The study by the Institute of Education, University of London, found that both low income and the experience of other difficulties in the family are important for child development, but more important are the problems associated with compounding risks.
‘The greater the number of risks experienced by the child, the greater the problems that the child will face during their life,’ the study concludes.
The research is also understood to be the first to analyse in detail the number of risk factors children in minority ethnic families face.
An analysis of 18,000 families with babies under one from the Millennium Cohort Study found that 28 per cent of them faced two or more out of ten risk factors.
These were living in overcrowded housing; having a teenage mother; having one or more parents with depression; a physical disability; low basic skills; substance misuse; excessive alcohol intake; living in a family with financial problems; worklessness; or domestic violence.
Based on this sample, the researchers estimate that 192,000 children born in 2001 faced multiple challenges before their first birthday.
Since many of these children had older siblings, the total number of children at risk from two or more factors was considerably higher at the time.
Previous research suggests that children who are growing up in families with only one of these risks will not end up with any major developmental problems – it is those that face multiple family difficulties that lead to the most damage.
The authors Dr Ricardo Sabates and Professor Shirley Dex found that children facing two or more of these risk factors had poorer behavioural development scores at the age of three and five than those experiencing one or no challenges.
However, they say that high numbers of children facing multiple risks are relatively uncommon, with less than two per cent of children facing five or more.
Just over four in ten children did not experience any of these risk factors in early childhood, and three in ten faced only one.
The study also found that Bangladeshi children were most likely to be exposed to multiple family problems, with 48 per cent of them experiencing two or more of the risk factors studied, particularly financial hardship.
This compares to only 20 per cent of Indian children and 28 per cent of white children.
'Tackling disadvantage'
The study concludes that the findings highlight the difficulties faced by policy makers in tackling disadvantage through early intervention.
The report says, ‘Among the risks considered here, there are not obvious sets of circumstances that hang together, which might be described as risk types or clusters.
‘This lack of clustering points to a gloomy conclusion that there are no easy wins for policy and intervention.
‘In fact, the wide range and varying nature of multiple disadvantages found here suggests it will be extremely difficult to tackle simultaneously all these disadvantages in order to reduce family risks for the benefit of children where they occur two or more at a time.’
Professor Dex told Nursery World, ‘It would be very hard to devise a policy that would attack all the problems because they are so diverse.’
It was important to have a multi-agency and holistic approach to risk factors, she added. But she suggested that some sort of screening check could be designed, particularly for families with two or more risk factors.
‘For example if a parent presents with depression there should be a process to make sure that any other issues get recognised.’
GPs, health visitors and other agencies should ‘look out for children who face a number of risk factors’ to make sure that these get picked up, she said.
