The United States is known worldwide for its leadership role in child development theory and research. Included in this is considerable theory and research about early intervention. The United States is also well-known for its laggard status in the development of proactive and preventive child policies. In contrast, the European countries do not announce new theories of effective intervention, nor do they emphasize intervention research. There is not much discussion of the value of early intervention, and what there is seems borrowed from the United States. Nonetheless, many European countries have been at the forefront of promoting what in the United States would be considered early intervention through the design and implementation of social policies that embody the concept. Family policies, generally, and parental leave, child care, home-health visiting, and family support policies and programs, in particular, are illustrations of these developments. Apart from those programs traditionally thought of in the United States as early intervention, the Europeans have developed also, for a variety of reasons, an elaborate social policy infrastructure, including income transfers, health care, and housing assistance, that provides a strong foundation for those policies targeted on young children and their families. This whole policy and program “package” also appears to reduce the need for treatment services and crisis interventions (Kamerman & Kahn, 1988, 1989, 1995).

In this chapter I contrast the U.S. and European perspectives on early intervention, describe the main European early intervention policies, and refer to other elements of their social policy infrastructure.