There is strong and growing evidence that early relational interventions can improve caregiving, parent-child relationships, and children’s mental health and development. However, in the UK, mental health service development has historically overlooked the youngest children, leaving a relative gap in provision for babies, young children, and their families.
The Bridging the Evidence- to-Implementation Gap in Early Mental Health report aims to support evidence-informed planning for 0-5 provision by clarifying what the current evidence shows, where it is strongest, where it is more limited, and what effective interventions tend to have in common. It provides a structured synthesis of attachment-based and psychodynamic interventions for babies and young children aged 0-5 and their caregivers.
Implications for policy, practice and research
The findings presented in the report point to several implications for developing a coherent 0-to-5 years mental health offer, as set out below.
- Prioritise interventions with the strongest and most relevant evidence.
- Use evidence in planning a differentiated system of support.
- Create a clear, developmentally informed pathway for identifying need and matching families to support.
- Invest in workforce capability, supervision, and implementation support.
- Use common elements to strengthen universal provision.
- Set a whole-system research strategy for the 0–5 offer
The report complements PEDAL’s wider Golden Threads work, which considers other brief caregiving interventions, including those grounded in social learning theory and those more closely aligned with universal provision.
