Exploring practitioners’ experiences of delivering on prevention
/This article was featured in the SCDC Weekly - 30th September 2026
A new report has explored what preventative policy looks like for the people trying to make it happen through their work in communities.
Published by SHERU, the report is a result of a series of prevention action learning sets featuring practitioners in different contexts.
The research found that participants widely supported working in this way, but that the realities of delivering preventative approaches are where the difficulties lie.
"Participants felt that national policy does not always recognise, reflect or respond to these realities,” the report states, "which have developed within an increasingly dense policy environment and against a backdrop of growing pressures and demands over the past decade."
Those pressures come from having to respond to immediate crises, involving emotionally demanding work that too often focuses on evidencing a person's eligibility to receive support, and not on the human consequences of delayed interventions.
SHERU makes a series of recommendations on the importance of creating the capability and conditions for prevention policy implementation - recommendations which are similar to the recent update of the joint statement on prevention, published earlier this month.