Social Science Impact Accelerator: Evaluating the Emotionally-Based School Non-Attendance framework

Mental health is often a driving factor behind EBSNA, with anxiety being a key contributor (e.g., Prosser & Birchwood, 2024). This can take the form of general anxiety, as well as specific anxiety about others, sometimes referred to as social anxiety (Finning et al., 2019). School experiences, such as bullying, also contribute to worries and fears about others (Kingston et al., 2024).

Eikon are a chaity who provide support to children and their families in Surrey. Acutely aware of the challenges that EBSNA creates for young people, parents/carers and schools, they have developed a theoretical framework to help understand and treat it. This framework informs the intervention work that they do with parents, carers, schools and young people.

This project will assist in evaluating and further developing Eikon’s EBSNA framework so as to provide an evidence-base for policy makers. We will work with adolescents, schools and families to evaluate the interventions EIKON use, to help evaluate and develop the EBSNA framework. We will combine qualitative and quantitative methods to gain insight into how the EBSNA intervention work is exprienced by service users and use this to develop theoretical knowledge and impact.