Early Years Intervention

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for giving me this opportunity to speak about preventing the abuse and neglect of children. Scientific and social research have proved that the development of a baby during the first two to three years has an enormous effect on the personality, happiness and achievement of the adult, and thus on the whole of society. National and local government policy can and should be mobilised to ensure that all babies can have good, healthy physical and mental growth and develop resilience. These matters affect their social mobility and, consequently, are the very foundation of progress towards social justice.

International experts have shown the effects of stress, violence, poor parental attachment, neglect and poverty on babies’ brains. We now know that during the first two years, new synapses are being added at a rate of more than a million per second and that the nature of these pathways is affected by the treatment that the child receives. We also know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the child’s brain can be damaged irrevocably by violence and maltreatment.

Politicians have played their part, too, but there is one organisation that has played a greater part than any other in bringing these matters to the attention of government and in developing policies and strategies to address them. It is the WAVE Trust, of which I am honoured to be a patron, led by its founder and CEO George Hosking. WAVE began in 1995 when George realised that the levels of child abuse in this country had not reduced in 60 years and that the majority of the policies and the money spent were reactive, simply cleaning up the mess which was left in individuals and society. He realised that unless we develop effective preventive strategies we will never be able to improve the situation, so he began researching worldwide for strategies that worked. One of the most outstanding was the family nurse partnership in the USA, and George managed to persuade the Blair Labour Government to start one up here. It has since been expanded by the coalition Government.

It is vital that we work with young mothers who are at risk in order to ensure the physical and mental health of their babies. Despite its success, however, the FNP deals with only the tip of the iceberg and is expensive, so we need other strategies to help more parents who are struggling to do the best for their babies. WAVE’s report, Conception to Age 2—The Age of Opportunity, sets out a blueprint for local authorities. It has been widely used in the UK and recommended by UNICEF for use by countries across the world. WAVE is now leading a campaign to reduce child abuse and neglect by 70% by 2030. Responding to the challenge of providing hard evidence of how results can be achieved cost effectively during the normal life of a Government, it designed the Pioneer Communities project to test the effect of a comprehensive approach to preventing harm to children before it happens. The aim is to do this in six communities in the UK between this year and 2020. A pilot in four small areas is being supported by a £15 million grant from the Treasury. I am confident that the project will prove the case for prevention as a cost-effective approach to individual child well-being and social justice but it needs more financial support. We need a general national shift to primary prevention, not just a test in four small areas.

WAVE has also led a consortium of organisations which helped the Scottish Government to improve their Children and Young People (Scotland) Act to deliver that Government’s aims. One of the ways that it has done this is through the Scottish Early Years Collaborative, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. This could be done on a regional basis in England. Will the Government consider this collaborative approach which has been so beneficial in Scotland?

Finally, the WHO recently called for a public health prevention approach: specifically, a national action plan to reduce child maltreatment by 20% by 2020. Last October, Luciana Berger MP asked a Written Question of the DfE asking if it would respond positively to this. The Minister, Edward Timpson, answered:

“Responsibility for action to tackle child maltreatment and respond to the needs of vulnerable children rests primarily with local government … health services and the police … co-ordinated by local safeguarding children boards”.

I fear that I find this answer extremely disappointing. It smacks of passing the buck. We need a nationally co-ordinated primary prevention plan, supported by the Government. Can the Minister do better than his colleague in another place? The evidence is there, the experts have spoken and the financial case is currently being made. It is time that this country was a leader in this matter, not a follower, and we could start by introducing a complete ban on hitting children and by introducing the mandatory reporting of child abuse.