Evaluating Early Childhood Interventions 

The Centre for Human Development and Public Policy (CHDPP) has a particular focus on childhood investment in Ireland, specifically with providing scientific support for the Disadvantaged Children and Youth (DCY) Programme of Atlantic Philanthropies. This research programme offers an unprecedented opportunity to conduct high impact, innovative scientific research which will distil world knowledge on the most effective childhood interventions and the optimal way to implement and measure such interventions. The CHDPP has the potential to build a programmatic infrastructure that will strengthen Ireland in terms of future improvements in child services, support for vulnerable children and their families and in detecting aspects of children's lives that warrant the attention of policy makers. [References]

The CHDPP will develop this research programme in the following ways:

• Development of a core scientific research agenda across the key elements of the Disadvantaged Children and Youth Programme.
• Establishment of process of engagement and involvement with intervention practitioners, specifically the DCY programme - to include scientific advice, input in service design processes, development of terms of reference for evaluation, and monitoring of evaluation activity.
• Accumulate and build a stock of information/resources (research papers, books, and policy reports) on 1) early childhood interventions and 2) best practice in evaluation methods (including quantitative, qualitative and mixed methods).
• Creation and development of a strong series of outputs (conferences, publications, symposia) that focus on the value and impact of international expertise on child well-being (including a detailed knowledge of 'what works') for other researchers, policy makers, practitioners and community activists.
• Development of collaborative relationship with the Harris School Pritzker Consortium on Early Childhood Development, including the convening of an annual symposium of the Consortium in Ireland for the research, policy and practitioner community in Ireland.
• Conduct of the meta-evaluation of all Atlantic Philanthropies' initiatives in Ireland in the Disadvantaged Children and Youth Programme.
• Analyse the importance of early childhood factors for later life outcomes (e.g. education, earnings) and the examination of the role of non-cognitive skills (e.g. personality traits) for later life outcomes, using longitudinal cohort studies e.g. British National Child Development Study, British Cohort Study, and Millennium Cohort Studies.