Conception to Age 2: The First 1001 Days

Mark Durkan Excerpts

Thursday 17th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mark Durkan (Foyle) (SDLP)]

It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who touched strongly on perinatal mental health. That is one of the issues addressed in the work of the all-party parliamentary group on conception to age two—the first 1001 days. In common with others, I pay tribute to the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) not just for his introduction to the debate, but for the way in which he has chaired that all-party group and the thorough way in which evidence has been drawn and accumulated from so many practitioners, academics and others. He has followed up the pioneering work done by the hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom) in establishing the group, along with the right hon. Member for Birkenhead (Frank Field) and the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas).

I have been a member of the all-party parliamentary group since its own conception, and I have been particularly impressed by the way in which so many different organisations, all of which have pledged their support to this manifesto, have engaged with its work with the aim of making us better informed about the policy questions that we raise, the policy priorities that we identify, and the ideas that we present.

It is great that the hon. Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) has been here to contribute to the debate, because in a number of respects he has been a policy prophet. For many years, people who talked about early years policy tended to mean the year or two before a child went to school, when the child was three or four years old. All too often, early intervention or early years policy has concentrated less on the role of parents as parents than on their role as workers who have parental responsibilities and are therefore in need of childcare, and who, along with their employers, benefit from good childcare support. We need to support parents in their capacity as parents with key responsibilities for their children, and that means supporting them when the children are experiencing those first, formative stages of their lives.

We have already heard today about all the scientific evidence relating to the plasticity of the brain and the key development of neurological pathways during the early stages of life. One of the academics who gave evidence to the all-party parliamentary group made the telling point that many of the experiences that affect people over their lifetimes can be traced back to childhood experiences that could have been averted, or prevented, by good early years support, and that means adequate support for parents during the formative years of their children’s lives. For instance, there may be a high correlation between child and adolescent mental health issues in the later stages of people’s lives and some of their experiences during their early years, when they may have faced challenges such as an upbringing in distressed circumstances or the absence of opportunities that could have been afforded if their parents had been given proper support.

That academic used a striking phrase. He was a north American, so perhaps it came from him all the better. He said, “Unlike what happens in Las Vegas, what happens in the early years does not stay in the early years.” For good or bad, what happens in the early years is with us throughout our lives, and many of those experiences may inform our expectations in life and of life. That is all the more reason for us to invest strongly in the early years, not just in terms of family love but in terms of policy and programme planning, and of actual support in the form of local services.

While I have been hugely impressed by much of the evidence that I have received as a member of the all-party parliamentary group—and, like the right hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), by the compelling case that has been put forward by George Hosking and others—I am happy to say that I have benefited from the presence in my constituency of the Lifestart Foundation, which was established in Ireland back in the 1980s and which operates active programmes in different parts of that country. Its essential mission is to provide high-quality parental support in order to produce better child development outcomes. It gives parents evidence-based information about the way in which young children learn and develop, and helps them to use the knowledge that they have gained.

The foundation also promotes the delivery of its Growing Child programme. Unfortunately time does not permit me to spell out the details of the programme, but they chime with all the points that Members have made today, and accord very strongly with the main points and principles in the manifesto that we are discussing. The foundation delivers a systematic evidence-based child development programme by means of home visiting, from which, as a parent myself, I benefited in my own area. That goes to parents of children from birth right up to pre-school, and indeed school entry. The outcomes are informed by sound empirical research, and they are designed and reviewed by child development and parenting experts.

There has been a randomised control trial conducted by Queen’s University from 2008 to this year and beyond. It involves 848 parents and children, and it has already proved the findings that argue for this manifesto. I encourage the Minister to look up those findings from the centre for effective education at Queen’s University in Belfast, because they prove that the Lifestart programme and the home visiting service work as predicted, with significant positive outcomes for parents and improved outcomes for children. Parents are less stressed, have greater knowledge of child development, demonstrate higher levels of parenting efficacy, are more confident around child discipline and boundary setting, report better parenting mood, have increased feelings of attachment with their children—the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham stressed that earlier—and feel less restricted in their parenting role. Of course, for children there are better cognitive skills, better social and emotional development, improved behaviour, and fewer speech and language referrals, and these positive effects on children will be expected to continue through life. This research team will be following the children’s development through school.

This all goes to show what international research points to: the quality of parenting, the amount of time adults spend interacting with children, and the nature of the whole learning environment are critical to child development and ensuring we avoid many of the social stresses and problems and behavioural issues that affect us all, and inform some of our debates on other subjects in this House.

As well as giving that example of Lifestart and its work in my constituency and elsewhere in the north and south of Ireland, I encourage the Minister not just to look at this manifesto in terms of what he can do in his own departmental responsibilities and in talking to ministerial colleagues here, but to see whether he should have a wider conversation not just with devolved Ministers, but using the British Irish Council model which takes in all eight Administrations on these islands, to talk about how we might roll out truly effective early years and proactive early intervention policies more widely, building on the arguments in this manifesto and drawing on the evidential experiences from elsewhere. What this shows is that all the rendered science chimes with our most tender instincts about what is the best thing to do for children in these early years.