Introduction

This chapter aims to improve knowledge about how needs can be prevented from emerging in the first place-failing that, about how early action will prevent them persisting. It considers different ways of understanding children’s needs and their associated social and psychological problems. The chapter looks at success and failure in responding to children’s needs, drawing wherever possible on carefully evaluated programmes and referring to important overviews of research and some policy driven initiatives. Evidence on ways of understanding children’s needs is in two forms. Some researchers, primarily those interested in all children, reveal how individual difficulty accumulates. Other researchers, those concerned with particular problem groups or with children known to particular agencies, have shown what happens in more specific circumstances. The combination of dimensions-different types of activity on behalf of children in need and the different aspects of a child’s life-provides the structure for the selection of programmes from around the world to illustrate what can be done.