Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve the (a) quality of attachment between parents and children aged under five, (b) home learning environments for children aged under five and (c) mental health of new and expectant mothers in low-income households.

Parents play a vitally important role in their child’s early development and learning.

The What to Expect When Guide, funded by the Department for Education (DfE), sets out the development milestones at each age in key areas to help parents support their children. http://www.foundationyears.org.uk/2015/03/what-to-expect-when-a-parents-guide/.

The Early Years Foundation Stage Framework (EYFS) statutory framework requires that early years settings must engage parents and carers in guiding their child’s development at home. In 2017, the Department awarded grants totalling almost £1.7m to voluntary and community sector organisations. These grants support work with disadvantaged communities to improve the take-up of free early education places for 2-year olds, and work with parents to create a positive home learning environment.

NHS England is leading a programme of work to ensure that at least 30,000 more women each year are able to access evidence-based specialist mental health care during the perinatal period by 2020/21. £60m has been committed to improve the provision of specialist perinatal community services across England between 2016/17 and 2018/19, promoting equality of access across the communities they serve.

Increasing capability across the specialist perinatal mental health workforce is also a key objective. Targeted funding of £1.2m in 2017/18 will enable the training of mental health, maternity and primary care staff, increasing awareness and skills related to perinatal mental health.