This paper discusses the Boxall Profile as an assessment and intervention framework designed to support disadvantaged children in mainstream schools. The Boxall Profile was developed in the 1970s in the United Kingdom by Marjorie Boxall to identify children who had come into school unprepared to meet the demands of classroom life and needed support in a nurture group. The nurture group provided the emotional/social support the children needed to prepare them for mainstream classes. The Boxall Profile shows how the processes of early child development play a central role in a child's ability to learn and succeed at school. It helps teachers in mainstream school to understand the emotional problems that lie behind difficult behaviour. A case study example demonstrates how the Boxall Profile provides evidence of deficit in social and emotional competence when attachment has been disrupted and a child has experienced trauma, neglect or abuse.