Health

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 26th November 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, it is a privilege to follow the considered and humane words of the noble Lord. I, too, am most grateful to my noble friend for calling this debate, for opening it so helpfully and for his courtesy in preparing for it. I will make five points on loneliness.

I begin by praising the Government. Evidence is clear on the benefits of employment for mental health. The Government have done a tremendous job here. The latest employment figures—with the lowest rate of unemployment since 2008 and the highest rate of employment since records began—speak to that success. That is so important in combating isolation. At my local cash desk there is a pregnant woman due to give birth in December. She had her last week at work a fortnight ago. While she has never given birth before, she was working beside a woman who has a child, so she could speak to others who had given birth. She had customers going up to her to wish her well. She was not isolated. As the Minister knows very well from the recent report on perinatal mental health, we must be concerned about mothers during pregnancy becoming isolated and depressed, and the cost to the nation as a result of that. I strongly praise the Government for their achievements in this area.

I have a number of concerns. I am very worried about the housing insecurity that so many families in this country experience. I call on the Government to bring forward a strategy along the lines that the noble Baroness, Lady Jay, called for, with a senior Minister developing and implementing a strategy to address housing insecurity. Increasing numbers of children grow up homeless and in bed and breakfasts. I speak to mothers with young children who look forward to the prospect of being sent to some distant local authority outside London where they will know no one and where their child will lose their school. This is a growing problem. Of course, there is an increasing issue with questions about immigration there as well. I hope the Minister will speak to his colleagues about that.

So many looked-after children speak of the experience of care as a lonely one, going into adulthood isolated. Because of their early experiences, they may well not trust others and find it difficult to relate to them. It is imperative that, the moment that they enter care, mental health professionals provide them with a proper, dedicated mental health assessment—as the NSPCC called for—and that the services they need follow on from that.

Furthermore, I really stress to the Minister that the best difference that mental health professionals can make is to support the relationships between adoptive parents and children, foster carers and children, and residential childcare workers and children. Supporting those stable relationships over time and making them work is the best way to help these children recover from trauma, rather than, important as it is, working directly with the children. I am afraid that that is often not recognised by the health service, where, unless one is working directly with the child, it is not recognised as helpful—because the child is not seen as “sick”—to support the foster carer or residential childcare worker.

Moving on, adolescence is a time of upheaval. Anna Freud entitled her last writings on the subject, Adolescence as a Developmental Disturbance. There are huge challenges throughout adolescence. It is important to meet those and not allow adolescents to become isolated, as they so easily can be. I commend to the noble Lord the institution in north London, the Brent Centre for Young People, which since 1989 has provided excellent specialist service in mental health for adolescents. If he ever has the time to go up there, I am sure he will find that a most interesting experience.

Early years were mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Neuberger, and, I think, others. I recently had the privilege of visiting a nursery in Hayes Park School, west London, and watching a nurture group in action. The Minister may be aware of the Nurture Group Network. These were eight disadvantaged three year-old children. One young girl, blonde, went up to the board, picked up a piece of paper with the word “embarrassment” on it and said “I am embarrassed”. She was shy. She was learning to talk about her feelings, as were her neighbours, so that they could communicate their feelings to each other. They sat at a table and enjoyed toast together. They may never have sat together in their own homes around a meal—they may never have had that experience—but here they were getting a chance to sit with others, to eat toast, to say “please” and “thank you”, to learn how to relate to others, so that they could be reintegrated into the larger group, know how to relate to other children, and thereby not grow up lonely and possibly depressed because they just did not know how to manage relationships with other people.

To sum up, so many people in this country, because of early disruptions in their lives, find relating to others an uncomfortable experience. If we want to build a healthy society, we really need to enable all our citizens to feel comfortable in themselves and with each other, so that they go on to lead full and productive lives. I look forward to the Minister’s response.