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Financing intervention: Allen report at a glance

11 July 2011 2 mins read Janaki Mahadevan Early Years Education Health Children's Services Early help Social Care Youth Justice Youth Work

MP Graham Allen's second report in his government-commissioned review into early intervention was published last week. It began to address how evidence-based schemes can be financed. While reiterating the now widely-recognised evidence that intervening before problems arise yields savings in the long term, Allen challenges the government to take the lead and make widespread early intervention a reality.

How can a cultural shift towards early intervention be achieved?

Allen calls for an annual report to parliament to chart the progress made on early intervention policy and set out further steps.

He urges the next comprehensive spending review to rebalance spending by imposing a one per cent shift in funding from late to early intervention per year. But 4Children chief executive Anne Longfield said the government must act even earlier: "A first step must be to ringfence resources for early years programmes."

How should the expansion of the early intervention agenda be governed?

In addition to the early intervention foundation recommended in Allen's first report, he proposes a "task and finish group" made up of representatives of the Treasury, Cabinet Office and private sector to lead the co-ordination of what he sees as "disparate activity" on early intervention.

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