“Giving families a bit of Incredible Years is not the same as properly implementing it. It’s like baking a cake. You need all of the ingredients. People will have their own way of going about things but all the basic components have to combined in roughly the right order. There may be some adaptations – for diabetics, for example, but there are no short cuts.” Carolyn Webster-Stratton makes the case for fidelity in the kitchen of parenting programs.

Plenty of prevention programs die of their own inertia. They just don’t have the right person pushing it to grow. That right person, for so many flourishing programs, has been Clay Yeager. Based in Pennsylvania, he started as a parole officer, but sought better ways to help kids. He succeeded.

There are plenty of scientists who publish good peer reviewed studies. But that’s all they do. Rare is it to find someone who has the whole package—impeccable research, excellent work ethic, and the ability to get that idea to the right people. That’s Kristin Moore, who has been working on children’s wellbeing for the last half century.

Jane Barlow is a leading proponent of the UK systematic review and a key figure in the Campbell Collaboration, but she remains unconvinced that the randomized controlled trial is the perfect or complete research instrument.

A young US photojournalist’s portrayal of the life of a vulnerable teenager growing up in poverty in South East Ohio has won a prestigious scholarship awarded in memory of a UK newspaper photographer killed in Romania during the 1989 revolution.

Is ten years in the US Defense department good training for a career persuading government to divert more funds into rigorous evaluation and to support the widespread implementation of programs that will enhance young people’s prospects. Jon Baron’s experience suggests so.

His most abiding legacy will be the 3,000 plus Sure Start children’s centers that serve disadvantaged children across the UK each day. Naomi Eisenstadt, Director of the UK Social Exclusion Unit, and Prevention Action’s executive editor Michael Little, pay tribute to Norman Glass, the former director of the National Centre for Social Research, who died last month.

“It’s the difference between understanding evidence based practices and evidence-based programs. Both are important, but we don't yet know how the two fit together.” Professor Del Elliott looks forward to a synthesis of Blueprints-style “benchmarking” of initiatives and the improving meta-analysis of prevention strategies.

Chair of the Centre for Social Policy at Dartington UK, Roger Bullock, remembers the career of the distinguished scholar and social policy activist, Professor Peter Townsend who died after a heart attack last weekend.

After 40 years at the University of Pennsylvania, Professor of Sociology Frank Furstenberg is beginning to get the measure of the long journey into “full social adulthood”.

In the eighth decade of a career of huge significance in the evolution of the science of child development and its role in US social policy making, the holder of the “Children’s Nobel Prize” is preparing to publish his saddest book. “We have no childcare system here” says Edward Zigler. “It's just a hodgepodge – poor to mediocre at best…”

“Longitudinal data is compelling stuff. It gives you leverage over policy makers to do the right thing…" The founder of the think-tank charity Longview, John Bynner, explains why the UK should continue to be a world leader in long-haul research.