The Journey So Far: Early Intervention.

This paper captures the journey of Atlantic Philanthropies and its grantees towards an early intervention approach to support for children and young people in Northern Ireland, and the emergence of the Early Intervention Transformation Programme (EITP) which saw Atlantic partner with the NI government to sustain and embed this work.   

Atlantic’s grantees on the island of Ireland had accomplished a lot and generated a lot of learning: about what works for children, young people and families; about the value of evidence-based practice; and about how to work across sectors and with government.  However, despite support in national strategies in both jurisdictions, neither government had fundamentally shifted their intervention planning towards prevention and early intervention.  

As Atlantic approached the end of its lifespan in Northern Ireland, it began to engage with government on a potential partnership focusing on early intervention, dementia and shared education.  Through the EITP strand of the partnership, Atlantic would assist the NI government in choosing a range of high quality, evidence-based early interventions, and in doing so embed the necessary skills, paradigms and dispositions deep within ‘the system’. 

This report describes how Atlantic and its partners designed the EITP programme and early lessons learned about working in collaboration with government.