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Improving the welfare of children growing up in disadvantaged circumstances is central to strategies to tackle health inequalities and social exclusion. Helen Roberts, at the time head of R&D at Barnardo's, now Professor of Child Health at City University (h.Roberts@city.ac.uk), took up a User Fellowship to help strengthen the interface between research and policy in this key area of child welfare. The aims of her Fellowship were (i1) to bring research, policy and media communities together to focus on how to improve dissemination of evidence, (ii) to draw evidence from early findings of the Programme relevant to improving the health of children and families living in poverty and (iii) to explore the effectiveness of targeted interventions.

Activities and outputs included:-

• Three fora which brought together researchers from the Programme, senior officials from government, the health service, and NGOs. Government departments included the Department for Education and Employment, Department of Health and the Treasury, together with representatives of the print media, and senior trustees and operational managers within child health and welfare organisations. The fora addressed: the role of the press in developing and disseminating ideas around inequalities; the contribution of lay understandings to policy and practice in health inequalities; and targeted and universal interventions.
• A review of interventions in the early years of life, assessing their effectiveness in reducing inequalities in child health. The work, begun as part of the Fellowship, was completed with the support of Barnardo's. The 180 page report by Helen Roberts, What Works in Reducing Inequalities in Child Health?, was published by Barnardo's in 2000.
• Liaison with and input into key user communities. This included conference presentations (e.g. BMA, RCN, HDA conferences, European Parliament), meetings (e.g. on the evaluation of Sure Start held at the Treasury and the BMA working party on child health) and publications targeted at health inequalities user community.

Roberts, H. (2000) 'Children, research and social policy' in A. James and P. Christiansen, Research with Children, London : Falmer Press.
Roberts, H. (2000) What Works in Reducing Inequalities in Child Health? Ilford : Barnardo's.
Roberts, H. (2000) 'Sure Start: why do we think it might work ?' Archives of Disease in Childhood, 82: 435-437.