Early Childhood Development

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Thursday 30th January 2014 Westminster Hall

[Jane Ellison]

The hon. Lady will understand that that is not in my portfolio, but I am happy to draw her concerns to the attention of colleagues in whose portfolio it rests. I undertake to do so after the debate.

The Under-Secretary of State for Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich, has asked Public Health England to commission a rapid review of the evidence base for the Healthy Child programme, with a focus on primary prevention. The Department of Health is also working with the WAVE Trust, which was instrumental in developing the evidence base for the manifesto, with the Early Intervention Foundation and with others to explore how valuable work in prevention can be built upon. We will be interested in the outcomes of that evaluation.

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

The Minister has referred to looking at the issues by drawing on data and evidence that are available in the English context. As well as sharing that, importantly in this context, will she ensure that questions in the “The 1001 Critical Days” manifesto are addressed at the level of the British-Irish Council? That would enable all eight Administrations throughout these islands who face such challenges in common to share their experience, good practice and piloting. The work could be elevated to that level rather than all the different Administrations trying to do the same things back to back.

[Jane Ellison]

The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I have regular dialogue on matters in my portfolio with Members of the devolved Administrations. I am happy to look into that point after the debate, because some of the lessons to be learned are universal across different countries in the UK.

There has been a lot of interest in health visitors. They and their teams lead the delivery of the Healthy Child programme, and of course they are the bedrock of our children’s public health services. They are often the first professionals to recognise that a mother is depressed or that parents are struggling with the negative effects of many sleepless nights; we have had a few descriptions of those from colleagues in this debate. Through their work, health visitors can have an impact on the well-being of the whole family. Because of their vital preventive role, the Government are committed to growing the health visitor work force by 4,200 by the year 2015 and to transforming health visiting services to improve outcomes and reduce inequalities in the nought-to-five age group.

Taking up the point about whether recruitment is on track, and weaving in the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire, we believe that we are on track. There have been a couple of challenges in one region, to which we are now responding, but the rate of increase in health visitors will increase. It is determined by training intakes, which determine the rate of qualification and entry into the profession. We are happy that that is on track. I give that assurance to the shadow Minister. The latest health visiting work force data that we have, which are from October 2013 and were published this month, show that the total number of health visitors nationally is 9,770 full-time equivalents. Overall, there are 1,678 more health visitors than the May 2010 baseline of 8,092. That is a growth of 21%, but we intend to grow that number more, as we have said, because we think it is so important and crucial to the aims of the manifesto.

On troubled families, we know that some families have multiple problems and cause problems in the community around them. I will not go into a lot of detail, but there is clearly relevance and read-across from some of the early years issues that we have been discussing in this debate. In particular, I have seen the Troubled Families programme in my area encouraging critical working together and getting everyone around the same table to consider people and families as a whole.

That programme will have done a great deal of good to embed that idea and approach as good practice for many local authorities. There is a strong read-across to the other things that we are discussing about earlier years, and in some cases, of course, they will be the same families, depending on the nature of the family. I have certainly seen in my area, and in lots of the other pilot areas, how services have embraced the opportunity to stop working in silos and consider a whole family’s needs instead. I hope that that will become orthodoxy in how we move forward with Government policy in numerous areas and in the local government approach to things.

The Government are increasing local authority budgets by £448 million over three years on a payment-by-results basis to support troubled families across England. Again, my ministerial colleague is meeting those involved in the Troubled Families programme to discuss the health contribution to this valuable programme, and he can then address some of the points to which I will draw his attention as a result of this debate.

I do not have time to go into much detail, as I am aware that I have already made a long speech, although I am drawing to the end of it. I have many points to respond to, but I wanted to touch on the points about social mobility made by my hon. Friend the Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds), which I have heard him articulate before. He discussed how to support parents. I think that my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire was present when Alan Milburn, presenting his most recent social mobility report, urged Government and politicians generally to break what he called one of the “last taboos” of public policy, which is telling people how to be good parents and supporting them to be good parents. That is an interesting challenge for us all to consider and respond to, because it is undoubtedly difficult terrain for both Governments and individual politicians.