The teams reunited at New Radcliffe House once more for our Summer Team Meeting, sharing progress and updating on activities across the project.

It was clear that everyone has been extremely busy since last we met. Shanta Raj, our Patient and Public Involvement Engagement and Participation Facilitator, shared updates about the launch of the Researcher Guide for the Parent Carer Research Network. We also heard about the recent NIHR Oxford BRC Health Research Showcase event 2025 which proved to be an excellent opportunity for outreach.

We were fortunate to be joined by Andreia Costa, Lead for Oxford Health BRC Training and Capacity Building. She shared about her work both with the BRC and also her lived experience within the neurodivergent community and her podcast NDV: Neurodiverse Voices.

Our key speaker this month was Dr Yu Wei Chua who gave a presentation on how early interventions can reduce mental health inequalities in early childhood and in adolescence. She talked about reducing socioeconomic inequalities due to maternal education. She considered interventions before 5 years old that improve the early childhood environment, from wider neighbourhood/school/community and household adversity, to factors characterising the parent-child relationship (e.g., activities with children).

An interesting point was that early interventions on these factors could reduce around a third of mental health inequalities in early childhood, and this benefit remained similar in adolescence. The early childhood benefits were predominantly driven by improving the early parent-child relationship, but this pathway was not the main contributor to reduced adolescent mental health inequalities. It was improving engagement with childcare and early support which had the largest impact on adolescent mental health inequalities.

The presentation stimulated interesting discussions about implementing interventions effectively. Would mental health interventions widen inequalities? Prof Creswell shared how work by BRC investigators found that groups who are already doing better may engage better and receive greater benefits. Dr Chua noted that the study tested a scenario where the most disadvantaged group received an intervention that delivered different (random) benefits, but in practice, an intervention would be offered to everyone. How would giving money directly help children? Dr Chua highlighted the Baby First Years study, which found that giving money directly to families did not improve early childhood development at 4 years old. This study also found that giving money did not improve parent-child interactions/relationships, which her study suggests may be most important for early childhood mental health.

We were also excited to participate with #Red4Research 2025 where we tried to don red clothing and share the reasons why we are involved with mental health research – quite a big question for a Thursday afternoon! It was lovely to share thoughts and aspirations for the future. We are a team full of passion and drive to help children and young people find the support that they need.