Panelists for this session were:

• Carolyn Downs, CEO, Local Government Association (chair)
• David Robinson, Chair, Early Action Task Force; Senior Advisor, Community Links
• Paul Johnson, Director, Institute for Fiscal Studies
• Duncan Tessier, Early Intervention and Prevention Assistant Director, Children’s Service, London Borough of Barnet
• Nick Axford, Director of What Works, Dartington Social Research Unit

Faced with a decidedly intractable question, all four members of the panel wisely decided against trying to give a direct answer and focused instead on identifying a number of key underlying issues for discussion. These included the following.

First, it was emphasised that we need a clear and agreed statement of what is meant by early intervention (EI) and what it is seeking to achieve. For example, the last 20 years have seen substantial increases in some areas of early years spending such as childcare where the objectives from an EI perspective are not at all clear. In the absence of an agreed definition, it is not possible to identify even how much is currently being spent on EI, let alone how much should be spent.

Second, making a compelling case for EI requires high-quality evidence on the costs and effectiveness of interventions, but this is lacking in many areas of service provision. In particular, relatively little is known about the long-term benefits of EI. Are initial improvements in outcomes maintained over time or do they typically fade away? Linked to this, we need to know more about the range or portfolio of interventions, including possible top-ups, that each cohort of children might need over the course of childhood and adolescence rather than in any single year.

Third, when budgets are flat or even declining, spending more on early intervention necessarily means spending on less on late intervention. Over time the sums should come out right, but because the benefits of EI are often spread over many years there is at the very least a difficult transitional problem to be overcome. Various possible ways of dealing with this were suggested, such as the identification of specific areas of spending where late intervention can be shown to be particularly costly and ineffective, and greater use of innovative approaches to financing and service provision that may facilitate the shift to EI, for example community or ‘whole place’ budgets, social impact bonds and service integration.

Next, it is important to ensure that existing provision for EI is demonstrably money well spent. This means not only selecting programmes and interventions which have a strong evidence base but also targeting these services on families and children who will benefit most and implementing them well (ensuring fidelity to the model, maximising take-up and minimising drop-out, using appropriately trained staff, and so on). The limited available evidence suggests that there is a sizeable gap between what could be achieved with existing provision on EI and what is actually achieved in practice.

Finally, it was noted that protecting and expanding expenditure on EI will depend on a strong measure of political consensus. This may not be easy to achieve, particularly in the present fiscal environment. We don’t have a Department for Early Intervention, so the case for EI has to be made several times over, and tight constraints on spending always run the risk that public bodies will become more protective of their own budgets and less willing to co-operate with others.

To sum up, the main conclusions of the session were broadly as follows.

• Q: How much should the government spend on EI? A: Who knows; more work needed.
• Q: Should the government spend more on EI than it does at the moment? A: Almost certainly yes.
• Q: Will the government spend more on EI? A: In the immediate future, protecting what’s currently spent could probably be seen as a good outcome.