Early Years Intervention

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 8th January 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Massey for creating the opportunity to debate what has become a perennially important issue.

We are by now familiar with the research showing that, by 22 months, a bright child from a disadvantaged background begins to be overtaken in key abilities by a less bright but privileged child. We are told that a child’s development score at 22 months is an accurate predictor of educational outcomes at age 26, yet still the public debate about life chances and social mobility seems to focus on 18 year-olds and what university they should go to rather than on whether our under-fours are receiving the best possible early years education to give them the opportunities in life that they deserve.

Graham Allen MP argues passionately for a shift from our late reaction culture to one of early intervention. His 2011 report, Early Intervention: Smart Investment, Massive Savings, is persuasive that early intervention has the power to,

“forestall many persistent social problems and end their transmission from one generation to the next”.

His views and findings are supported by many others working in the field.

The previous Labour Government had an impressive record of investment in preventive policies targeted at children, families and disadvantaged communities. The coalition Government have pulled back on many of those reforms, but they have sustained a commitment to early intervention, particularly through the work of voluntary organisations and the private sector—and here I should declare an interest, as my sister is an early years professional and has two nurseries in Nottingham. There is a clear consensus that early intervention is needed to ensure that all our children get the best possible start in life. We know that high-quality early education is one of the most important determinants of every child’s life chances.

The Government’s child poverty strategy made a welcome commitment to 15 hours of free childcare for all three and four year-olds, and for two year-olds from low-income families. The introduction of an early years pupil premium to help three and four year-olds from the most disadvantaged backgrounds from April this year is also welcome, but it is still considerably below the help given through the older children’s pupil premium. The National Day Nurseries Association independent research for the Pre-school Learning Alliance showed that 70% of local authorities have never updated costs since the introduction of the funding formula, and that providers are losing an average £900 per child per 15-hour nursery place per year, making many unsustainable and pushing up the fees that parents have to pay for extra hours of childcare. Given the coalition’s avowed commitment to high-quality early years education, will the Minister commit to a review of the level of funding at least for two year-olds if not for under-fives?

The Family and Childcare Trust believes that, while the introduction of universal credit and tax-free childcare gives welcome extra support with childcare costs, there will be at least 335,000 families who may miss out on this vital support because of the complexity and overlap between the two systems. We know that those at the most risk of poverty are the least likely to take up their entitlement to free early learning and childcare places. The trust argues that the Government need to review childcare funding to simplify the system for parents. Can the Minister give any assurance that this will be considered?

Like my noble friend Lord Sawyer, I am also concerned about how we ensure the quality of this provision, and particularly high-quality staff. Low wages and the lack of career structure among nursery staff is an ongoing concern and will not change at all if provision is underfunded.

I have just one last point about the importance of early years education for a particularly disadvantaged group, children in care. A 2012 report from the APPG on Looked After Children and Care Leavers, Education Matters in Care, noted that despite the best efforts of social services, schools, carers and government, looked-after children remained,

“disproportionately destined to a life of academic underachievement”.

Evidence to the APPG inquiry showed that interventions in the early years can have a tremendous and long-lasting impact on the future outcomes of children in care, particularly in relation to their education. I should add that research has also shown that early intervention before the age of four can be critical for children with disabilities where language is impaired or for those with autism, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder or dyslexia.

Finally, I do not underestimate the complexity of the task. I endorse what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Albans said about whole-system change. All agencies, local authorities, health and early years professionals, schools and parents need to work together if success is to be sustained. But in all this early years education is crucial to our attempts to improve the later life chances of younger children. Early intervention and its funding—sustainable funding—must become a key priority if we are to transform both the economic and the social potential of future generations.

Education: Contribution to Economic Growth

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe (Lab)]

My Lords, this debate is timely. This morning, the Chancellor of the Exchequer is making his Autumn Statement. He is widely expected to announce yet more cuts to funding for higher education and research, and it is for that reason that I want to focus my remarks on the implications of his statements for higher education.

I have spoken many times on the contribution made by higher education to economic growth and I was delighted to see the pithy and convincing briefing sent to us by Universities UK, my former employer. Other noble Lords across the House will, I know, reinforce many of these comments, as have my noble friend Lady Morgan and the noble Lord, Lord Baker.

However, fine words or arguments can have no effect if resources do not shore up policy. While we do not know the detail of these cuts or how they will be allocated, reports have suggested that that the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has to find more than £1 billion in additional savings. There have been fears, reported in the Guardian, that this would mean that the Government would breach the principle of a science ring-fence, making cuts of as much as £200 million. I hope that that will not be the case.

It also appears likely that the Higher Education Funding Council will have to find additional savings from within an already tightly constrained budget. These cuts would be in addition to those announced in this summer’s spending review. At that time, the Government said that cuts to HEFCE funding would be at least £45 million and that there would be no inflationary uplift for the science budget. This is serious. I have said previously that the Government should be congratulated on their relative protection of investment in higher education, and particularly in research, despite the pressure to cut expenditure. However, public funding for teaching has been dramatically reduced and it now looks like it will be reduced still further. It is not widely understood that research budgets lost 13% of their value during the last spending round as a result of the fact that they were maintained in cash terms rather than in real terms. Projections suggest that, because the science budget has again been held in cash terms rather than in real terms, the budget will lose a further 10% of its value during this spending period. Will the Minister confirm that this is indeed the case?

Any new cuts would exacerbate that position. We know that the UK already spends less on research than many of our competitors. We have made relatively little progress towards the Lisbon goal of spending 3% of GDP on research and development. We spend 1.8%, below the average of both the EU and the OECD. We are holding our own in international terms because we have a highly efficient research system. In fact, it is the most efficient in the world when measured by citations per pound spent. Meanwhile, HEFCE now has very little funding available to support teaching. Support is restricted to high-cost and vulnerable subjects, which are likely to continue to be protected. There is some limited support for specialist institutions and taught postgraduate courses, and funding to support widening participation.

This last strand, of widening participation, looks increasingly vulnerable, which is a shame because the student opportunity funding underpins the kind of long-term and collaborative work which universities do to encourage children from primary school upwards to think about higher education generally, not just applying to their own institution. It acts as a lever for additional investment by universities and philanthropists. It is hard to see how the funding council can shoulder cuts without doing some damage to long-term national priorities. Clearly, the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills has to balance its budget, but overspending on student support and loan subsidies, including to support the rapid growth of private providers, is starting to squeeze out long-term investments, which should be high priorities for a Government committed to fostering strong economic growth. While national investment in research is critical to our future economic competitiveness, as today’s debate has again made clear, it should not be achieved at the expense of investment in education. After all, the most important form of knowledge transfer from universities is in the heads of the graduates that they educate.

There is so much evidence of the link between education and the economy and I will not repeat the arguments already made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan, and the noble Lord, Lord Baker. It is worth emphasising, however, that around 20% of GDP growth in the UK from 1982 to 2005 can be attributed to graduate skills accumulation, according to government figures. The same study estimated that a 1% increase in the share of the workforce with a university education raises the level of productivity by up to 0.5% in the long run. Many of our fastest growing sectors depend on high concentrations of graduates, including the creative sector, which needs graduates from a range of disciplines including the arts and humanities as well as the sciences.

Our research base increasingly supports innovation in businesses from the very large to the very small. Collaboration between university and business is a considerable success story in the UK. So if the Government want long-term economic growth and an economy that will remain competitive with fast-growing economies with rapidly growing skills levels, we cannot afford to stand still, let alone go backwards.

Instead of driving forward, we seem to be constraining growth. Capital investment has been limited. Universities face strict limits on the numbers that they can recruit and perhaps numbers may be restricted again next year. There is no plan for growth and there is unlikely to be one until the system of loan funding is sorted out. It is simply too expensive to allow for growth in student numbers.

Part of the answer has to be in encouraging the development of diverse modes of study, including more online and flexible study. We have seen the number of part-time enrolments drop by a staggering 40% since 2010. Studies by the UK Commission for Employment and Skills, Universities UK and others have pointed to the need to address this decline to meet the rapidly changing skills needs of employers. We should also be concerned about the decline of taught postgraduate enrolments by UK-based students. The noble Lord, Lord Leitch, in his seminal report published in 2006, described postgraduate skills as one of the most powerful levers for improving productivity but a number of factors are combining to pose a real challenge to postgraduate education, which has received insufficient attention from government. We cannot afford to be complacent. As President Obama put it:

“The nation that out-educates us today is going to out-compete us tomorrow”.

Deficit reduction is of course a priority but education is precisely the wrong place to cut if you want to balance the national budget.

Education: Early Years

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 8th November 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for bringing this vital subject back to the House. It provides us with an opportunity to consider some of the telling reports that have come out over the past year or so. As we have heard, early years care and education is an area that attracts strong views and debate.

We can all agree with Dame Clare Tickell when she observes in her report on the early years foundation stage that there are few things more important than making sure that all children are given the very best start in life. Indeed, the aim of doing so through improved childcare, early education, health and family support lay at the heart of the previous Government’s creation of Sure Start in 1998. These children’s centres are an excellent example of partnership between the maintained, private and voluntary sectors. Today, they offer the earliest help to more than 2.5 million children and families.

The Government have themselves said that the series of reviews over the past year have served to strengthen the arguments for investment and reform in the foundation years. I should like to focus my remarks on one report—on an aspect of the debate that I have raised before, but to which I make no apology for returning: the need for a properly qualified, well motivated workforce in the foundation years.

In her review of early education and childcare qualifications, Foundations for Quality, Professor Cathy Nutbrown says:

“The biggest influence on the quality of early education and care is its workforce. Those who engage with children, supporting their learning and interaction with their environment through play, can affect their wellbeing, development and achievements”.

I know that to be true. I should declare an interest here in that my sister is an early years professional, operating two nurseries in Nottingham and previously several in London. I take my cue from her when she says that it is crucial that staff working in the early years are highly trained, well managed and led; that continuing professional development is vital; and that early years practitioners should be appropriately qualified and rewarded. Needless to say, this is not the current state of affairs. However, I am encouraged by Professor Nutbrown’s review, whose final report came out in June this year. She recognises that progress has been made in skills, and notes examples of excellent practice across the sector, but makes detailed and specific recommendations for improvement. I look forward to the Government’s response, which I understand is imminent.

Dame Clare Tickell’s earlier review of the early years foundation stage recommended that the Government keep a focus on upskilling the workforce and,

“maintain the ambitions for a graduate-led sector”.

Professor Nutbrown picks up on many of Clare Tickell’s points. She recommends that level 3 qualifications become the minimum standard for the workforce, changing current requirements so that all staff, including childminders who work with the early years foundation stage framework, should be qualified at a minimum “full and relevant” level 3 by September 2022. She also wants to strengthen level 3 qualifications to focus on the birth-to-seven age range and to include more on child development and play, more on special educational needs and disability and more on inclusivity and diversity. More controversially among the early years community, she has called for the introduction of a new early years teaching qualification to replace the early years professional status, citing research which shows the huge positive impact of graduate leadership on areas such as early literacy and social development.

I wonder about this proposal. The previous Government invested huge sums, through the transformation and graduate leaders funds, to transform the early years profession by the introduction of the early years professional status for existing graduates, based on the pedagogical model so admired in the Scandinavian childcare system, and also by encouraging others to undertake graduate study through the early years foundation and early education degrees. The profession tells us that this has already had a huge positive impact on practice, particularly in the areas highlighted by Professor Nutbrown. Can the Minister tell us the Government’s response to this?

In their response to other reports, Supporting Families in the Foundation Years, the Government announced that they would set up a national network of early years teaching centres to raise standards and improve children’s outcomes. The idea is that nursery schools and children’s centres demonstrating outstanding practice will share their expertise and support with other early years settings in their region. Will the Minister indicate how the Government plan to share lessons learnt from this model and say whether there may be opportunities for expansion?

The Government’s response also pointed to the new workforce agency. The Teaching Agency, operational from April this year, is to take responsibility for early years workers, including supporting the drive for a more highly qualified workforce and an increase in graduate leadership. Can the Minister give us any insights into progress made by the Teaching Agency in these areas?

When we consider the quality of staff needed to give our children the best possible start in life, we need to consider their qualifications. The evidence suggests that those with a higher level of qualification, degree-level specialism in early childhood, have the greatest impact. Research has shown the benefits that graduate leaders, and particularly qualified teachers, bring to early years settings. They have positive impacts, both in terms of curriculum and pedagogical leadership and in terms of measurable improvement in children’s outcomes in early literacy, social development, mathematics and science.

However much we talk about improving qualifications, we must also talk about cost. Someone has to pay for this and in that context, will the Minister say whether the Government will monitor the impact of the loss of the early intervention grant so as not to jeopardise other early years programmes, as the LGA fears? At the moment the major providers of childcare and education, the private and voluntary sectors, are almost totally dependent on the fees paid by parents and carers who need assistance. The early years education grant, paid by local authorities directly to providers for the support of two, three and four year-olds, is a reliable model, but the rate needs to be increased to enable providers to continue to offer it. The tax credit system accessed directly by parents is complicated, confused and easily open to fraudulent or mistaken claims. Will the Government bite the bullet and finally look at a system by which early years childcare and education becomes jointly funded by parents and the state, with all payments being made directly to providers who are highly regulated, constantly inspected and more easily accountable?

We have been told that high quality early education is one of the most important determinants of every child’s life chances. It is clear that we need to raise our expectations of what it means to work with young children and attract the best people into the workforce. We must not lose sight of the fact that investing in early years is investing in all our futures.

Schools: Well-being and Personal and Social Needs

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 14th June 2012 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Jones for introducing this debate. As she so eloquently reminded us, children’s well-being matters not simply to ensure that they have a good childhood but because it provides a solid foundation for their future well-being as adults.

The Good Childhood Report, published earlier this year by the Children’s Society, makes the point that fortunately many children in the UK are happy with their lives. However, substantial numbers of children do not feel so positive. It says that at any given time around 4% of eight year-olds and 14% of 15 year-olds have low subjective well-being—the term used to describe people’s assessment of, or happiness with, their lives as a whole. The society points out that children who report low levels of happiness are much less likely to enjoy being at home with their family, to feel safe when they are with their friends, to look forward to going to school, to like the way they look, and to feel positive about their future. The evidence shows that a low level of subjective well-being is associated with a wide range of social and personal problems. These include poor mental health through increased depression, social isolation through increased loneliness and the likelihood of victimisation, and involvement in risky behaviours such as running away from home and sexual exploitation.

The Children’s Society report is part of a growing body of evidence about children’s well-being that is based on responses from children themselves. This was given greater impetus here in the UK by UNICEF’s 2007 report, which placed the UK at the bottom of a league table of child well-being in 21 industrialised nations. Although there has been some progress, the UK remains within the lower rankings compared with other OECD countries. It hardly needs saying that education is core to this. All the studies show that learning is closely intertwined with well-being. The school environment, as a context of learning, plays an important role in children’s social, emotional and behavioural well-being.

This afternoon, I will focus on the contribution of schools to young people’s well-being at both the entry and exit points. Those are the nursery school years, or early years foundation stage, and the latter years of school life, as schools prepare their leavers for the next stage of their developing adult lives, including through careers advice or further academic study. I have spoken on the subject of early years education in this House before. It is very important that nursery schools are able to address each child’s individual developmental and cultural needs. I welcomed the Department for Education’s recently published document Supporting Families in the Foundation Years. It reminds us that the primary aim of these years is to promote a child’s physical, emotional, cognitive and social development so that all children have a fair chance to succeed at school and in later life.

Reforms to the early years foundation stage will take effect from September this year. I am glad that they pick up the recommendations made by Clare Tickell and others last year, and acknowledge the compelling evidence that high-quality early education is linked to children’s healthy progress through school and into adulthood. For example, studies show that nursery schools offer a secure environment in which children with special educational needs, or with English as an additional language, can flourish. A significant number of nursery schools are also children’s centres serving areas of social or economic deprivation. They therefore have a particular role to play in social inclusion.

However, nursery schools across the country are under threat due to cutbacks in council spending. Universal services are becoming more targeted. The loss of more early years’ grants will directly affect existing children’s centres. Further cuts threaten nursery classes within schools as nursery schools find it increasingly difficult to be financially viable within the LEA. What assurances can the Minister give that behind the welcome words about the importance of the reformed EYFS there will be clear directives to local authorities to raise the profile of nursery schools and to promote an understanding of their role?

A further point here is the importance of experienced, properly qualified staff. Work in early education and childcare is still widely seen as low status, low paid and low skilled. I therefore await with great interest Professor Cathy Nutbrown’s report on strengthening the early years’ workforce, which is due out this month. We must ensure that women and men enter the profession with the skills and experiences that they need to do the best work possible with young children and their families. What will the Minister do to encourage the promises made in the Supporting Families in the Foundation Years document to strengthen qualifications and career pathways in the foundation years? What assurances can he give us that there will indeed be continuing investment in graduate-level training in early education and childcare, and that early years education professionals will become a central part of the remit of the new Teaching Agency?

We can all agree with the Department for Education’s aim that children should start school healthy, happy, communicative, sociable, curious, active, and ready and equipped for the next phase of life and learning. The same aim should hold, of course, for when they leave school. Schools have a tremendous role to play in preparing young people in a whole range of areas as they enter the next stage of their lives. There is no doubt that advice and guidance on careers is needed. The latest statistics show that the number of 16 to 18 year-olds not in employment, education or training increased from 159,000 in the first quarter of 2011 to 183,000 in the same period this year. This means that the proportion of NEET 16 to 18 year-olds now stands at 9.8%, which is up from 8.3% from last year. Those are troubling statistics. We are in difficult economic times and the employment prospects for young people can seem bleak. It is all the more important, therefore, that schools are equipped to advise on the most appropriate next steps for each individual.

From this September, schools will have a statutory duty to provide independent, impartial careers guidance for pupils aged 14 to 16. While I do not think that that goes far enough, with no additional funding many schools will be unable to meet even this basic requirement. The Milburn recommendation to use the previous Connexions budget to allow schools to tender for careers services has not happened. What is more, the guidance was issued with little time for schools to commission careers services to start from this autumn. Will the Minister take steps to ensure that careers advice in schools does not miss the most disadvantaged pupils? Will he also give consideration to the call in the Milburn report to prioritise initiatives, such as a national mentoring scheme?

Schools also have an important role to play in giving accurate, up to date information on the diverse landscape of higher education. I believe passionately that a key part of a young person’s social and personal development can come through the life-enhancing experience of higher education, but they must have the right advice on their choice of A-level subjects and accurate information on the changing arrangements for student funding. There is little universities can do to counteract the impact of a student having studied the “wrong” A-levels for the degree course.

It is crucial that young people, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds and those with no family history of higher education, have access to first-class guidance about their options and on how to navigate the many choices offered by higher education. In conclusion, perhaps I may ask the Minister whether, if schools are to be charged with providing this, they will be given the means to do so. Without a ring-fenced budget, and without much clearer guidance to schools on what good careers guidance looks like and how to provide it, there is a real danger that the system will fail those who most need it.

Children: Early Intervention

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for introducing this timely debate. Recent debates in this House and in the other place have ensured that we are familiar with the challenging reports by MPs Frank Field and Graham Allen. As we await the Government’s response to those reports, as well as to Dame Clare Tickell’s review into the early years and foundation stage, I am particularly thankful that we continue to give significant time and thought to this hugely important area.

We know that the first few years determine profoundly how a child will be as an adult and as a citizen. More brain development takes place in the first 18 months than at any other time of life. Therefore, more damage can be done at that stage than at any other time if the environment is wrong and once that damage is done it is twice as hard to undo, so the child is hit by a double whammy.

Research tells us that by 22 months a bright child from a disadvantaged background begins to be overtaken in key abilities by a less bright but privileged child. Indeed, a child’s development score at 22 months is an accurate predictor of educational outcomes when that child is 26. Yet the public debate about life chances and social mobility often seems to pay more attention to what university a young adult of 18 should go to than to whether our three year-olds can hold a crayon or a simple conversation.

I shall focus on the importance of highly trained staff in early years education, also highlighted in Graham Allen’s report. In doing so, however, I should first like to record my support for Sure Start children’s centres in the current difficult financial climate. Giving our children the best possible start in life through improved childcare, early education, health and family support lay at the heart of the previous Government’s creation of Sure Start in 1998. Today these 3,500 life-enhancing children’s centres offer the earliest help to more than 2.5 million children and families. At their best they are hubs for community activity, offering a welcoming place to which families can turn, and, crucially, identifying difficulties before it is too late. Like many noble Lords, I am deeply concerned by reports of closures by local authorities charged with cutting budgets. The recent survey suggesting that some 250 Sure Start children’s centres could close within a year, affecting an estimated 60,000 families, is very distressing.

Of course, we cannot afford to waste money, but short-term measures mean that we risk wasting much more—what Graham Allen calls the wastage of human potential, social disruption and fractured lives. He cites the OECD in arguing that spending on young children is more likely to generate more positive changes than spending on older ones, and is likely to be fairer to more disadvantaged children. However, in the UK, for every £100 spent on the nought to five years, £135 is spent on the six to 11 years and £148 on the 12 to 17 years. As Allen points out, this is not a cost-effective way of treating society’s problems.

In championing cost-effective early intervention, I highlight the continuing need for high-quality care provided by highly trained staff. Like my noble friend Lady Morris, I am particularly concerned that children’s centres will no longer need a trained nursery teacher or early years professional of graduate status. This is a retrograde step. It goes to the heart of the call by Allen and Field to put the nought to five, or foundation years, on a par with primary and secondary education. Low-paid, low-qualified staff cannot give the expert remedial help that many families need.

I should declare an interest as my sister, an early years professional, has two nurseries in Nottingham, one rural and one urban. She sees every day the importance of an environment which is safe, secure, stimulating and loving. All these are essentials for a child’s proper development; missing any of these can be crucial. Many parents now lead unsettled, stressful, even chaotic lives. With the best will in the world, which most parents have, they are not able to provide this environment either through lack of time, money, resources or poor parenting experience themselves. Highly trained staff are, therefore, essential. High-quality childcare must be well managed and supervised. It is demanding work. Staff in children’s centres and nurseries need to be constantly aware of children, parents and each other, and vigilant about noticing change. As recent flaws in nursing care of the elderly demonstrate, the attitude of staff working in these challenging environments is critical. It must not be seen as an option for those who cannot think of any other line of work.

Training and continual professional development must be ongoing. We cannot continue with a situation whereby people can be paid more for stacking supermarket shelves than for looking after our youngest children. Will the Minister therefore endorse the schools White Paper proposal that the remit of the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services should be extended to provide training for children’s centre leaders?

We need to find a way to make the vocation attractive to more highly qualified candidates, and we need to encourage schools, colleges and universities to teach and develop resources for the future. Therefore, will the Minister consider the call for equal status and recognition for the foundation years of nought to five, on a par with primary and secondary education? In support of this, will he also seriously consider the proposal for a workforce development framework to establish training and salary structures which recognise the challenge faced by, and importance of, early years staff?

None of this can be done on the cheap—funding is, as ever, the critical question—but I believe that these steps are vital if the early years foundation stage is to deliver what we ask of it.

Marriage

Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Warwick of Undercliffe]

My Lords, I thank the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester for introducing this timely debate. It is particularly timely, following as it does the debate that we had only last week in your Lordships' House on parenting. Rereading Sir Graham Hart's report, I was struck by the similarity of its conclusions to those of the more recent reports which were referred to in the debate last week.

The 1999 Hart report was prompted by deep concern about the rate of marital breakdown and the damage it causes to couples and their children, to family lives and to society. Sir Graham highlighted the then £5 billion-a-year cost to society of family breakdown and divorce. Alongside the financial costs, he highlighted the huge cost in human misery resulting from marital conflict and breakdown. Similarly, last year's Demos report, mentioned frequently in the debate on parenting last week, focused on the damage caused to families by conflict in couple relationships. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chester highlighted, the cost of that damage has risen markedly. It is now estimated by the Relationships Foundation as £41.7 billion or, put another way, a cost of £1,364 a year for every current UK taxpayer.

I take the view, reflected in all those reports, that we need to focus on the importance of supportive loving couple relationships providing support for parents and families, and not restrict ourselves to those couples who are married, but I reinforce the point made by Sir Graham Hart and reflected in the Demos report, which stated:

“Support for couples should be offered before problems arise to prevent breakdown rather than alleviate problems after they start”.

I believe emphatically that, although it is vital to provide support for children, if there is only minimal support for parents, children could, for example, have an excellent session with a counsellor but come back home to find parents being physically, emotionally or verbally violent with each other, or using them as weapons, which largely defeats the good of the help that the children receive.

I look forward to the maiden speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, who I know will have enlightened and passionate words to say on these issues. From my contacts with Relate—which, as noble Lords will be aware, is now the country's largest provider of relationship support—I know that that is its core business. Support for couples is crucial to the support of children. I welcome its campaigning work to put relationship support for children, adults and families at the heart of the social justice agenda.

As Sir Graham Hart recognised, the work of Relate is fundamental in tackling those issues. Any development of family policy must recognise that. I am particularly impressed with the way in which Relate uses volunteers. Sir Graham Hart focused particularly on the essential role played in the field of relationship support by bodies which had traditionally relied heavily on trained volunteers to carry out that vital work. Indeed, I believe that Relate is unique in that there is no difference in the type of clinical work or the training of its volunteers and paid counsellors.

It is the role and expectations we place on those volunteers in today's society which prompts my intervention today. I speak as the former chair and current vice-president of Voluntary Service Overseas, an organisation which has spent the past 50 years harnessing the expertise and enthusiasm of volunteers to transform lives, with localism and partnership the cornerstone of its mission.

A thriving society needs its volunteers. That simple truth is a core element of the Government’s big society, about which we have heard rather a lot in recent days. Noble Lords will know that the comments made earlier this week by Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, the retiring executive director of Community Service Volunteers, about the impact of government cuts on services, have struck a chord with many. Her call for co-ordinated, strategic thinking in providing services echoes Sir Graham Hart's recommendations, accepted and acted on by the then Government 12 years ago. After all, voluntary work does not happen for free—it costs money to run it. How will the Government respond to Dame Elisabeth’s call for the setting of targets for the use of volunteers in public service, particularly in the vital area of family support?

The Prime Minister's announcement last December of £7.5 million-a-year funding for relationship support was indeed welcome news. I am sure that organisations such as Relate, Kids in the Middle and the Tavistock Centre will use it well. We need research into family breakdown, and families need practical support when things go wrong, but the bigger picture—where this fits into strategic thinking, the basis of the big society—remains blurred. Training in this area is crucial, yet there is no longer the infrastructure of the grant for training. How will help be provided in relationship support to train people who act as volunteers? If individuals themselves pay the £6,000 that it costs, how likely is it that they will work as volunteers? If they are to be paid, the cost of service delivery will go up and an invaluable opportunity for dedicated and hugely useful volunteering will be lost.

I referred earlier to the huge cost to this country of relationship breakdown. The previous Government put supporting parents at the heart of their family policy. I hope that the Government will ensure that they reinforce support for services such as those provided by Relate and other parts of the infrastructure for family support, such as Sure Start centres—perhaps making a commitment through the ministerial Childhood and Families Taskforce. I hope that they will spell out clearly how they all fit into the strategic aims of the big society.