Children and parents have become a focal point of debates on ?new social risks? and ?new public policies? in European welfare states. Policymakers and experts, also those from UNICEF, OECD and the EU, have converged in defining such risks, engaged in mutual policy learning and outlined measures to better safeguard children, activate their poten-tial, promote their well-being and ensure equal opportunities. At the same time, we wit-ness a new or renewed interventionist, also ?prevention?-ist, policy stance towards chil-dren to tackle earlier risks of exclusion and poor parenting. Parents are expected to offer their children ?grade A? parenting, yet are increasingly suspected of falling short of meet-ing public expectations. The boundaries between what has been seen as ?family? or ?pri-vate? versus ?public affairs? are being redrawn by discourses and ?evidence based? meas-ures to fight children-related risks. The central research question is: do logics and practices of child-centred policies con-verge or diverge in France, Germany, the Netherlands, UK and Sweden given on the one hand their historically different family and institutional systems and on the other hand their increasing tendency to import programmes from abroad and the international con-sensus on what are ?good? policies for children and parents? While debates on ?new risks? and the ?need for child-centred social investment strategies? have converged, policy responses to the new challenges have so far varied across coun-tries. Such variations, it is hypothesised, result from path-dependent institutional set-tings, public ?sentiments? and policy ?cultures?. They require further elaboration, if mutual learning of what works in securing children?s and families? well-being is to be encouraged. ORA offers the unrivalled opportunity to study policies for children in countries which rep-resent different ?worlds of family policy?: France, Germany, the Netherlands and the UK. The study will also be informed by the Swedish experience, thereby including a case clas-sified as a ?forerunner? of children?s rights and investment in children. We are interested in comparing variations of ideas about children?s proper status in society (?private? versus ?public? children), ?good? parenting, experts? political influence, and different forms and timing of policy change. Research objectives are: (1) to identify and offer a taxonomy of recent child-related in-tervention programmes, drawing out their underlying ideas, and their proponents in the countries under investigation; (2) to explain and specify the driving forces and timing of ?new? policies; (3) to elaborate how intervention and prevention programmes have been implemented and transformed by everyday practices (evaluation); and (4) to identify processes of policy learning across countries. Research in each country is based on a combination of methods and a variety of data: historical accounts of (evidence based) intervention and prevention programs in each country; interviews with (micro- and meso-level) key actors involved in agenda setting, programme design, implementation and evaluation; survey data on changing attitudes towards family life, parenting, the role of the state, also on feelings of (in)security; analyses of policy documents. [Word count: 475]