Support for Infants and Parents etc (Information) Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 6th September 2024 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

That the Bill be now read a second time.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, a vast amount of evidence unambiguously points to how critical the first 1,001 days of life, from conception to age two, are to the health, well-being and opportunities of children throughout their lives. Those days are also incredibly stressful for the vast majority of parents. Is the baby feeding properly? Is she putting on enough weight or too much weight? Why will she not stop crying? Is she sleeping too much? What am I doing wrong? What should I be doing? What information can I rely on? Why are we arguing so much? These questions are typical during those early days after a baby is born. This is therefore a vital stage of family life to support.

I know that one of this Government’s key missions is to turbo-boost opportunities for babies, children and young people. Parents are a key means of achieving gains in this area. Being child focused requires being parent and family focused, as I am sure they are aware. Finnish research shows that the bond a parent has with their child is the most potent and all-consuming form of love. Using MRI scans, researchers could see how feelings of parental love provoked the strongest level of brain activity and fired up the largest number of regions within the brain, sparking areas untouched by other forms of love. Support to harness, encourage and strengthen that parental love, also known as kin altruism, complements the clinical support that everyone needs when a baby is born and is the heart of the intent of this Bill.

In outlining the Bill, I declare my interest as a guarantor of FHN Holding, the not-for-profit owner of the Family Hubs Network Ltd. Vital though they are, GPs and health services cannot do it all. NICE reports that in the first year after birth, around 15% to 20% of women and possibly one in 10 men experience depression and anxiety. This is frequently missed or undertreated in general practice. The risk is greater if new parents are isolated, or relationships are not good between parents. Many break down in these early days. These non-medical issues have massive knock-on effects on mental and physical health, requiring a holistic and whole-family approach. My interest in the Bill stems from an awareness that many fathers are treated as incidental in the antenatal and postnatal periods, yet they are often the mainstay of support to the new mother and will, of course, be of considerable importance to the growing child.

A new joined-up and continually improving Start for Life offer was the focus and first action of Dame Andrea Leadsom’s early years healthy development review. This reported in March 2021 and named a welcoming family hub as the place where families could access those Start for Life services. Although much support and many services were available to new parents, her review established how hard it is for families to access information about what is available so that they can draw on it when they need it most.

Moreover, access to help is often inconsistent across the country. For example, great ambitions over several decades to increase breastfeeding will be constantly thwarted if parents do not get the support and information needed to keep breastfeeding beyond the earliest days, when extreme tiredness, pain and mastitis often set in. Baby tongue-tie is another issue, but many must go private to resolve it or for accessible advice. Many go online for help, without knowing how reliable that will be. But now, thanks to the family hubs and Start for Life programme, mothers in Derby, for instance, have support from breastfeeding experts and from each other in their local family hub. Peer support can be decisive for women to keep breastfeeding. This is one of the five named services that the early years healthy development review said should be universally available to support parents and carers and to ensure babies’ sound cognitive, emotional and physical development from pregnancy to age two.

But, as the 2023 progress report from this review points out, just providing better services does not go far enough: all families need to know what support is available to them and be able to access it easily. Funding was provided to ensure that expectant parents in the 75 eligible local authority areas receive a physical copy of their local Start for Life offer and can find it online. However, without the Bill, which simply and modestly requires all local authorities to publicise their Start for Life offer to all new parents, future funding is not guaranteed.

The Start for Life offer is information on services that a local authority is aware are available in its area for infants, parents or carers of infants, and prospective parents or carers, provided by or on behalf of public authorities. The named services in the Bill are maternity; health visiting; services promoting positive relationships between infants and their parents or carers; mental health; and breastfeeding and other infant-feeding services. Local authorities should also provide additional information on other services as appropriate. The Bill includes a regulation-making power so that the Secretary of State can include information on other specific services in the future. This future-proofs the Bill by ensuring that services that become indispensable are also systematically included.

The transformation fund for 75 local authorities, mentioned earlier, is allowing much innovation and good practice to emerge. This could eventually become universal. For example, family hubs in Bishop Auckland in County Durham have begun to offer birth registration to make this process easier for new parents, starting with just one day a month—but this could grow with demand. There have been many calls over the years to make this standard across the country. The Bill introduces a further duty on the Secretary of State to publish guidance to local authorities relating to those duties. Current guidance is non-statutory and does not include the learning from the Government’s family hubs and Start for Life programme, because evaluations from these have not yet been completed.

Finally, the Bill requires the Government to publish an annual report that sets out information about support being provided in England for infants, their parents and carers—and prospective parents and carers—as well as outcomes. Certainty about what can reasonably be expected and where it can be accessed makes a great difference during a phase of life when very little is certain and everything is being experienced for the first time. Everyone wants to enjoy this period when a new baby comes, but not knowing where to find help if things go wrong puts a major dampener on that.

Information is vital, which is why we need family hubs right across the country so that parents can access that joined-up early support to help them overcome difficulties and build strong relationships. Family hubs do not replace children’s centres. Many local authorities still run these nought-to-five facilities and integrate their work into the family hub network of buildings and services across an area. Family hubs do not deliver everything but are the access and connection points for families of children aged nought to 19, and up to 25 where there are special educational needs. They draw together all the family support available, which combats fragmentation of help and costly duplication.

Many family hubs in Essex provide paediatric healthcare that would otherwise be delivered in hospitals far from the community, as well as inoculations and oral health drop-ins for children aged nought to 19. Westminster includes GP clinics in family hubs so that families have access to a wide range of other support. GPs report how working in this way facilitates early intervention, holistic practice and a better grip on the myriad determinants of health.

Family hubs also draw in support provided by faith and other community organisations, in which parents place a high level of trust. Relationships are key to how they function. Family hubs in North Tyneside and Camden, among many others, adopt a “barefoot professional” model, which recruits local people from communities of greatest need and who have experienced poverty or family difficulties. Through peer-to-peer learning and appropriate supervision and support from the family hub, their ability to overcome adversity becomes a transferable skill set.

For family hubs to be sustainable, they need to draw in and on the local community and build prosocial peer support networks. Research has shown that these are invaluable to health visitors and other professionals, and certainly do not replace them—but they can never on their own address the problems of isolation I mentioned at the beginning. University College London research proves that well-functioning relationships are themselves health assets, and the relationships that parents have with their children can be most powerfully so. I reiterate that information about where help is available supports these from the earliest point before birth and afterwards, giving all children the best start for life. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I should start by welcoming my right honourable friend Dame Andrea Leadsom. I was not aware that she was on the steps of the Throne, and I welcome her here today to hear this debate. Obviously, I am saddened and disappointed by the Government’s response. However, I want to thank all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate, which has been wide-ranging; a lot of deep thought has been put into it and there has been agreement from all sides of the House on this matter.

In answer to the Government, we are talking about information. I understand the Government’s argument that they are working on a comprehensive plan for families and children for addressing poverty among children, but this is just a small point about getting information out, and information can deal with a lot of problems quite quickly. The noble Lord, Lord Bird, talked about poverty, and we have heard from other people. I have found throughout my life that poverty is caused by a lack of information. When we learn something, it helps us to deal with it. I ask the Government, if they are not supporting this Bill, that they might nevertheless instruct departments to encourage councils to improve information given to families on what services are available for the whole natal area—prenatal, perinatal and antenatal. It seems to me that it would not be that difficult without a statute to get departments of government to see this as important, because lack of information is causing so many problems—I come back to the poverty issue as well.

I thank all noble Lords. I was very honoured by the noble Lord, Lord Blunkett, saying that it was a granddaughter of Sure Start. I should mention that I once attended a Labour conference in Brighton on a very blustery day. I was placarding a meeting about family hubs. I was being blown about all over the place and all of a sudden I heard, “Lord Farmer, what are you doing in enemy territory?”. I turned around and there was the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby. I said, “Family hubs, family hubs. Building on Labour’s Sure Start centres.” That is what family hubs are doing, so I really press that point.

I thank noble Lords for some very good contributions; I hope that the Government will pay attention to them and move quickly, even in this area. I would be very happy to work with the Minister. I thank her for the meeting and the advice. Obviously, it is disappointing—this is a simple Bill that could be enacted quite quickly and would bring immediate benefit—but things are as they are. With thanks to all noble Lords who contributed, I would still like to press on.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.