CHALLENGING THE POLITICS OF EARLY INTERVENTION

Contents

Acknowledgements

1. The politics of early intervention and evidence

Introduction

Policy and the linking of early intervention, brain science and social investment

Evidence and early intervention

The ‘Brain Science and Early Intervention’ research project

Structure of book

2. Citizens of the future

Introduction

Saving the children

The science of reform: strengthening British stock

Rescuing the infant brain

Back to the future? From risk to resilience

3. Rescuing the infant brain

The quiet revolution: social investment and the ‘Third Way’

Commandeering infant brains

Examining the brain claims

Prevention science: epigenetics and shrunken brains

4. In whose best interests?

Introduction

Policy networks and the ‘polycentric state’

Troubling the consensus: political interests

Financialising social welfare: business interests

Giving and taking: the rise of philanthrocapitalism

Strategy, power and justification: professional interests

Therapy wars: the institutionalisation of attachment

In whose interests then?

5. Case studies of interests at play

Case study 1: Wave Trust

Case study 2: Family Nurse Partnerships

Case study 3: Parent Infant Partnership UK (PIPUK)

6. Saving children

Introduction

Evangelical early intervention

Reliance on science: the truth

Intergenerational cycles of deprivation

Implications

7. Reproducing inequalities

Introduction

Intensive attachment

‘Parenting’ as gendered, biologised and learnt

Biologising, buffering and effacing social class

Neoliberalised race and biolologised brains

Conclusion

8. Reclaiming the future: alternative visions

The brave new world of prevention science

Values beyond value

Material matters

Supporting families

From individual risk to social harm

References

Index