Children: Welfare, Life Chances and Social Mobility

Baroness Tyler of Enfield Excerpts

Thursday 1st November 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for securing this vital debate. Early intervention has the potential to drastically improve the social mobility of disadvantaged children. We are at a time in our country’s history where social inequality is being felt very keenly. The Sutton Trust has found the proportion of people believing that we have truly equal opportunities in this country has decreased very substantially since 2008. We need to be building a society in which opportunities are more equally distributed and all are socially mobile. It is a goal that would improve not only the health and well-being of individuals but the economy as a whole. According to the Sutton Trust, raising the UK’s social mobility to the average level in western Europe would boost the economy by 2%.

As we have already heard, early intervention really does matter for social mobility. It matters because these disparities, between the most disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers, emerge before the first day of primary school. More worryingly, when not addressed, they affect a child’s social mobility throughout their adult life. It was back in 2012, when the All-Party Group on Social Mobility, of which I am co-chair, in its report 7 Key Truths about Social Mobility, noted that the greatest leverage point for social mobility is between the ages of zero and three. During this time, children are developing in all sorts of ways; not only are they learning key verbal and vocabulary skills, but also developing incredibly important emotional well-being and resilience skills which will shape the rest of their life. A child with a poor vocabulary at the age of five is twice as likely to be unemployed aged 34.

I could go on, but I hope I have really emphasised the point that early intervention and social mobility go hand in hand. What happens in the classroom is undeniably very important, but so is what happens before. Parenting and the home environment play a huge role in driving inequalities in a child’s early cognitive development. Parenting has often been viewed by politicians and policymakers as no-go territory. I firmly believe that a successful strategy to early intervention must take into account the home environment. That is why, in 2015, the All-Party Group on Social Mobility held an inquiry into parenting and social mobility, and it recommended both the development and implementation of a national parenting support campaign. That would be designed to help support and empower parents, not preach to them, and fully recognise that the vast majority are trying to do the very best job they can, but need some support.

Given all of this, it is unfortunate that the current policy and fiscal landscape has shifted from a focus on preventive schemes. An obvious example is the closure of children’s centres, which we have already heard about. In 2009, there were over 1,000 centres open nationwide and in previous years they have been vital in providing early intervention and preventing poor childhood outcomes, not only for the children but for the parents themselves. Sometimes that support began even before the child was born. But since 2009, over a third of these centres have closed and those which have not have often broadened their age range and shifted away from early intervention towards high-need families.

This shift in focus has been echoed in other areas of children’s services, particularly children’s social care, where there has been a clear move away from working with families who need some help to being able to work with only very high-risk families who are reaching crisis point. This picture was painted in stark relief in the All-Party Group for Children’s recent report, Storing up Trouble: A Postcode Lottery of Children’s Social Care. When the Minister responds, I would be grateful if he could indicate when the Government will be in a position to reply to the recommendations in that report.

The reasons for this shift are pretty obvious: financial pressures, which are huge, are having a major effect. Cuts to children’s services have come at a time of unprecedented demand, forcing many local authorities to deliver children’s services which can focus only on that smaller number of very high-risk cases. Since 2010, over £2.4 billion has been cut from central government funding for local authority children’s services, and local authorities now face an estimated £3 billion funding gap by 2025. Important as it is, however, funding is not the only issue; quality is incredibly important as well. While I very much welcome the Government’s commitment to early years education and childcare, it is a real concern that one-third of staff involved in group-based childcare lack English or maths GCSEs. We really need to have the staff involved in this important work moving towards qualified teacher status, wherever possible.

What can be done with this rather unhappy picture that I have painted? We need key improvements in the areas of funding, focus and strategy. I am currently much involved in finalising the All-Party Group on Social Mobility’s report which looks at tackling the regional attainment gap. We will shortly publish our report, so watch this space. I can assure your Lordships that we will have a fair amount to say about the importance of early intervention, particularly the need for a reinvigorated national strategy for children’s centres, and much to say about how children’s centres are funded and the need for Ofsted to be involved in inspecting them.

I call on the Government to use the upcoming spending review to address the ever-growing funding gap for children’s services. Any financial settlement must incentivise local authorities to invest in early help. That is why I support calls for a new, cross-government taskforce on intervention to feed into the spending review. I look forward to the Minister’s reply.