Family Hubs

Tracy Brabin Excerpts

Tuesday 24th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Tracy Brabin (Batley and Spen) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Graham. I congratulate the hon. Member for Congleton (Fiona Bruce) on securing the debate. It is a great pleasure to speak for the Opposition in what has been an interesting and wide-ranging discussion. I welcome the passion that the hon. Lady has shown in her commitment to families who are struggling against the odds, as well as her celebration of the innovation and determination of councils across the country to keep families at the centre of all they do.

I pay tribute to the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for Upper Bann (David Simpson), who both focused on how faith groups can bring communities together. Our Muslim community in Batley and Spen certainly works incredibly hard in supporting families. I also pay tribute to the hon. Member for Mansfield (Ben Bradley) for his focus on the preventive approach to early intervention and the impact that it can have. I slightly take issue with the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell)—he is no longer in his place—who said that middle-class mums do not deserve the same attention and protection. They can have the same struggles as others, such as with breastfeeding or with their postpartum mental health.

[Fiona Bruce]

We all have our challenges in developing healthy, wholesome relationships. Family income is no discriminator in that.

[Tracy Brabin]

I could not agree more. A struggling parent will struggle whatever their income.

As we have heard, the proposals for family hubs have come from Members from across the political spectrum. The mission statement from the hon. Member for Congleton is certainly commendable. It is to

“co-locate superb early years health and other services with help for parents with children across the age ranges”.

Many wish to see the hubs encompass other services, such as jobcentres and relationship advisers, along with more conventional children’s centres.

The potential merits and points of discussion about family hubs are more substantial than one could hope to fit into a single short speech, so I will look at the impact of Government policies on services that would be incorporated into them. First, it is important to acknowledge that we already have a highly successful model of support for families. It is robust, has been tested and is highly popular with families from all communities. It is called Sure Start.

Unfortunately, the number of Sure Start units and children’s centres have been in rapid decline in recent years. In the late ’90s and the noughties, Sure Start grew to become a staple of communities across our country, providing immeasurable educational, health and social support to millions. However, the respected and independent Sutton Trust tells us that 1,000 Sure Start centres have closed since 2010. Furthermore, Action for Children states that local authority spending on early years services has fallen by more than half since 2010.

We should therefore not look at family hubs in insolation. We must make sure that they retain a clear early years focus and a strong offer to families. It is in the early years that we see the fastest development of our brains and neurological pathways, so the right early years support can give children the best start in life and help to close the developmental gap between poorer children and their peers.

That is not to mention the serious health problems facing children, which are a growing concern. One in three primary school children in year 6 are either overweight or obese, and if the childhood obesity crisis is not tackled, half of all UK children will be obese or overweight by 2020. That problem is much worse in the most deprived areas. A quarter of five-year-olds in England suffer from tooth decay, making it the leading cause of hospital admissions for five to nine-year-olds. Around three children and young people in every classroom have a diagnosable mental health condition. No matter what the services are in local areas, it is clear that they certainly have their work cut out for them.

We believe that early years services have been cut to a shameful extent, and that the growing postcode lottery is completely unacceptable. All family hubs must keep the early years and children’s centres ethos very much at their heart.

[Fiona Bruce]

One pressure on local authorities is that of the increasing acute needs, which is what we seek to tackle. As the Children’s Commissioner highlighted, the funding disparity is great. It costs £204,000 a year to house a child in a secure children’s home and £100,000 a year to house a teenager in a young offenders institution. However, behavioural problem support can be delivered in a group setting at an early stage for around £1,000 per child. We must do that early intervention. The pressures on local authorities are so huge—look at the kind of figures I quoted—that they inevitably impact on what they can do by way of earlier intervention.

[Tracy Brabin]

I really do appreciate that intervention. I also read that report and found those numbers incredibly startling. It is common sense, is it not? Getting it right in the early years will be cost-effective. If a child is admitted to hospital to have their teeth out due to decay, that is costly for the NHS. Bringing dental health and similar schemes into early years provision might mean less of an impact on NHS budgets.

On early years, will the Minister provide a progress update on the consultation into children’s centres, and confirm whether work on that is ongoing and whether we should expect to see a published consultation? The consultation has been more than three years in the making and is on an incredibly important policy area. Will he please take this opportunity to give some transparency on the issue?

Lastly, Sir Graham, all that is left is for me to wish you, the Minister and all Members a peaceful and rewarding recess.

--- Later in debate ---

[Nadhim Zahawi]

Let me just make some headway. I will come back to my hon. Friend if time permits, because I have a lot to say about this subject

We share a common view about the importance of effective local support for families. That is why the Government’s legislation and funding is designed to give local authorities the freedom to decide the best way to deliver their services, based on their understanding of their local needs and the character of their areas. My hon. Friend the Member for Mansfield mentioned that, for every council that is not doing well, there is a very good example of one that has done well for its families. We welcome the development of family hubs as a way to meet local need. We encourage local authorities to adopt the family hub approach, which aims to build stronger relationships and co-locate services, if they believe it would deliver improved outcomes for their areas.

We already know that many councils are moving toward that model of support, working with local statutory, voluntary—as the hon. Member for Strangford mentioned —community and private sector partners. When I was promoted to Minister, one of the first meetings I had was with Lord Farmer and the team that put together the manifesto. I have already promised my hon. Friend the Member for Congleton that I would visit a family hub in Essex and I still plan to do so.

What we are discussing today is how we can ensure that strong, effective local services provide effective support for families and children. I would like to take this opportunity to talk about the work that the Government are doing to deliver that. The strengthening families manifesto argues that Government should be working to put in place a nought-to-19 model across the country. We know others advocate for a sharper focus on younger children, proposing that children’s centres focus on a nought-to-two age range. The shadow Minister talked about that early intervention.

My view is that both of those models, depending on local circumstances, could work and provide much needed support to families, just as I am sure that there are other models that can work, too. Let me be clear, it is for local authorities to determine the model that they believe will work best for them, based on their area’s specific needs and on the history of local provision, local community circumstances and priorities.

[Tracy Brabin]

The difficulty for some councils—in Kirklees, for example—is that 50% of their budget has been cut since 2010, so they are having to slice the pie into even smaller slices. Should the pie not be bigger?