Dr Nick Axford
Implementation Lead and Associate Professor in Health Services Research
Expertise
Prevention and early intervention to improve child well-being
Biography
I joined PenARC in 2017. I work on a variety of projects concerned with evidence-based prevention and early intervention to improve child psychosocial outcomes, with a focus on service design and evaluation. I have undertaken studies involving a range of methods, including evidence reviews and randomised controlled trials, and covering a range of subject areas, such as bullying, child maltreatment, youth offending and social-emotional learning. I am particularly interested in forms of intervention that have the potential to achieve impact at scale, and in methods for developing and testing these – including co-production with users and the use of rapid cycle testing. I also enjoy engaging in debates about the value of evidence-based approaches in children’s services.
I am a Senior Associate of the Dartington Service Design Lab, a member of the board of the European Society for Prevention Research and a member of the evidence panels of the Early Intervention Foundation, the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care and the Xchange online registry of evidence-based prevention programmes (hosted by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction).
Projects
- INTEGRATED – Integrated Parenting and Financial Wellbeing Support
- Strengthening partnerships through research to tackle male violence against women and girls in Plymouth
- Dental care for looked after children and adolescents: evidence synthesis and qualitative exploration
- Income maximisation for families: exploring implementation and impact
- Review of evidence on implementation in education
- PhD Project – Social prescribing and horticulture therapy for autistic adults
- Feasibility study and pilot outcomes evaluation of Becoming a Man
- Looked After Children Transition Hub
- COVID-19 Learning Partnership
- How can schools best support parents’ engagement in their children’s learning?
Publications
- Transporting an Evidence-based Youth Development Program to a New Country: A Narrative Description and Analysis of Pre-implementation Adaptation
- Becoming A Man (BAM) Feasibility study report
- Money Matters: Time for Prevention and Early Intervention to Address Family Economic Circumstances
- How can we optimise learning from trials in child and adolescent mental health?
- Engaging youth at risk of violence in services: Messages from research
- “What works” registries of interventions to improve child and youth psychosocial outcomes: A critical appraisal
- Health and wellbeing outcomes and social prescribing pathways in community-based support for autistic adults: A systematic mapping review of reviews
- Delinquency and Substance Use in Europe: Understanding Risk and Protective Factors.
- GP trainee responses to using SHERPA for multimorbidity consultations
- Engaging Young People During the COVID-19 Pandemic
- Promoting Learning from Null or Negative Results in Prevention Science Trials
- The effectiveness of a mentoring program for children aged 5-11 years: results from a randomized controlled trial
- The effectiveness of a therapeutic parenting program for children aged 6-11 years with behavioral or emotional difficulties: results from a randomised controlled trial
- The effectiveness of the KiVa bullying prevention rogram in Wales, UK: resuts from a pragmatic cluster randomized controlled trial
- PROTOCOL: A comparison of the effectiveness of cognitive behavioural interventions based on delivery features for elevated symptoms of depression in adolescents.
- How Can Schools Support Parents’ Engagement in their Children’s Learning? Evidence from Research and Practice.
- Health for all children
- Improving the Early Learning of Children Growing Up in Poverty: A Rapid Review of the Evidence.
- Tobacco, alcohol, and substence use in the perinatal period
- Perinatal parental mental health problems
- Intimate partner violence
- The effectiveness of Chance UK’s mentoring programme in improving behavioural and emotional outcomes in primary school children with behavioural difficulties: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial
- The effectiveness of the Inspiring Futures parenting programme in improving behavioural and emotional outcomes in primary school children with behavioural or emotional difficulties: study protocol for a randomised controlled trial
- Rapid Review on Safeguarding to Update the Healthy Child Programme 5 to 19
- Wrong’ answer, right response: learning from randomised controlled trials when you don’t get the answer you were hoping for
- Perfect bedfellows: why early intervention can play a critical role in protecting children – a response to Featherstone et al. (2014) ‘A marriage made in hell: child protection meets early intervention’
Other team members
Sara Eddy
PhD Student
Kath Wilkinson
Research Fellow
Charlotte Hewlett
Research Manager
Dr Jo Day
Research Fellow