Effectiveness Of Interventions For Children From Low-income Families:A Systematic Review And Meta-analysis

This study systematically evaluated the effects of different intervention measures on the physical health,mental health and academic performance of children from low-income families in China to provide evidence for the effectiveness of intervention,and explored the important factors affecting the effect of measures to provide reliable advises for social work practice in the field of children from low-income families,and contribute to the high-quality development of social service programs.Ten databases were searched by computer,including Psyc INFO,ERIC,Scopus,MEDLINE,Web of Science,EMBASE,Pub Med,CNKI,Wan Fang Data and VIP.By screening titles,abstracts,and full-texts to identify included studies,then extracted data from these studies.Meta-analysis using fixed-effect or random-effect model were performed.A total of 36 literatures were included in this study.Meta-analysis results showed that: The Ying Yangbao intervention can effectively improve children’s health and academic performance;Information intervention can improve children’s nutritional knowledge level and mental health status,but it has no substantial impact on children’s physical health and academic performance.Economic intervention and Computer-teaching intervention can improve children’s academic performance;Integrated intervention can improve children’s physical health,but has no significant effect on their mental health.The results of subgroup analysis showed that the effect of the Ying Yangbao intervention was moderated by intervention object,children’s age,intervention cycle,sample size,sample source and study type.The effect of Information intervention is related to intervention cycle,sample size and study type.According to the results,there are many effective interventions for children’s physical health.Therefore,in the post-poverty alleviation era,social work should pay more attention to the mental health and education of children from low-income families,and optimize social service projects from the three aspects of children’s age,intervention object and intervention cycle.