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Who are EIF, and what do we do?

At the Early Intervention Foundation, we champion and support the use of effective early intervention.

We’re most interested in learning what works, which means focusing on the interventions and approaches that have been shown to actually improve the lives of children and young people.

We don’t work directly with children, young people or families to provide early intervention. Instead, we work with the people who do. We bridge the gap between scientists and researchers, and the policymakers, commissioners and service managers whose decisions can have such a significant impact on the life of a child or family. We want to make the detailed findings of research into early intervention understandable and useful to the people who design, run and invest in services and programmes for children.

EIF is an independent research charity focused on supporting all these people to take an evidence-based approach to early intervention. We want to ensure the evidence of what works is used to change policies at all levels and to support people working in public services to do their job more effectively.

We conduct research, bringing the evidence from scientific studies and trials together with the expertise of people working in early intervention. We publish our findings and recommendations and produce resources which translate this research into practical guidance and tools. And we join with government, local councils, public services and everyone who works in early intervention to ensure the evidence is used in critical decisions about how early intervention is designed and delivered.

Together, we can ensure more and better early intervention support is available to the children and families who need it most.