Christine O'Farrelly

Imperial College London | Imperial · Centre for Mental Health

Formal consent for children’s research participation legally resides with adults, and guidelines typically recommend consulting children about their participation only from 7 years of age. How can researchers support younger children’s informed decision-making about their research participation, particularly in larger-scale studies without extended...

Behavioral and emotional problems in infants and toddlers are common, often persist and put children at risk of later mental health problems. Reliable, efficient, and sensitive tools are needed to identify young children who may benefit from further assessment and support. The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), offers a brief, convenie...

Background Parental anxiety and depression have been associated with changes to parent–child interactions. Although play constitutes an important part of parent–child interactions and affords critical developmental opportunities, little is known regarding how parental anxiety and depression are related to parent–child play. This is an important kno...

Background: Behaviour problems emerge early in childhood and place children at risk for later psychopathology. Objectives: To evaluate the clinical effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of a parenting intervention to prevent enduring behaviour problems in young children. Design: A pragmatic, assessor-blinded, multisite, two-arm, parallel-group...

Importance Behavior problems are one of the most common mental health disorders in childhood and can undermine children’s health, education, and employment outcomes into adulthood. There are few effective interventions for early childhood. Objective To test the clinical effectiveness of a brief parenting intervention, the Video-feedback Interventi...

Amidst the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID‐19) pandemic, there is uncertainty regarding potential lasting impacts on children's health and educational outcomes. Play, a fundamental part of childhood, may be integral to children's health during crises. We undertook a rapid review of the impact of quarantine, isolation and other restrictive environme...

Participatory approaches to play research emphasise the active engagement of key stakeholders in all aspects of the research. Ranging from children, parents and educators to policy makers, the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL) at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, UK, actively engages with a...

Background Reaching recruitment targets in randomised controlled trials is a challenge. Media tools are increasingly used to engage participants, yet there is a paucity of research into the use of video to optimise recruitment. We therefore tested whether adding a participant information video clip to a standard participant information sheet improv...

In the wake of the current COVID-19 health crisis, there is uncertainty and concern about the impact this pandemic will have on children’s health and educational outcomes. Play is a fundamental part of childhood and can be integral to children’s health in moments of crisis. Due to severe lockdown regulations around the world, typical play experienc...

Interventions aimed at improving children's lives are widespread and research evaluating these is central to policy decisions that affect their lives. Although there is an increasing move in intervention and evaluation research to include stakeholders’ perspectives this rarely extends to children's voices. As a psychologist committed to children's...

What are children's real experiences of making the transition from early years setting to Reception? By the researchers behind the Children's Thoughts about School Study Beth Barker, Mimi Tatlow-Golden, Ailbhe Booth and Christine O'Farrelly

Despite the importance of self-regulation for school readiness and success across the lifespan, little is known about children’s conceptions of this important ability. Using mixed-method interviews, this research examined kindergarten children’s (n = 57) perspectives on self-regulation in a disadvantaged area in Dublin, Ireland. Children depicted s...

Young children in communities facing socioeconomic disadvantage are increasingly targeted by school readiness interventions. Interventions are stronger if they address stakeholders’ priorities, yet children’s priorities for early school adjustment are rarely accounted for in intervention design including selection of outcome measures. The Children’...

Importance Paternal depression during the postnatal period has been associated with adverse child outcomes. Family environment has been reported as a pathway for risk transmission from fathers to children. The influence of paternal depression during the postnatal period on offspring depression remains to be clarified. Objective To investigate the...

This study uses data from an evaluation of an early intervention programme, Preparing for Life, to estimate the impact of book gifting on shared reading during infancy and the association between reading and later development. Participants were randomised during pregnancy to a high intensity intervention group, receiving mentoring and book packs (n...

Background Behavioural problems are common in early childhood, and can result in enduring costs to the individual and society, including an increased risk of mental and physical illness, criminality, educational failure and drug and alcohol misuse. Most previous research has examined the impact of interventions targeting older children when difficu...

Infant mental health (IMH) is best promoted through a continuum of services underpinned by strong service capacity. However, service providers often lack fundamental IMH knowledge and skills. Using the Ready, Steady, Grow (RSG) initiative as a case study of a capacity-building model (P., Hawe, L., King, M., Noort, C., Jordens, & B., Llyod, 2000), t...

This paper reviews parenting programmes and their effectiveness with families of young children and highlights additional resources for primary care practitioners. Typically, 30% of GP consultations concern child behaviour problems and established behaviour problems can have lasting effects on children’s life chances. These problems can be identifi...

Research shows that children facing socioeconomic risk often have poorer skills at school entry, greater difficulty adjusting to school, more negative school experiences, and lower scholastic achievement, relative to their peers. However, the promotion of positive early school experiences is constrained by a lack of insight into disadvantaged child...

Objective This study estimates the effect of a targeted early childhood intervention program on global and experienced measures of maternal well-being utilizing a randomized controlled trial design. The primary aim of the intervention is to improve children’s school readiness skills by working directly with parents to improve their knowledge of chi...

(DOCX)

(XLS)

(DOC)

(DOC)

(DOCX)

This study examined the impact of a targeted Irish early intervention program on children’s emotional and behavioral development using multiple methods to test the robustness of the results. Data on 164 Preparing for Life participants who were randomly assigned into an intervention group, involving home visits from pregnancy onwards, or a control g...

Comparison of Participants and Eligible Non-participants at Baseline. (DOCX)

Study Protocol. (DOC)

(XLS)

Table A) Impact of PFL on emotional and behavioral functioning—Main and interaction effects controlling for baseline differences. Table B) Impact of PFL on emotional and behavioral functioning—Treatment effects by gender controlling for baseline differences. Table C) Quantile regression results of the distributional impact of PFL on emotional and b...

CONSORT Checklist. (DOC)

Children’s use of the toilet at school, although rarely explored, is an important facet of school experience with consequences for physical and psychological health. A mixed methods study investigated views of 25 children (4–5 years) regarding potential stressors in the first school year, including views of toileting, in Dublin, Ireland. Despite ve...

Children from economically disadvantaged communities frequently lack the socio-emotional, cognitive and behavioural skills needed for successful early school adjustment. Assessments of early school experience often rely on parent and teacher perspectives, yet children’s views are essential to design effective, resilience-promoting school ecologies....

This article gives an overview of video-feedback approaches in parenting support, drawing on current research and models of best practice. Video-feedback approaches use a strength-based model to combine positive feedback from parent–infant film clips to promote sensitive parenting. There is a growing evidence-base for the use of video-feedback acro...

Unlike the transitions children make between settings, those they undertake between age groups within early childhood care and education (ECCE) settings are seldom studied. Accordingly, this exploratory study followed seven preschool children (three boys and four girls) as they moved to new rooms in five ECCE settings. Structured observations of ch...

For a significant number of children attending centre-based Early Childhood Care and Education (ECCE) settings transitions between age groups are likely to be an inevitable experience. However, the literature on these transitions is remarkably sparse, with only a handful of studies contributing to an understanding of these times of change. To addre...

Saliva offers developmental researchers and pediatric clinicians significant opportunities to measure numerous biological markers. However, many preschool-aged children refuse to participate in saliva collection. Identifying collection methods known to be acceptable to participants may help in maximizing participation. To this end, this study aimed...

Over the last two decades, interest in salivary research in the social sciences has grown rapidly. Salivary research is appealing as a quick, inexpensive and non-invasive means of determining a range of biological markers, which offer insight into a variety of human responses, for example, stress. To the social researcher these advantages provide e...