Children: Maternal Care

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Barker. I think I can say that I agree with every word that she said. I was particularly pleased that she referred to the work of the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, and the importance of the continuity of care from midwives, specifically from practices where midwives are there at the beginning of pregnancy, deliver the child and keep in contact for a short time after pregnancy. That is definitely the ideal situation. I am also grateful to the noble Earl for calling this important debate. Many of these issues have been raised with the Minister in the course of the Childcare Bill. A particular concern is that many babies in childcare are often placed with the least qualified and experienced staff. I hope the Minister will perhaps have a chance to look at that.

I would like to address three issues: family learning as a means of promoting ongoing maternal care for children; the particular importance of continual maternal care from conception to the age of two; and the impact of homelessness on maternal care. I hope to concentrate most of my remarks on the area of the Minister’s immediate responsibility, which is schools. I begin by welcoming the new investment in schools by the Chancellor. I am delighted that he has chosen to introduce the sugar tax and will invest the benefit of that in education. The Government have also committed to expand still further the number of academy schools. I hope I may encourage noble Lords of all parties or none to use any business contacts they may have to promote application for high-quality sponsorship. Whatever one may think of academies it is becoming clear that it is vital for our children that there are sufficient excellent sponsors.

On family learning, I suggest that continuing good maternal care throughout a child’s development is becoming increasingly important. On the one hand, fathers are becoming increasingly absent. By the 2030s about 30% of our children will be growing up without a father in the home. On the other hand, housing continues to be in short supply and children are being obliged to remain at school: they cannot move out. It is becoming increasingly important that mothers stick with their children through the difficult adolescent years. Family learning can strengthen maternal relationships through the early school years and so help mothers tolerate their teenagers later.

Family learning can also hit another number of important goals. It improves children’s educational attainment. It engages fathers more effectively in their families. It can help migrant families to settle well, and may help combat childhood and adult obesity. I developed an understanding of family learning by meeting foster carers who had benefited from the prepared reading developed by Dr Andrea Warman at the British Association for Adoption & Fostering. Many of the foster carers themselves had difficulties at school and were taught to draw on those difficulties in efforts to understand the challenges that some of their foster children experienced. The training package gave the foster carers the confidence to read regularly with their children, and the results were significantly improved literacy results for their foster children and a reduction in placement breakdowns—foster parents and foster children sticking with each other. John Coughlan initiated paired reading at the local authority at which he is director of children’s services in Hampshire. Early indications suggested that paired reading also reduced the breakdown in placements in children’s homes.

I then had the opportunity to meet mothers at one of the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education events to celebrate family learning. One mother had had a heroin addiction but was now able to work, thanks to the confidence that she had gained through family learning. Another mother had gone to get driving lessons following her success; another still described her joy at taking her son on a field trip to explore the natural history of a field and pond.

More recently, I spoke with the mother of a child who graduated from the Pimlico Academy, which the Minister established. The mother is the catering manager in a local secondary school and has a second, part-time job in a launderette. She is an immigrant of African origin; she said that in her country mothers will sell their jewellery to secure a good education for their child. Every school day, she and her son and daughter read together for 20 minutes, looking up any difficult words. She spoke of her pride in her daughter’s academic success. Now reading physics at a prestigious university, she gained 12 GCSEs, A*s or As, and four A-levels. Family learning arguably strengthens maternal bonds with children and certainly leads to significant increased attainment. If the Minister wishes to extend academic success to areas of generational deprivation, such as County Durham, he could do worse than to consult the National Institute of Adult Continuing Education and the Workers’ Educational Association. The WEA has spoken to me about how it would position its teachers near the primary school gates to engage parents as their children begin their education.

No doubt, the Minister is also concerned about childhood obesity. Only this morning I heard about a project led by North Eastern Electricity which provides parents with cooking classes so that they can avoid wasting money on takeaways and feed their children more healthily. We heard on the “Today” programme that many schools require their pupils to run a mile a day. Schools find that their pupils lose weight, sleep better and have more concentration in lessons. So it may be possible to offer opportunities to parents to learn about exercise and so encourage their children to walk, and to run with their children. In all the above, I remember my own family experience and the importance for me of learning with my mother and father things such as cookery, reading and other study.

I commend to the Minister NIACE’s report on family learning, chaired by my noble friend Lady Howarth of Breckland, the chair of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children. With the expansion of academies, free schools and early years care, and the additional funds, I hope that he may wish to weave family learning much more strongly into what he offers.

On the importance of the continuity of maternal care between conception to the age of two, which the noble Earl, Lord Dundee, emphasised strongly in what he said, I hope that I can pay tribute to the many parliamentary colleagues who have raised the importance of early years to successive Governments. I think particularly of the right honourable Iain Duncan Smith MP, Graham Allen MP, Andrea Leadsom MP and the vice-chair and officers of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Conception to Age Two—The First 1001 Days, to which the noble Baroness referred. Then there are Tim Loughton MP, Frank Field MP and others. Following on last year’s report for the parliamentary group, Building Great Britons, we recently heard from health professionals from Croydon how their trust was enacting the report’s inquiry in building a seamless partnership between midwives and health visitors, so extending even further the continuity of care to which the noble Baroness referred. I commend the report to your Lordships and am very grateful for the efforts of midwives, visitors and other health professionals to provide excellent perinatal care to mothers.

As a society, we need to give every attention to perinatal maternal care, if mothers are successfully to make a strong, continued attachment to their infant, which is vital to their child’s future health, education, economic independence and own family. I applaud again the Government’s investment, and that of the previous coalition Government, in health visiting, and indeed the resurrection of that service.

In my final area, I would like to explore the importance of homelessness on maternal care. Here again the perinatal period is a particular concern, and I much appreciate the work that the London Scholars at the University of East London have undertaken in the last six months of the effects of homelessness on perinatal maternal care. I await those conclusions. I was grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Bates, for undertaking to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister of Burtersett, that the Government would review policy on those pregnant women in detention, awaiting immigration removal, on Report of the Immigration Bill. Regrettably, in recent years the number of homeless children has increased to 100,000 in England alone. The Government’s legislation on housing and planning and their investment are a golden opportunity to make more secure affordable housing available to families with low incomes. I declare my interest as a landowner and residential landlord.

Again, I am very grateful to the noble Earl for calling this important debate and look forward to the Minister’s reply.