary, business and professional links that arranges fee-paying seminars on public policy issues) focusing on ‘Early intervention: joining up services, targeting support and the role of the Foundation’ (Westminster Social Policy Forum, 2013).Footnote ⁷ The day seminar brought together a range of speakers: Members of Parliament, directors of government services and NGOs, chief executives of councils and charities, leading professionals and heads of research institutes, to address an audience of (mainly) early years service providers and consultants.

A recurring set of motifs in the talks and discussion was that of ‘evidence’. The discursive framing of this issue ranged across versions of:

1. (i) We have evidence that the early years are formative:

   So I want to open today's Forum by taking a moment to think about the massive amount of evidence we now have that early life experiences provide a blueprint for the rest of our lives. (Andrea Leadsom, then Chair, All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sure Start Children's Centres, and a Trustee of the charity Parent Infant Partnership UK)

   We now have a huge body of evidence demonstrating the very close association and relationships between health and early years . . . some very clear evidence linking quality of early years and later health outcomes. (Dr Jessica Allen, Deputy Director, Institute of Health Equity, University College London)

2. (ii) We need to understand the evidence base that we have:

   [We decided that we would] try and understand where there's a problem where we can track, monitor progress against, understand an evidence base that's currently there and take research from the globe. (Dharmendra Kanani, Director England, Big Lottery Fund)

3. (iii) We have evidence about intervention:

   It has to be about the total impact that early interventions will have across society, including things like prevention of domestic violence and substance misuse. All of those aspects are in Public Heath England's evidence base. (Professor Rod Thomson, Director of Public Health, Shropshire Council)

   There is a consortium of eight organisations . . . organisations which are specialists in evidence, the evidence-based practice. (Sarah Brennan, Chief Executive, YoungMinds)

4. (iv) We have evidence about intervention working but there are hurdles that get in the way:

   In our work we've found that it's not really a knowledge problem that we have here, it's a systemic problem . . . Simply telling people that some of these interventions have a really strong evidence base will not be sufficient. (Matthew Horne, Managing Partner, The Innovation Unit)

   [Key elements include] the systems that work around the evidence as well as the language and translating that evidence, research evidence, into real practice. (David Buck, Senior Fellow, Public Health and Inequalities, The Kings Fund)

5. (v) We need evidence of the efficacy of intervention:

   Firstly, you need to get the evidence right, you need to show that certain things work and certain things don't. The Early Intervention Foundation is part of the What Works network that the Government has created . . . [We need] hard evidence about what works. (Graham Allen MP, then Chair, Early Intervention Foundation)

   I still think the evidence base is weak and there's more to do on the evidence base. Because we have to get this to a point of producing the evidence that absolutely convinces chief executives, Chancellor of the Exchequer to make these investments. Because they don't speak for themselves, no matter how enthusiastic we can all be about all of this. (Martin Fisher, Director, Universal Credit and Social Justice, Department for Work and Pensions)

6. (vi) We need good quality and ‘fit for purpose’ evidence: ‘strong’/‘convincing’/‘robust’/‘hard’, synthesised, and longitudinal:

   Lots of interventions have been discussed in relation to early years services, but not all of them have robust evidence. One urgent need is to get the appropriate evidence together, particularly around the longer-term consequences. (Martin Knapp, Professor of Social Policy and Director, Personal Social Services Research Unit, London School of Economics and Political Science)

Viewed together, the logic of these various versions of the state of evidence about early intervention in the early years field do not sit comfortably alongside each other. There is the obvious inconsistency of both having (motifs (iii) and (iv)) and being in need of (motifs (v) and (vi)) evidence of intervention working. Notably also, the discursive motifs of requiring good quality and ‘fit for purpose’ evidence of the efficacy of intervention (motifs (v) and (vi)) call into question the notion of evidence-based policy, since the evidence required is that which shows that interventions already in place are working. Indeed, if the evidence required is longitudinal, then the production of evidence cannot precede the adoption of an intervention. Clearly then, evidence is being used as political strategy, where objectives come first and research evidence is then generated to justify them (Davies, Reference Davies2003), what Gregg (Reference Gregg2010) dubs ‘a classic case of policy-based evidence’ in the family intervention field.

Further, evidence that the early years are formative (motif (i)) does not lead in any necessary and direct fashion to a particular form of policy action; rather it has to be mediated and framed in a certain way. We turn to this issue next.

Framing the early years intervention problem

The reason why a focus on pre-emptive intervention in the early years field is regarded as crucial and the state of evidence is such an important stake is clear from the resources and literature in the field. For example, the voice-over in the ‘Brain Hero’ video shown in the Westminster Social Policy Forum event and long featured on the Early Years Foundation websiteFootnote ⁸ asserts:

There has been a slew of political and think tank reports across the political spectrum. The examples that we quote here come from, first, one of the independent reviews commissioned by the Conservative coalition government from Labour MP Graham Allen, making the case for early intervention to counter the damage to babies’ and young children's brain development caused by sub-optimal parenting; and, secondly, a cross-party ‘manifesto’ reinforcing the importance of the period from conception to age two for children's brain development and life chances:

The importance of early intervention is also a feature of the arguments of researchers evaluating early years intervention programmes,Footnote ⁹ for example:

Overall then, the evidence being called upon is that biological mechanisms underlie personal and societal dysfunction. The quality of parental nurturing and care in the first years of a child's life is claimed to be formative, reflected in the anatomical structure of the child's neural circuits with sensitive mothers producing ‘more richly networked brains’ (Gerhardt, Reference Gerhardt2004: 43). This ‘brain science’ evidence thus leads to the calls for intervention to take place in this window of opportunity in a child's life, when synapses are connecting, before it is too late and their brains are hard-wired for failure through deficient parenting.

Yet the state of hard science does not point towards formative hard wiring in any clear-cut fashion. First, current neuroscientific knowledge highlights the long-term plasticity of brain structures and functions; brains are constantly reacting to stimulae across the lifespan: forming, embedding and discarding synaptic connections (Rose and Abi-Rached, Reference Rose and Abi-Rached2013; Schmitz and Höppner, Reference Schmitz and Höppner2014). Second, the state of neuroscientific knowledge itself is far from settled and ‘policy ready’ (Wastell and White, Reference Wastell, White, Wastell, White and Lorek2013). It is fluid and developing rather than definitive:

Indeed, even much cited sources in policy documents can criticise misuse of their work by politicians.Footnote ¹⁰

This reductionism seems almost beside the point though. Neuroscientific evidence, it seems, is not necessarily called upon for its actual explanatory capacity, but for its persuasive value. Bruer (Reference Bruer1999) has shown how, in the USA, advocacy groups in the mid-1990s started drawing on long-established neuroscientific principles to make claims about the primacy of infant brain development in an effort to convince the American public of the value of early education initiatives and to lobby for greater funding for early years services.

Brain claims as evidence are acknowledged as a current politically expedient strategy in the UK too, by proponents of their use to drive early years intervention. For example, a prominent UK policy advisor who we spoke to, like other proponents, asserted that neuroscience has an advance role in pushing policy but is limited in forming it, and emphasised how ‘brain science’ overcomes outmoded ideas about social class as shaping life chances:

Highlighting the evidence provided by ‘brain science’ enables policymakers to endorse and pursue some sorts of policy intervention and to avoid others. They do not have to bother about strategies for redistribution. They no longer have to consider material and social inequalities as causal and in need of policy solutions. They can put that aside and focus down on where the real responsibility lies for the early years problem, how parents, or more specifically mothers, bring up their children and determine their brain architecture.

Brain claims and taming the early years problem

The emphasis on evidence-based solutions to social problems as part of new managerialism involves a shift from valuing the knowledge of practising professionals in shaping service developments to prioritising that of auditors, policymakers and statisticians (Rose, Reference Rose1999), and now to lauding the ‘authoritative’ knowledge of neuroscience (Rose and Abi-Rached, Reference Rose and Abi-Rached2013). Some commentators have argued that the evidence-based approach not only excludes professional judgement but also erodes professionals’ confidence in their ability to make assessments on the basis of their tacit knowledge and practical wisdom (Hammersley, Reference Hammersley, Pring and Thomas2001; Marston and Watts, Reference Marston and Watts2003). Others declare that professionals acquire the new discourses and become party to their dissemination (Davies, Reference Davies2003), and that in the social work field the concern for evidence-based practice is adopted as a political strategy articulated by an unstable occupational group in the context of occupational upheaval. It is a strategy to gain regard, status and recognition (McDonald, Reference McDonald2003), or even a radically democratising strategy that empowers professionals (Trinder, Reference Trinder, Trinder and Reynolds2000).

From our interviews with practitioners working in the early years field, it appears that both positions can be the case. Practitioners can feel that neuroscience provides new evidence, separate from but to some extent dependent on the expertise that they have built up over the years, and also that it offers valuable knowledge that means others must pay attention to them. All these facets are captured in the account given by an early years professional with over two decades of experience:

Taming the problem of how babies’ brain development leads to educational, social and behaviour failure, means that services are targeted at mothers living in poor communities. They carry forward the gendered and social-class assumptions embedded in the evidence-based policies into practice interventions. While often couched in the gender neutral terminology of ‘parenting’, early intervention is largely directed at mothers as the core mediators of their children's development, where the foundations for optimal brain development are located in pregnancy (for example, Kinsley and Franssen, Reference Kinsley and Franssen2010). Underpinned by ‘brain science’ evidence, the early years workers attribute the fact that the mothers in whose lives they intervene are poor and living in difficult circumstances to the way that they were brought up by their own mothers, where their own brains were hard-wired for failure:

In this way, social and material inequalities are explained and justified as individual and familial failure; the poor have caused their own poverty. Wider structural and economic factors are not recognised within the taming interventions that are framed by an evidence-based practice built on brain claims.