Topic description and stories

Understanding the implications of enabling children to grow into healthy, happy, educated and inquiring adults, in safety and free from adversity.

Researchers and children at the PEDAL Centre during the Cambridge Festival

Learning through 'guided' play can be as effective as adult-led instruction

12 Jan 2022

Play-based learning may also have a more positive effect on younger children’s acquisition of important early maths skills compared with traditional...

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The Lost Words: a ‘spell book’ that closes the gap between childhood and nature

01 Jan 2022

The Lost Words is a book by Robert Macfarlane and Jackie Morris that summons the magic of nature to help children find, love and protect the natural...

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A man sitting in front of a screen

Teenagers at greatest risk of self-harming could be identified almost a decade earlier

15 Jun 2021

Researchers have identified two subgroups of adolescents who self-harm and have shown that it is possible to predict those individuals at greatest...

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Children running

Physical activity may help to close the wealth gap in school attainment by improving self-control

20 May 2021

Guaranteeing every child the opportunity to participate in certain types of physical activity could support their academic attainment and help to...

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Year 8 students work with Cambridge researchers to help their peers learn about the census

13 May 2021

Year 8 students work with Cambridge researchers to help their peers learn about the census.

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Children playing with a parent

Supporting mums’ mental health strengthens ‘protective’ playmate role with children

07 May 2021

Helping parents with depression or anxiety could also improve their ability to engage in potentially ‘protective’ forms of play with their children...

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Boy at sunset

Autism rates have increased and show differences in ethnic minorities and links to social disadvantage

29 Mar 2021

Around one in 57 (1.76%) children in the UK is on the autistic spectrum, significantly higher than previously reported, according to a study of more...

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Mum and toddler

Video-led feedback programme reduces behaviour problems in children as young as 12 months

16 Mar 2021

A home-based parenting programme to prevent childhood behaviour problems, which very unusually focuses on children when they are still toddlers, has...

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Boy wearing face mask

Pandemic restrictions aggravating known triggers for self-harm and poor mental health among children and young people

10 Mar 2021

Experts have issued a stark warning about the effects of the pandemic on the mental health of children and young people.

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The neuroscientist who champions LGBT+ equal rights

26 Feb 2021

Duncan Astle is a neuroscientist on a mission to understand why the brains of some children develop differently to others – and how it affects not...

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Children sitting on park bench

High insulin levels during childhood a risk for mental health problems later in life, study suggests

13 Jan 2021

Researchers have shown that the link between physical and mental illness is closer than previously thought. Certain changes in physical health, which...

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Mother and child at sunset

Family court decisions distorted by misuse of key research, say experts

12 Jan 2021

Family courts are misunderstanding and misusing research around how children form close relationships with their caregivers, say an international...

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