For parents with young children, it’s been a game of grandmother’s footsteps. First they heard from the new Labour government that they will open 300 new state nurseries in England to cater for the 30 hours of free childcare that families with children aged nine months and upwards are eligible for. Now they hear Naomi Eberstadt, high priestess of New Labour’s early years programme Sure Start, proclaim the home, not the nursery, as the best place for a child under one.
The ‘yes but no but yes’ approach of policy makers risks further confusing working parents. The 30 hours of free childcare was the previous Conservative government’s response to the UK’s crisis-level economic inactivity. It might prove tricky to meet the mental health needs of the millions who had dropped out of the labour force, their thinking was – far easier to place babies as young as nine months in a state-run nursery to free their parents to find, or return to, a job. The impact on that baby’s life chances might be felt in the future, but that would be another government’s problem.
For too long, parents have been watching, despairing, from the sidelines
From the outset however, the free childcare policy has faced obstacles – in the dearth of provision (only a third of councils have enough childcare places) and, tragically, in the poor quality of care found in over 650 nurseries across the countries. With infants not yet able to talk, the failures of a childminder only surface when children come to harm.
And so the childcare system continues to disappoint. British parents face the highest childcare costs of any OECD country, with an average family spending more than a fifth of their income on childcare. Yet the system delivers little choice to parents, few rewards to providers, and leaves employers feeling short-changed.
These multiple failures are born of an unresolved question: what is childcare for? To enable parents to work or to ensure the best start in life for children? To reduce inequalities or to boost the Treasury’s takings in taxes and NI contributions? Policy makers seem stuck in a blindman’s bluff where they stumble from one ideal to the other.
They should heed the neuroscientists and approach childcare through a different, long term lens. The Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) argues that government should prioritise the early years when the baby’s brain is developing and parents are more likely to be financially struggling. If parents – even those on low incomes – can be present in their infant’s earliest years, that baby will enjoy healthy cognitive development and grow to have better health, better relationships, and greater success at school and work. Without that committed and continuous one-on-one presence – such as when left to the not-so-tender mercies of minders with up to three other charges in their care – infants will flounder.
Parents sense this, even if they ignore the science. In a survey for the CSJ by pollsters Public First, 81 per cent of parents with young children said they believed parents should be supported to spend more time at home with their children. Meanwhile, 61 per cent (62 per cent among Labour voters) wanted the government to give them a budget to spend on raising their children, rather than vouchers or subsidies for approved childcare providers.
Meeting such a demand would call for the £13 billion that constitutes our child benefit bill to be redirected towards supporting families in the first years of their child’s life. Front-loading child benefit payments so that they target families with children under the age of five would give parents with two pre-schoolers up to £7,400 a year, while reducing the annual cost to the taxpayer from £13 billion to £10 billion.
Admittedly there would be losers in this new scheme: parents with older children would find they have less support than young families – but then, the neuroscience confirms this trade-off is necessary. Investing in children in their first 1,001 days is key to prevention. A solid foundation, with positive emotional interaction (‘attachment’ was the buzz word once), stimulus to think and question, and an income above the poverty threshold can prevent risks down the line – from school exclusion through to mental health issues and joblessness.
This is especially true of children in low income households, when learning skills in their earliest days can prevent the attainment gap that affects so many. The savings inherent in this preventative approach are significant: think of the cost of school exclusions (£2.9 billion last year), or the average cost of a place as an in-patient in a child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) unit (£61,000).
For too long, parents have been watching, despairing, from the sidelines, as a succession of governments take turns at playing the childcare card to win votes – only to then lose interest. Enough’s enough. The new Labour government should resolve to give parents what they want (more time with their children) when they want it (in the early years). Such a bold proposition doesn’t have to come at an extra cost. Parents – and their children – will prove why this is a win-win solution.
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