Children: Early Intervention

Lord Northbourne Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[Lord Northbourne]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, for introducing this debate and for the brilliant way in which she explained the problem. I am extremely happy to be on the same side as her on this occasion.

The classic research of Bowlby, Ainsworth and others—indeed, almost all modern published work—confirms the importance for the child of secure loving attachment during the early years to a mother or surrogate mother. During the first year of life, infants learn to love, to feel confident and to deal with stressful circumstances and negative emotions in an organised manner. As an illustration of the importance of an appropriate environment in the early years of brain development, the noble Lord, Lord Winston, in an earlier debate on this subject, told the House that kittens are born blind, and that if you put a blindfold on one for no more than 21 days the cat will be blind for life.

Similarly the synapses in a child's brain are developed by that child's experiences. Key emotional and social development takes place in the early weeks and months. The human child needs regular positive interactions with nurturing adults in order to develop the complex networks of brain connections that they will need to form healthy relationships. I have been aware of this research and this story for some time, but I must admit that the full force of it has come to me only very recently when watching my daughter care for and play with her beloved first child. That child knows that she is safe and that she is valued more than anything else in the world. She is learning how to love and be loved.

Given that the emotional and social development of the nation's children depends so much on the quality of secure attachment to a mother or another secure attachment figure in those first months and years, does it not seem logical to argue that we as a society should be doing more to optimise the chances of child/mother relationships being secure and loving? This is the basic point which the noble Baroness and others have already made, but successive Governments have shied away from this proposition because intervention in the child/mother relationship can be intrusive. Indeed, the word “intervention” sounds just a little too much like interference. I would rather change the word, focusing in the opposite direction, and talk about prevention. I was extraordinarily happy to hear the noble Baroness and other speakers talking positively about prevention. In those terms, there are many things that we can do. I do not have time to go into them this afternoon, but one is better preparation for parenthood, starting perhaps in schools and certainly elsewhere too. There should be more support for first-time parents before and around the time of birth of the child, and in the first year of the child’s life. Also, we need to think about trying to create a society which more greatly values and encourages long-term parental commitment. There are also obvious elements that we must not forget, involving the improvement of the environment in which some parents are obliged to bring up their child. These include poverty, debt, ill health, violence, addiction and many more things that your Lordships know about.

I want to turn to the subject of grandparents. In all this work, there is a very important role for grandparents. In particular, they often have key roles as supporters of parents, as carers and often as surrogate parents. I was therefore most concerned recently to hear that before the end of April The Grandparents’ Association will have to close its helpline, manned mainly by volunteers but none the less costing money, because their financial support is to be withdrawn from 31 March. This helpline has been dealing with more than 8,000 calls a year, many involving legal advice or deeply complex and emotive problems faced by grandparents.

We all have to accept that cuts are necessary, but I cannot help wondering whether this cut will not cost a great deal more than it saves. In this context, I should be grateful if the Minister could give me an answer to three questions of which I have given him notice. First, do the Government recognise the important role which grandparents can play in supporting their grandchildren during their early years? Secondly, is the noble Lord aware that each year some 8,000 grandparents have been contacting The Grandparents’ Association helpline for advice and help, and that the association has been working with grandparents for more than 23 years? Thirdly, will the Minister please ask his right honourable friend to find some way at least to provide essential short-term financial support to The Grandparents’ Association helpline at least to give it time to seek other sources of funding for the helpline or, if necessary, to try to transfer its services in an orderly manner to some other provider?