About the research
Conduct disorders, where a child’s behaviour violates either the basic rights of others or is outside age-appropriate norms, are the most common psychiatric conditions amongst children. The disorder develops into adulthood anti-social personality disorder in approximately 50 per cent of cases, and it is estimated that 5 per cent with the most severe behaviour problems in childhood are responsible for more than 20 per cent of all crimes committed. Researchers from the London School of Economics, King’s College London and the Centre for Mental Health have been investigating the potential costs of (and savings from) parenting programmes designed to reduce persistent conduct disorder using UK Data Service-hosted data.
Existing research has already shown that parenting programmes have a positive effect on child behaviour, and here the authors are interested in the potential long-term costs and savings of these programmes.
The research strongly suggests that, given the assumptions used in the model, evidence-based parenting programmes do reduce the chance that conduct disorder would persist into adulthood. It shows that consequently, there is a cost saving effect within five to eight years under base case conditions.
The cost of intervention is between £952 and £2,078 (in 2008/2009 prices), but the savings per family are estimated at £16,432 over 25 years. Most of the savings are associated with reductions in offending.
Methodology
This research used a decision-analytic model, populated with data from the best available research findings that compared two scenarios over 25 years:
- a five- year-old with clinical conduct disorder receives an evidence-based parenting programme
- a five-year-old with clinical conduct disorder does not receive the programme
A cost-savings analysis was conducted by comparing costs associated with persistent conduct disorder in both scenarios, considering both the public sector costs (such as health and criminal justice services ) and costs to society (such as the wider costs of crime).
Data from the Offending Crime and Justice Survey were used to obtain an estimate of the number and types of crimes committed by 10- to 25-year-olds. Home Office estimates of the cost per crime were used to calculate the average cost of crime per person with conduct disorder, assuming that 5 per cent of children are subsequently responsible for over 20 per cent of crimes.
Publications
Bonin, E., Stevens, M., Beecham, J., Byford, S. and Parsonage, M. (2011) ‘Costs and longer-term savings of parenting programmes for the prevention of persistent conduct disorder: A modelling study’, BMC Public Health, 11, p. 803. doi: 10.1186/1471-2458-11-803 Retrieved 6 September 2013 from http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/11/803/