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This article illustrates the key findings from the economics literature on education investment, in particular the findings focused on early child investment. The article shows the impact of early investment, particularly evidence from experimental programmes on later life outcomes such as labour market performance and societal position. It demonstrates how investment in children is both an important investment for the child but also an important tool for economic and social policy.

This article reviews the first volume of the Journal of Children's Services. In doing so, it discusses broader directions and challenges in research, policy and practice. The article focuses on discussion about outcomes, the ‘idea’ of children's services and the impact of interventions on children's health and development. It welcomes reflections on different approaches to outcome measurement, analyses of the practicalities of implementing policy reforms and rigorous evaluations of the impact of Early Years, parenting and other programmes. At the same time, it suggests specific areas in which more work would be valuable, including: socio‐political commentary on policy developments; methods of and results from need analyses; empirical research on inter‐agency initiatives; how to improve the processes and structures that underpin good outcomes; transitions; and understanding ‘what works’ in research dissemination and utilisation. The value of international perspectives (including intra‐UK comparisons) is stressed. Forthcoming special editions on randomised controlled trials (RCTs) (2007) and anti‐social behaviour by young people (2008) will help to address other points raised.

The heady system of high‐pressure Continental air that drifted across the Atlantic and collided with the traditional cyclonic patterns of U.S. literary academe in the mid‐1960s precipitated a “Theory Revolution” that has brought a couple of decades of stormy and stimulating weather to the campus. The collision has produced occasionally furious debate and resulted for higher education in the kind of public attention customarily reserved for athletic scandals; it has kept tenuring processes in turmoil and publish‐or‐perish mills working round the clock.