A series of consistent themes dominated the Blair Brown years.While Blair himself was deeply committed to improving education for all children, there was also a strong push from both politicians about child poverty, and particularly about reducing the gap in outcomes between the poorest children and the wider child population.While the main strategy for reducing the gap in outcomes was through statutory schooling, there also emerged a keen interest in family policy, both in policies to reduce pressures on families and policies to enhance the capabilities of parents. Supporting parents and supporting parenting
The social class gradient in outcomes for children is well established.Children from better off backgrounds do better than those from poorer backgrounds.Reducing pressures on poorer families, that is, supporting parents, is one way that Government can intervene to ameliorate the impact of poverty, or indeed reduce the numbers of children living in poverty.Such policies include targeted benefits, improved parental leave arrangements, flexible working arrangements, and flexible and affordable childcare.Government can also intervene to support parenting, improving the behaviours of parents in the ways they interact with their children, from informal support, advice and information to highly structured parenting programmes.
The decisions on which of these twin tracks to take has become highly politicised.The left will argue that the real problem is poverty, and with a more generous benefits systems and better employment prospects, child poverty and the poor outcomes associated with poverty will significantly decrease.The right argue that poverty is no excuse, any parent, given the right capabilities, can improve their child’s life chances.The either /or nature makes this a sterile debate.It is clearly easier to adopt the behaviours associated with ‘good’ parenting if the pressure to provide the basics are reduced.Not all well off people make good parents, and not all poor people are bad parents; it is just significantly more difficult to be good parent with a minimum level of resources.Finding the right balance between reducing pressures and increasing capabilities is challenging, and critically important.
Supporting parenting is intervening early
The evidence is now substantial on the impact of severe stress on infant and pre-natal brain development.However, there is also evidence of on-going brain plasticity into adolescence and beyond.High quality home learning environments and early education improve the chances of success in later life, but they do not provide inoculation against all risks as children mature.Children experience risks well into their teens and support to mitigate such risk also needs to be available.The arguments about the need to increase resource allocation for the early years were made on the basis of decades of significant under investment.The second strong argument for increased investment in early years and parenting support is that there are significantly more interventions and programmes with a stronger success record with very young children and their parents, than there are programmes for older children.Intervening early is likely to cost less, and achieve more.
Shifting the curve or addressing the tail
Most of the major social policy systems changes in the last hundred years have shifted the curve, leaving the general population wealthier, healthier,and wiser.The Victorians provided clean water for everyone, not just those likely to contract cholera. State provision of education and a National Health Service have also shifted the curve. Universal provision of early education is already ensuring more children experience success at school, and therefore, have better chances of employability in adult life.Good early-years provision is also associated with better physical and mental health in adulthood. Unfortunately, no policy works for everyone; as the curve is shifted, the few in number for whom successive policies have not worked are left further and further behind.The tail becomes longer, thinner, and those at the very bottom have a complex set of problems that no single policy or initiative can address. A set of key features are likely to coalesce around families in this group: inter generational worklessness, poor housing, mental ill health.An additional high risk factor for poor child outcomes is having a parent in prison.None of these issues individually predict disaster, but collectively, within the same family, they create almost intractable problems that cannot be dealt with by children’s services or indeed, by the best evidence based parenting programmes.Nor can they be dealt with by traditional community development or Big Society approaches. These are the families that neighbours don’t like, and for good reason, don’t want to associate with.
Addressing the curve requires a niche market approach.It requires sophisticated market research to establish from the families themselves as well as from data analysis, what would work. Carefully targeted programmes like Family Intervention Projects have had some success, as has the Family Nurse Partnership programme.However, we have failed to develop a systematic approach to targeting based on both adult and child risk factors.
The Government is conducting a number of reviews on the riots.Firstly, any review should re-examine the data analysis done by the Social Exclusion Task Force on the nature of deep exclusion.They should also do a much clearer analysis of who was involved in the riots. How much was about deeply rooted long term disconnection and how much was going along with the crowd for free stuff.Finally, any new proposals need to consider the impact on the wider family, not just the individuals caught up in the affray. Putting more parents in prison, particularly if they have not had contact with the criminal justice system before, is likely to increase rather than decrease risk of intergenerational disaffection.
