Disadvantaged Children

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

Of all the fascinating and important topics that we discuss in the Chamber, none is more important than this, and it is perhaps the topic about which I personally feel most passionate.

You may observe, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I am wearing red. You may also observe that, although we are not allowed props, I am wearing a piece of clothing that I am allowed: a hat, which I wish to take off to the Opposition for having had the compassion to create the Sure Start centres. That is enough theatre; although all Members would agree that there is much to be done to improve Sure Start centres, they represent a huge move in the right direction, and the fact that there is so much consensus across the House on the need to focus on the earliest years is immensely positive.

I want to describe my experiences as chairman for 10 years of a charity called OXPIP—the Oxford Parent Infant Project. It is based in Oxford, and is now co-located with Rose Hill children’s centre, an incredibly important centre in one of the most deprived areas in the country which has been operating for a long time. During my 10 years as chairman, OXPIP has focused, throughout Oxfordshire, on delivering psychotherapeutic support for families who are struggling to bond with their newborn babies.

I shall now give a short master class in early infant brain development, which is mentioned in the reports from the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) on early intervention. This really is the key to mending our society, creating the society for which we all strive, and solving many of the problems that we end up firefighting in politics.

When a baby is born, he has only the “fight or flight” instinct, rather like an animal. He does not possess the social part of the brain, the frontal cortex, which enables us to form relationships, see the world as a good place, and have hope and aspiration. That part of the brain develops later, and the peak period of its development occurs when the baby is between six and 18 months old. It develops as a result of secure attachment to a principal carer, who is normally the mum but could be the dad, the nanny, the granny or even the next-door neighbour. That first important relationship establishes the baby’s lifelong mental health opportunities.

If a baby is neglected, abused or unloved during the first 18 months or two years of its life—or, worse still, is treated inconsistently—its neural pathways and brain development will reflect that, not just for the moment but for the rest of its life. Leaving a baby to scream and scream will have two profound impacts on that baby. I am not talking about our desire to leave the baby to cry for a while because we are sick and tired of marching him up and down; I am talking about leaving him to cry night after night.

First, the baby’s level of cortisol—the stress hormone—will be considerably raised. If it remains raised for a long period, it will reach a danger point, and will start to damage the baby’s immune system. Secondly, the baby will develop a higher level of tolerance to its own stress hormone. Whereas you or I might be excited by a good hand at cards, a baby with a high tolerance to its own stress level might, in later life, feel the need to beat someone up, spray-paint something, or become involved with drugs in order to get the kick that we might get from a hand of whist. There is a real scientific reaction to constant high levels of stress experienced at a very young age.

If a baby does not experience that secure attachment during the peak period of development of his frontal cortex, his brain development will be damaged over time, and that damage will be permanent. So the baby who is constantly neglected will grow up thinking that neglect is a feature of life and will have a higher likelihood of being depressive, possibly throughout life, of feeling a failure and of being unable to make friends. Likewise, people who are abused and treated inconsistently have a chance of being unable to form decent relationships in later life. All these things are, of course, on a spectrum: some horrifying statistics suggest that 40% of five-year-olds in this country are not securely attached. Of course not all those people will go on to have problems of violence, depression or drug taking, but some of them will. John Lennon said “All you need is love” and that could not be truer, as a growing raft of scientific evidence demonstrates.

A fundamental problem is that if a girl does not form a secure attachment to her mum as a baby, she may lack the physical brain ability to empathise with her own baby when she goes on to have one. So we end up with a cycle of misery that passes down through generations. The ability to feel that the world is a nice place, to get on in life, to form lasting relationships and so on also affects someone’s chances of a decent job and, lo and behold, their prospects in the workplace, their prospects for having a long-lasting relationship and so on. So that cycle of misery is a bit chicken and egg: does the poverty come first or does the lack of attachment come first? We are not putting nearly enough focus on the importance of early attachment and on providing that support.

For the past 12 years, OXPIP has been providing psychotherapeutic support for families and their babies who are struggling, and we have had astonishing results: babies have been taken off the child protection list; countless families have said that they had not realised just how they were reliving their own earliest experiences with their own families; and we have managed to break that cycle of deprivation. From a political point of view, prevention is not only so much kinder, but so much cheaper than cure. So I wish to conclude by issuing a call to action. There are things that the Government can do, and I wish to make some very specific recommendations.

First, I agree completely with the hon. Member for Slough (Fiona Mactaggart) on the desperate need for more evidence. OXPIP has been working for 12 years but we have always failed to get any proper quantitative research done because of the ethical problems involved in leaving one group to suffer while interventions are made with another group. We have somehow to get around that and find ways to build up the evidence. I am planning to launch NORPIP—the Northamptonshire parent infant project—this year, with support from the director of children’s services, and I hope to use that as a model for how this can be done across the country.

Importantly, the children’s centres must be brought to the centre of all policy making. The right hon. Member for Birkenhead made the great suggestion—I am not sure whether it was to me or whether it is in his paper—of making people sign up for child benefit in a children’s centre, to ensure that they are not stigmatised in any way. Most importantly, the Government need to re-examine the adoption legislation to ensure that babies can be adopted before the age of two, because any time after that is simply too late. Training for health visitors and midwives in the crucial importance of early attachment, improving nursery protocols to focus on the attachment needs of babies, and parenting training in classes can also all prove so valuable. I wish to finish by saying that cross-party support is key and I am so glad that we are seeing an example of it today.

--- Later in debate ---

[Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)]

It is a great honour to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat). He has given the coalition Government a proper test, and rightly so, because it is important that they should have such a test. The phrase “disadvantaged children” is not an attractive one, and we should be embarrassed by the fact that we have to talk about it so often in this country. It certainly embarrasses me and often has. The experience of meeting a young person who is unable to communicate properly, or read and so forth, can be heartrending. One has only to think of the waste that we allow to happen, with so many people who could do so much being left behind. We really need to address the whole issue of disadvantaged children.

Social mobility is critical. We want a mobile society, and that mobility depends on everyone being able to move around. They cannot do so because there are too many roadblocks. I shall refer to a few and suggest some ways in which we might deal with them.

First, we have rightly talked about education, but too many children leave the education system without being equipped to communicate properly and without the confidence to get around and about their lives. Therefore, we must ensure that the education system makes sure, at the very least, that all children can read, write and communicate properly. If we do not do so, we will obviously fail them, but we will fail society as well, and, as a member of the Education Committee, one thing that I constantly worry about is how we ensure that our schools system delivers such results.

The pupil premium and so forth are very important, and we must encourage all those who are entitled to collect it to do so. The question of stigma often arises, however, so we need to think about that in terms of the policy. The very fact that we need the pupil premium is a measure of our failure, but we have talked about measures throughout the debate, or at least while I have been present, so let us recognise that we have to deal with a big measure.

Secondly, education is critical, but there are other roadblocks. I am struck by the fact that we do not deal holistically with early years issues. That is why I was so impressed by the work of the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field). Alongside all the usual issues, the health of a young person also matters, so we have to ensure that, in the foundation years, as described in the right hon. Gentleman’s review, we consider not just education, but health care and other factors. We need an holistic approach at that level.

My third point, which strikes me every time I go abroad, especially when I focus on planning and housing development, as I did before becoming a Member, is the importance of a child’s environment. That includes the quality of their homes, the way in which they play and interact with each other, and how families interact with each other. I have been to some fascinating places, in Rotterdam for example, where local communities with really well designed housing developments come together, look after each other, spot problems, allow families to develop and ensure that fewer children are disadvantaged. It is, therefore, important for us to think about the environment. Too much of our housing just does not allow such family life or social development between families, so I want to ram home the point that we have to improve our planning system.

I have talked about education because I am on the Education Committee, but we need to highlight a few more issues that have cropped up during its work. One issue is the number of children who care for somebody else. We cannot expect that to be good for them or for anybody in their near neighbourhood; it is totally wrong. The hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), who is also a member of the Committee, rightly rammed home the point that it is unacceptable to ignore that group in the context of school discipline, but it is unacceptable to ignore it in any context. We have to calibrate the problem and ensure that we start to do something about the fact that more than 10% of children scuttle back home after a day at school to look after somebody in their household. We need to address that problem, do we not?

Also on the subject of education, we have to think about the early years and encourage proper care and attention for the child as well as where they come from and the family framework in which they are involved.

That brings me to another example from Europe that we need to consider. On the continent we often see the extended family approach, but we do not see it here. We should be encouraging people to think more in terms of their whole family and its different generations. That is linked to other points that I made about planning, health care and education.

We have to be far more inclusive and holistic, and much more demanding that our institutions and charities co-operate with each other to share information more effectively and ensure that local government stops being so silo-based.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I should like to draw my hon. Friend’s attention to the charity OXPIP, with which I have been involved for a long time and which works well with the children’s centre in Oxford. There is great potential for the voluntary sector to work closely with statutory agencies to deliver exactly the sort of help to which he is referring.

[Neil Carmichael]

I thank my hon. Friend. That is a very important example of what is necessary, but we need to see it across the piece.

Government can talk about what they want to happen, but ultimately we have to ensure that it does happen. Delivery is crucial, as is measuring, assessing and understanding the problems. If we do not know what is happening after we have said that something should happen, we are failing completely. We must be holistic, check up, and never, ever take our eye off the ball.