Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)
I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to require the Secretary of State to provide appropriate perinatal support to any family expecting a child who will be born on to the child protection register and for whom an adoption plan has not been made at the moment the child is entered on to the register; to require that a decision be made not later than one year after the child’s birth as to whether or not such a child will be adopted; and for connected purposes.
I am a huge advocate of early-years intervention, and of the vital importance of parents establishing a secure bond with their new baby. During adoption week, we need to recommit ourselves to ensuring that the most vulnerable in our society get every chance to achieve their lifelong potential.
Astonishingly, in the first year of life, a baby’s brain forms 1 million brain connections per second. It is the baby’s earliest experiences that will largely determine the nature and extent of those vital connections. It is a fact that the period from conception to the age of two is the most crucial time to harness a loving and secure attachment that will, in turn, have a profound impact on the baby’s capacity for lifelong emotional health.
At one level, achieving a secure attachment between baby and carer sounds simple. It is the cooing, the loving eye contact and the singing of baby songs—the things that many parents find perfectly natural—that stimulate the development of the baby’s frontal cortex. That is the part of the brain that deals with our emotional capacity as human beings. A healthy brain equips the baby to deal with life’s ups and downs, and that baby will grow up able to make friends, hold down a job, find a partner and eventually be a good parent themselves.
Forming that secure bond does not come easily to everyone, however. In fact, it is completely natural for someone to treat their own baby in the same way as their own parents treated them. Poor attachments offer miserable outcomes for infants, and they are all too often passed down as a cycle of misery through generations. I would not go so far as to say that poor attachment means that a terrible life is inevitable for such an infant, but evidence suggests that society pays a high price for not intervening early. Our prisons, our hostels for homeless people and our psychiatric hospitals are full of the evidence of poor attachment.
The point of the Bill is to recognise the urgent needs of babies who are placed on the child protection register even before they are born. During 2011, 748 babies were born on to the child protection register in England and Wales. Of the 4,190 babies under the age of one in the care system in England and Wales, 505 were referred for adoption in 2011-12, but just 77—some 15%—were actually adopted. If that pattern were repeated for babies born on to the child protection register last year, only 112 would be adopted. It is difficult to imagine how any of the 636 babies still in care could develop the secure bond with a loving adult carer that they need in order for their fast-growing brain to develop a healthy emotional capability.
Circumstances in which a baby might be born on to the child protection register include previous incidents of neglect or abuse towards children; a parent who might be involved with a registered sex offender or a violent partner; and a parent who might be heavily addicted to drugs. In all these situations, it is vital that the decision to adopt remains utterly focused on the baby’s urgent need for a loving parent or carer. Of course it is right that birth parents who are good enough are always best for their baby. That is why my Bill calls for appropriate support to be provided to parents in the perinatal period where their capacity to be good enough parents is in question.
I have been personally involved with parent-infant partnerships in a voluntary capacity for 13 years. OXPIP, the Oxford parent-infant project, delivering psychotherapy support for struggling families in Oxfordshire, and NORPIP, the sister charity in Northamptonshire, have both seen successes, working therapeutically with parents whose children are on the child protection register. Just as important, where the difficulties are huge, the assessment of a trained parent-infant psychotherapist has enabled evidence-based decisions to be made at an early stage about the ability of the birth parent to make the transition to be good enough. No one, least of all me, wants to see babies taken away from their birth parents, but the sad truth is that, currently, decision taking is just too slow for the baby’s emotional needs and not always based on sound enough evidence.
At the moment, the average age of a child who is adopted is three and a half, so those 500-plus under-ones waiting to be adopted could have a long stretch until they are finally placed in a loving home. Damningly, children are mostly taken into care after the age of 10, when all too often they are already demonstrating the consequences of poor early attachment.
We are all concerned about the human cost of babies and children taken into care, but as public servants the economic consequences should also massively concern us. The basic cost of a child in care is £45,000 a year, rising to an incredible £280,000 a year where the child has severe emotional or learning difficulties. Opening up access to appropriate early-years intervention, and at the same time committing to faster, evidence-based decisions about whether a baby should be adopted or supported with birth parents, could decrease the eye-watering costs of the care system, as well as avoid the enormous costs in criminal justice and health care that are so often incurred by those who have had a disastrous start in life.
I am very supportive of the steps the Government are already taking. We have set out plans to reduce the time it takes between a child first entering care and being adopted, and we are working to increase the number of adopters being recruited and approved. I am pleased that the Government are making “fostering for adoption” standard practice in appropriate cases, so that children can move in with their likely permanent families much earlier. I absolutely share the Government’s aspiration for a happier, stronger and more stable future for children in care becoming a reality.
However, the need for an early-years intervention model to be articulated and rolled out by Government has never been stronger. Neuroscience and the advent of neuro-imaging supports the idea that secure attachment, with the resulting healthy brain development of infants, is the key foundation on which rests the potential for lifelong emotional health. If the physical health of the nation, through the NHS, was one of the greatest achievements of the 20th century, I hope that the mental health of the nation, through access to early-years intervention, will become one of the greatest achievements of the 21st century.
Question put and agreed to.
Ordered,
That Andrea Leadsom, Fiona Bruce, Harriet Baldwin, Jim Shannon, Mr Frank Field, Mr Graham Allen, Andrew Selous, Damian Hinds, Tim Loughton, Meg Munn, Mr Gary Streeter and Robert Halfon present the Bill.
Andrea Leadsom accordingly presented the Bill.
Bill read the First time; to be read a Second time on Friday 1 March 2013, and to be printed (Bill 88).