Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
Current Literature
The rather dry title to this paper conceals a well-written, interesting, relevant and easily read account of research and other
evidence about what factors facilitate effective working in strategic partnerships for children. The paper first describes the
sources of evidence which includes official publications, guidance and theoretical discussions, as well as research-based evidence. It then discusses definitions which is where some of the
problems start because partnerships mean different things to
different constituencies. Next, the body of the review describes
the fairly large literature on factors which facilitate or inhibit the
development of functioning partnerships, contrasting this with
the lack of evidence that partnerships actually deliver positive
outcomes for children or families.
There are a number of important points made. First, that
creating effective partnerships is time-consuming, costly,
requires active senior management commitment and will have a
number of predictable barriers to overcome. If short-term gains
are required, partnership working is not the way to get them!
Second, that the assumption that partnership working is a good
thing requires to be challenged. There is a lack of evidence of
positive outcomes, and a pressing need for well-conducted
outcome research into the effect of strategic partnerships on
children. Not included in the review because the data were not
available at the time is the outcomes from the Sure Start programme, which although showing a modest beneficial outcome
overall, showed a deleterious effect on the most disadvantaged
families. This illustrates the complex nature of the potential
relationships between the delivery of services from strategic
partnerships and the outcomes in children which may vary in
unpredictable ways among different groups in the population.
This paper has vital messages for public policy relating to
children, for child public health and for academic research into
complex services.
Richard Reading
Richard Reading
Effect of breast feeding on intelligence in children:
prospective study, sibling pairs analysis, and meta-analysis.
Der G., Batty G.D. & Deary I.D. (2006) British Medical
Journal, 333, 945.
DOI: 10.1136/bmj.38978.699583.55 (published 4 October
2006).
Objective To assess the importance of maternal intelligence,
and the effect of controlling for it and other important confounders, in the link between breastfeeding and childrens
intelligence.
Design Examination of the effect of breastfeeding on cognitive
ability and the impact of a range of potential confounders, in
particular maternal IQ, within a national database. Additional
analyses compared pairs of siblings from the sample who were
and were not breastfed. The results are considered in the context
of other studies that have also controlled for parental intelligence via meta-analysis.
Richard Reading