Older children and adolescents constitute over 40 per cent of children admitted to care or accommodation. Concerns about these high rates of admission have led policy-makers and practitioners to consider innovative ways of working with adolescents. In many local authorities, specialist support teams have been set up, which offer intensive, short-term, preventive services which aim to divert adolescents from the care system. This book reports the findings of a study, commissioned by the Department of Health, into the effectiveness of these specialist support teams. The book charts the development of policy on preventive services for children and provides a comprehensive review of the research on interventions with older children and adolescents. It then outlines the multiple risk factors in the lives of the young people in the study, assesses the services they received and compares outcomes for young people referred to specialist support teams with .