Professor Pasco Fearon

Professor Pasco Fearon is Director of the Centre for Family Research. He is a developmental and clinical psychologist doing world-leading research on child development and children’s mental health.

Pasco's research focuses on the caregiving factors involved in children’s psychological, emotional, cognitive and psychobiological development. Pasco is the Director of the Children of the 2020s Study, a nationally representative birth cohort study funded by the Department of Education, and a co-director of the Early Life Cohort Feasibility Study, funded by the ESRC.

Pasco works internationally, with key collaborations in the USA, Netherlands, Canada, South Africa, Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya and Lebanon. He is also closely involved in children’s mental health policy, through his work at the Anna Freud Centre and as a trustee of the charity Foundation Years Information Research.

Pasco is currently involved in five ongoing clinical trials for children and adolescents:

• The SUNRISE Early Child Development programme in Burkina Faso, funded by the Welcome Trust
• The RESET trial of a hybrid IPT and cognitive training prevention programme for at risk teenagers in the UK
• The SUMMIT trial of group IPT for postnatal depression funded by the NIHR
• The COSI trial of Circle of Security for postnatal depression in the UK
• The Supporting Parents Programme for families on the edge of care, funded by the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care

The common theme across Pasco's work, is the intention of understanding and promoting positive child development and children’s mental health and wellbeing. Much of Pasco's work has addressed the role of parent-child attachment and caregiver sensitivity as key dimensions of caregiving. His work includes both large-scale longitudinal studies of child development and clinical trials. His work on childhood interventions has focused on supporting parenting and parental mental health as a means of achieving improvements in:

• family wellbeing
• child development and mental health

This includes work on interventions for:

• socio-economically disadvantaged young parents
• postnatal depression
• children in foster care

Pasco did his undergraduate degree at Cambridge University and PhD at UCL, and subsequently trained as a clinical psychologist at the University of Wales, Bangor. He was joint-director of UCL’s Clinical Psychology Course for 10 years, and has worked at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families continuously since 1995.

Pasco's work has focused on the caregiving influences on child development, and includes:

• longitudinal observational studies
• neuroscientific investigations

He was a member of the NICE guideline group on attachment and a member of the groups that developed the Children’s Wellbeing Practitioners programme and the CYP IAPT National Zero-Fives training curriculum, as well as a number of other national initiatives for children.

As well as Directing the Centre for Family Research, Pasco Fearon is also President of the Society for Emotion and Attachment Studies and Deputy Editor in Chief of the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry.

He is a member of staff at the Anna Freud National Centre for Children and Families where he co-directs the Chaptre research unit.

Pasco also holds a position at UCL in the Department of Clinical, Educational and Health Psychology.

He is a Trustee of the charity Foundation Years Information Research and faculty member of the Child Study Center at Yale University. He is an expert advisor for the Better Start Programme in Blackpool.