The Social Research Unit was established in 1963 at Kings College Cambridge, moving to Dartington in Devon in 1968. It has a long track record of applying evidence to government legislation in the areas of education, youth justice, child welfare and child protection.
In recent years, the Unit has promoted major prevention initiatives in Ireland and Birmingham, and has developing strands of research on the mediating effects of neighborhood, school and family contexts on risks to healthy child development, and strategies for taking evidence based practices effectively to scale.