Support for Children and Families: Covid-19

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I will be uncharacteristically brief, Sir Christopher. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) for securing a debate on the subject. We have heard so much about the impact of covid on jobs, schools, universities, businesses, the hospitality sector and the NHS. Children—particularly young children—and families are the forgotten element in the whole covid crisis. It is important that we talk about them today, and about the mental health impact on not just school-age children, but parents, for all the reasons my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned. There has been huge upheaval due to the extra childcare required and the unpredictability of schools.

There is a lack of support networks for new parents in particular. Some 350,000 babies were born during lockdown. Many of them have not seen other babies. Mums have not been able to take babies to the normal post-natal classes and baby groups that they would usually take them to, so we are now seeing examples of babies recoiling when they meet other babies, because they are not used to other human beings like them. They have not had the support network of extended family members; for a new parent, a new mum—particularly a new single mum—that has been a huge challenge. We need to think not just about the catch-up we need for school-age children—the Children’s Commissioner has calculated this week that we have lost 575 million school days since lockdown—but about catch-up for very young children, and babies and infants in particular.

In last week’s debate, I flagged up the importance of health visitors. Before lockdown, we had lost 30% of health visitors. A great triumph of the coalition Government was to create 4,200 additional health visitors. We are virtually back to the numbers we inherited in 2010. Health visitors have had face-to-face contact only with new parents in vulnerable families, but there are over 106,000 children under the age of one living in households in this country where parents suffer from domestic violence, substance abuse or serious mental health issues. These children need those health visitors eyeballing them, providing health support and acting as an early warning system.

I recommend reading the “Babies in Lockdown” report, which was jointly published over the summer by the Parent-Infant Foundation, which I have been proud to chair for the last six years, Home-Start—a fantastic charity—and Best Beginnings. Their report found that 68% of the 5,500 parents interviewed felt that the changes brought about by covid-19 were affecting their unborn baby or young child. Over two thirds of respondents said that overall, their ability to cope with pregnancy or care for their baby had been affected by covid-19, and many families on lower incomes from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and young parents have been hit harder by the pandemic. This can only have widened the already deep inequalities in the early experiences and life chances of children.

The report therefore recommends that we increase specialised parent-infant relationship teams around the UK, of which there are only 30 at the moment. These teams bring together a range of highly skilled professionals to support and strengthen the important relationships between babies and their parents or carers. The report also recommends a parent-infant premium, which would provide local commissioners with new funding targeted at improving incomes for the most vulnerable children. We need children in schools to catch up, but if we do not help babies and pre-school children catch up, the problem will be even worse when they get to school; that is why this report and this debate are so important.