Nine-year-old Ivan and his parents live in a small coastal town and appear well adjusted, but a recent conflict revealed family tensions, the father’s alcohol use, and a lack of parental attention.
Further enquiries uncovered concerns about Ivan’s social and emotional difficulties, alongside his mother’s illness and his father’s recent career change.
What Ivan’s story reveals about prevention today
Ivan’s case, though fictional, closely reflects the reality of prevention today: far too often, the social care system ends up putting out fires that could have been prevented much earlier.
The European Social Network’s Prevention and Early Intervention Working Group was established to explore how social services can better support communities to prevent or reduce situations that may cause harm, promoting safety, wellbeing, autonomy, and social inclusion while reducing the need for more intensive support later.
During its first in-person meeting in Sofia on 23-24 April, the focus was on children and their families. Cases like Ivan’s sparked discussions on risk and protective factors, prevention, and barriers. Despite different contexts, participants identified three recurring themes across all case studies.
Prevention requires stronger connections
When in need, most families first turn to their informal networks: relatives, friends, neighbours, and, increasingly, online communities. Social services are rarely the first point of contact, but they can make a difference by reinforcing these support networks.
In Bruges, Het Huis van het Kind (“The House of the Child”) brings to life the idea that “It takes a village to raise a child”. In at-risk neighbourhoods, it provides free weekly activities for both children and parents, such as craft-making and cooking. These sessions, consistently led by the same social worker, help families to connect and build trust in social services.
For families to seek support, services must be accessible. This means going beyond office settings, working through trusted community actors, and using tools like social media to strengthen connection and a sense of belonging.
Prevention requires “joining the dots” earlier
According to the socio-ecological model, harm is complex and results from the interplay of factors at different levels: individual, relational, community, and societal. Yet in practice, professionals often operate in isolation, within the boundaries of their roles. As we saw in Ivan’s case, the result is fragmentation: different services may see parts of the situation, but no one has the full picture, leaving the dots unconnected and risks escalating.
Targeted programmes that could support families like Ivan’s do exist, but the challenge is connecting families to them at the right time. In Riga, for instance, the Latvian Children’s Support Fund runs Ceļš pie sevis (“Path to Self”), which provides psychosocial support to children and families facing communication, behaviour, and emotional challenges. Delivered by a multidisciplinary team, it currently supports 72 children and their caregivers over a ten-month period.
Prevention requires adequate systems and policies
A family strengthening approach goes hand in hand with a dialogical approach, in which professionals do not simply offer standardised interventions, thereby adding to the burden already borne by both families and the workforce. Instead, they work alongside families to identify priorities and co-design plans that work best for them. Through practices such as family group conferences, families lead the decision-making process and, as a result, feel empowered and are more likely to succeed.
To make it work, investment in the workforce is essential. Professionals need the skills, time, and flexibility to engage meaningfully with families, as well as ongoing training and evidence-based guidance. As illustrated by the prevention pyramid model, the workforce underpins all prevention efforts and depends on supportive systems, resources, and long-term planning.
In September, the Working Group will meet online to translate these reflections into policy recommendations at all levels. As Alfonso Lara Montero, CEO of ESN, noted, “Prevention is not just about timing, but about redesigning services to ensure they are holistic, anticipatory, and person-centred.”
