An evaluation of the Teachable Moments A&E Service: Correlating age with presenting needs and assessing how family difficulties impact intervention effectiveness

Abstract

In 2019, the Home Office established 18 Violence Reduction Partnerships to reduce violence by understanding health, social care, and economic needs and identifying risk and protective factors to support community-level interventions. The Teachable Moments A&E programme was commissioned in 2021 as part of the violence reduction partnerships to support children and young people with presenting needs in hospital A&E and Major Trauma departments for violence-related activities. This study expanded on previous evaluations of the programme and considered how to improve the efficiency of the programme.Monitoring data were collected over a six-month period for 601 service users. Polyseries correlations were performed between age and participants’ presenting needs, and moderation analyses were performed to assess if family-wide challenges reduce the effectiveness of the Teachable Moments programme in improve service-user outcomes.There was a strong positive correlation between age and the presenting needs peer relationships, employment, and housing, as well as a strong negative correlation between age and self-harm. Moreover, moderation analyses show that unsupported family-wide difficult significantly reduce the effectiveness of the Teachable Moments intervention on improving the outcomes self-esteem, reducing risk, health and wellbeing, relationships, and employment/education.Findings show that as participants age, the prevalence of presenting needs is likely to vary which can allow the Teachable Moments programme to offer preventative support as service-users age and become more at-risk. Additionally, moderation analyses show that support programmes for service-users should extend beyond the individual and towards family-wide support in cases where support is required to improve the effectiveness of the Teachable Moments service.Paper Content:this paper expands on previous evaluations of the Teachable Moments service and considers how to improve the effectiveness of the interventions for service-users.Practical Implications of the paper:Findings from the paper offer insight into how the Teachable moments service can be altered to reduce future risk for service users by improving preventative measures towards specific presenting needs based on age, and how the programme can be expanded to account for factors around the service user that may reduce the effectiveness of the intervention.