Rachel Hamada finds out why the state needs to support children from the moment they are conceived
Easter in Muirhouse. The golden sun shines down the avenues of dilapidated Edinburgh council housing. With daffodils and crocuses peppering the green grass of Pennywell Road, everything suddenly looks much more beautiful and hopeful than it might have done even weeks ago. Walk into the local primary school and meet some of the local five-year-olds – Amy, Ethan, Joanne and Martine.
They are sitting with their teacher talking about how they are feeling today – “happy!”. Then, because it’s the holidays and they’ve all been well behaved, they get to choose what activity they do. Martine, impressively, opts to clean up the playhouse. Amy and Joanne make Easter cards, and Ethan plays with a stuffed cat.
They may look like model pupils, but in fact they are part of a pilot at local Craigroyston Primary – all of them were identified in their nursery year as having problems that could result in their struggling with mainstream education. So they now make up a “nurture group” – a 1970s concept that went out of fashion for a while but has been resurrected in reaction to soaring school exclusion rates. All of these children exhibited troubling behaviour of some kind when they started in the nurture group back in October – but finally, as the Easter holiday is about to start, the benefits are starting to show and the children are starting to blossom.
Joanne was previously extremely withdrawn and would scarcely speak in class – now she has a voice and more confidence. Ethan showed signs of obsessive behaviour, such as having to be first for everything, but now he has learnt that this isn’t important and that he will still get a turn. Martine used to talk over other people and shout to get attention, now she signals to the teacher when she wants to say something. Amy didn’t know how to play or speak to people when she started at nursery – and she had just one friend, which made her paranoid about what happened if her friend wasn’t there. Now she has made lots of friends. There is a high rate of absenteeism in the area, but the children who come to the nurture group pester their parents to let them come because they enjoy it.
The nurture group teaches the children the curriculum, but above all, it helps them to develop emotionally and socially – showing them how to collaborate with each other and share, how to empathise with one another, when to speak and when to listen, how to make friends, and how to sit down, share a meal and talk. They are given praise, encouraged to play, learn and explore the world and given a secure environment with access to adults that they can trust, who behave consistently and positively toward them. “We are like a mini family,” explains nursery nurse Linda Grandison, “and we help to give children any opportunities they might be missing as they are growing up.” Parents have reacted very positively, she says, despite concerns that they might see the group as being too “social worky” or that that their parenting was being criticised.
Who knows how Trainspotting would have turned out if Begbie and Renton had gone to a nurture group when they were wee? But funding, as always, is an issue. As part of a pilot, the future of this nurture group isn’t guaranteed.
Back to front. That’s how in Scotland, as in many other countries in the world, we deal with the human beings that make up our unique population. We invest the most money in people when they are coming toward the end of their educational journey, rather than at the beginning. Levels of prestige and money accorded to those who support and educate children and young people increase as the subject gets older and older.
Nurture and parenting are undervalued. Yet parenting is “possibly the most important job of all”, according to Alex Salmond at the launch last week of the Government’s early years policy paper. Why is it then that an investment banker is often seen as a more valuable contributor to society than a housewife, and a university professor as more skilled than a nursery nurse?
Why is it then that an investment banker is often seen as a more valuable contributor to society than a housewife, and a university professor as more skilled than a nursery nurse? 
This is the nut that has to be cracked if Scotland is really going to address the issue of early years. Investment has to be made, time and thought spared, and social attitudes have to change. Scotland is in a double bind – not only does it need its young to be nurtured and supported better for a positive future, but it also needs more babies to be born to support older generations and to drive the economy. Yet statutory maternity pay means that many working women struggle on substantially less money than they earn normally if they choose to have children and spend time at home with them. Meanwhile, nursery teachers have seen their jobs axed by many local authorities in recent years, and nursery nurses are hampered by low wages and poor prospects of career progression.
Early years are when children’s minds are most open and malleable – and can physically be damaged by neglect – yet currently this is the time when they are supported by undervalued, low-paid and often low-skilled staff. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.
So now the consensus seems to be that more focus and investment in early years is a “must do”. It would take an extremely bloody-minded devil’s advocate to argue the toss on this one. Inevitably the political parties, the SNP and Labour in particular, will use the early years arena to score petty points off one another, but the fundamental point is that every MSP in the Scottish Parliament agrees that more has to be done to support babies and children in their most formative years. (If this is not true then Holyrood would be happy to hear from the person who doesn’t agree!)
This doesn’t make it an easy task. Alan Sinclair, chief executive of the Work Foundation, who recently published a paper entitled 0-5: How Small Children Make a Big Difference, points out that there is an important difference between “a nodding agreement and a serious practical commitment”. The Government’s policy plan, developed with local authorities, is a short and vague document that resembles the air around us in that it’s clearly a good thing in general… but it’s very difficult to grasp any substance. The hope, presumably, is that detail will emerge during the consultation as health, education, social work and childhood experts from across Scotland contribute their penny’s worth. Sinclair is cautiously positive about it, saying that it is an “encouraging first step toward catching up in an area we are terribly behind on”.
Lots of the ideas key to early years – for example, more partnership working, multi-agency approaches, building family and community capacity – are common sense, if not very sexy. The sexier stuff is the economics (early years investment could yield a return of up to 17 times the amount put in, according to one Nobel prize-winning economist) and the developmental, psychological and neurological side (how does a baby’s brain become differently wired if it cannot form a bond with an adult or if it suffers extreme neglect).
The point is that early years is a vast subject, and not an area that the Government can necessarily tackle in one fell swoop. Good intentions, time and thought, putting its money where its mouth is, and bringing the public on board will be critical, and moves such as withdrawing funding for nursery places for vulnerable two-year-olds at a national level, and closing crèches at a council level don’t immediately seem like the best start. Hopefully, these moves herald a blank slate for the Government to draw a more positive picture of the future on. According to Salmond: “It will ensure that Scotland no longer suffers the saddest thing of all – the potential waste that has gone on over generations
It will ensure that Scotland no longer suffers the saddest thing of all – the potential waste that has gone on over generations
.”
The Government has now committed to a ten-year strategy, which will start from pre-conception and finish when a child is eight years old. Sinclair stresses that some of the biggest potential gains could be made as early as the first stages of pregnancy. For example, midwives and health visitors could have a much bigger role to play than that of purely monitoring physical health – such as helping to address parenting skills, family relationships and education. This could be direct or a case of getting a mother connected with the right professionals.
The rise across the board in drug and alcohol use by young women is also reflected in those who become pregnant, and medical evidence shows the devastating effect that this can have on babies in the womb. Scotland also has one of the worst records, in international terms, on breastfeeding, which strengthens a baby’s immune system and the bond between a child and mother.
Class and age are undoubtedly issues. According to the ‘Growing Up in Scotland’ study, mothers under 25 are more likely to be living in low-income households and receiving benefits; more likely to be single parents; less likely to be employed; less likely to have educational qualifications; more likely to be living in council housing; and more likely to live in an area of deprivation. Bringing up a new baby is a challenge for any mother, but the array of extra obstacles facing young mothers is formidable.
Sinclair says that he is not a eugenicist but that it is a fact that young parents from socially deprived backgrounds tend to have more children. These children are more likely to suffer neglect, to witness domestic violence, to have drug or alcohol-using parents and to experience a “poor” developmental background, with less parental interaction, play time and reading. When these children grow up, they often have children young themselves. In mathematical terms, the number of children coming from poor developmental backgrounds is growing exponentially. This is why, Sinclair thinks, public services in Scotland are struggling so desperately to tackle social problems – the numbers of people with problems stemming from early childhood are huge, and growing. He says he wants to avoid being alarmist, but that something does have to be done soon.
The picture is reminiscent of the satirical film Idiocracy, in which an average American wakes up 500 years in the future after being cryogenically frozen. He is shocked to find himself easily the most intelligent man alive, as during the time that he has been frozen, the poor and under-educated have bred at a rate far higher than the university graduates and careerists.
That said, the middle classes are far from perfect in all of this, according to Sinclair. Career ambitions and the need to earn to consume mean that middle-class parents may be generous with presents and toys, but they are often stingy with their own time. Very young children can be farmed off to private childcare for long periods during the week, depriving them of the chance to continue bonding with their parents. It is generally recognised that however important quality childcare can be, there is no substitute for the in-depth knowledge that a parent has of their own child’s personality and development. Parenting skills are key, says Sinclair, for parents across the board. Different social backgrounds may mean different hazards, but there are still too few parents getting it right.
There is a danger that too much government involvement with pregnant mothers and young families becomes labelled as “social engineering”. This is clearly a concern for the Government, which says in its policy plan: “It is important to make clear that early intervention does not mean early interference by the state at national or local level. A key part of any early intervention policy is building the capacity of individuals, families and communities to secure the best outcomes for themselves.” In short, it’s about prevention rather than the welfare state acting as an ambulance, speeding from emergency to emergency. Overflowing prisons, swathes of the population not working and on benefits, young people leaving school with few prospects, hospitals clogged with heart attack and stab victims – all of this demands huge levels of government and professional resources. Tackle the root cause and these manifestations of a physically and mentally unhealthy society should decline.
But how does the Government afford to do this all now? It is still saddled with all the existing problems that it needs to “fix” in the short term – often for quite a lot of money. For example, social work in one local authority area with troubled 18 to 22-year-olds is costing £120,000 per year per individual, which could buy a lot of early years support. But if we are talking about morality and social equity, it hardly seems fair to abandon generations for whom things have gone badly wrong. In logical terms, we can’t either, explains Sinclair – as “many of those who have suffered the most, and are the most wayward are now parents themselves”.
The Government undoubtedly faces some tough spending decisions. Margaret Brunton of the Scottish Pre-School Play Association says that it “recognises the complexity and challenge of the tasks facing Government and local authorities about where they should prioritise and allocate public expenditure”. However, she also points out that currently, Scotland spends just 0.5 per cent of its GDP on early years and childcare services, compared with the 1 per cent recommended by the European Commission’s Childcare Network and the spending of over 2 per cent of GDP in Scandinavian countries.
Now the Government has indicated a theoretical willingness to invest in early years, what will it actually end up doing in concrete terms? Much should come out of the month-long consultation that has just begun, and an early years “framework” will be in place by this autumn.
Children’s Commissioner Kathleen Marshall says that in terms of early years, her mantra is “safe, active and happy”. In terms of children being safe, she says there is often a lack of confidence to tackle a situation early on, for example, when there is a background of substance abuse at home. Failure to intervene can result in the child losing out developmentally, and the longer the child is left unsupported in a detrimental environment, the harder it is to tackle any developmental disadvantage.
In terms of children being “active”, the key is play, she says, adding that she will be scrutinising the Government’s early years proposals to make sure that play is a key plank rather than just an add-on. Play isn’t just a nice experience for children – it also helps develop how children feel about learning and helps them to learn actively. In terms of children being “happy”, Marshall says it is critical that everything done in the early years looks at the subjective wellbeing of the child – for example, childcare should not be looked at just through the lens of getting parents back into work, but also how it affects the child. There are children whose parents may not be working who would still benefit from being able to access a childcare environment.
The divide between childcare and early years education is often an artificial one, she adds, with early years tending to be less about formal education and more about play and social development. “We need to value nurture much more.”
Jean Carwood-Edwards is early years team leader at Learning and Teaching Scotland and helps to deliver support and ideas for professionals working with very young children. She says that she hopes the early years framework will ensure support for high-quality early years provision, and that investing in developing the professional capabilities of the workforce will definitely have a major impact and should be a priority. However, she adds that every child should be looked at within the context of their family and local community. She mentions the word “holistic”, which comes up time and time again in relation to early years, because young children have to be treated as complex, dynamic wholes rather than having discrete categories of needs.
As well as early years and encouraging children to adopt “active learning” models, where they seek out learning themselves rather than being passively taught, there is the issue of transition, says Carwood-Edwards – giving adequate support to children when their lives reach a new stage, such as when they progress from nursery to primary school. Fundamentally, all these strategies are investments not in the early years, but for life, she explains – much as a house needs solid foundations. “When children have the very best start, they are much more likely to reach their own potential. A positive ethos can continue on when those children themselves become parents.”
Encouraging high workforce standards and continuing professional development, as well as boosting levels of pay, is desperately important to ensure that children get the complex range of support they need and to make the early years profession attractive to the wide range of people it requires. According to Professor Collette Tayler of the University of Melbourne, who co-authored the OECD’s Starting Strong II report on international early years provision, “early childhood professionals need the capacity to diagnose subtle as well as obvious changes in the condition of children, the skill to liaise closely with parents and colleagues to support child development and advance learning, the design competence to prepare informal yet well-structured learning and development programmes, and the relational skills to build, for each child, a secure engaging environment”. To expect all of this from staff who are low-paid, poorly qualified and with negligible chances of career progression is pretty naïve.
At the moment the profession is largely female, but a more representative gender mix would be ideal for children in need of male role models. Divisive assumptions about gender are behind many early years problems, such as the undervaluing of parenting and the childcare workforce, and the failure to understand that stereotypically, “female” skills such as nurture, lead to hard economic savings down the line as likewise does the the tackling of “male” issues such as violence and knife crime. According to Sinclair: “A lot of policymaking is a male world still. It may not be something that we talk about, but some of the worst prejudices are the ones left unspoken.”
Brunton of the Scottish Pre-School Play Association agrees that pay and conditions for early years staff and gender imbalances must be tackled. “We see an increased presence of men in the workforce, particularly working directly with children, as being beneficial to children, and as a means to generating greater involvement of fathers in their child’s care, early learning and development.” She agrees, unsurprisingly, that play must be a key plank of the early years framework, and she also flags up the importance of a holistic approach; a mixed economy of early years provision and parental choice; strong guidelines, frameworks and quality assurance; and increased and more consistent spending on services provided by the voluntary sector.
David Milliken, who is the Scottish director of charity Home-Start, which supports vulnerable parents in the home, says that currently the charity finds that the involvement of statutory agencies with its 32 schemes throughout Scotland, ranges from excellent to almost non-existent. “The lack of relatively secure funding is a constant concern, and I would like to see a move to a more sustainable, longer-term approach.” He hopes to see everyone involved in early years activities working towards the same set of agreed aims. “I would very much like to see increased co-operation and joint activity amongst health, education, social work and the voluntary sector, who all have much to contribute in different ways.”
Milliken says that it is essential that families should have a voice in saying what services they need and want. “There is no single model which provides a panacea for everything, so we need a good mix of services and we urgently need to ensure that the services are not stigmatising, because this is a very real fear that people have. We all need support at various stages of our life, and many of us are lucky enough to be able to access this through family or friends. But many cannot.”
Back in Muirhouse, Ethan is happily feeding a plastic jam tart to his stuffed cat while Joanne makes a smiley face out of tissue paper. Their futures are in front of them, and perhaps their whole lives will be different because of the extra attention and help they got when they were five.
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