Speech in the Scottish Parliament

11 February 2011

I welcome this debate on early intervention in health and education, which is crucially important to future generations.

Every child deserves a good start in life regardless of where and to whom they were born.

When we took evidence in the Health and Sport Committee on spending priorities a couple of years ago, I remember that the evidence was stark.

We were told that the health budget should be targeted towards the early years, as those years will impact on a child’s mental and physical health throughout their lives.

The children who face the biggest disadvantage are those whose parents are drug or alcohol dependent.

Without support, their future mental health suffers because they do not learn resilience.

As a society, we have a big job to do to protect those young people.

There is always a dilemma about what form intervention should take.

There are those who would remove children from their home where their parents are drug or alcohol dependent, and I have some sympathy with that view.

However, history has shown us that looked-after children can be more vulnerable than those who are left at home.

A child may be reluctant to seek help and confide in adults if they are afraid that speaking out will lead to them being taken into care and removed from their parents.

Parental love is probably the most important thing for a child when they are growing up, but wider family support is also crucial.

Children of addicted parents are likely to suffer from poverty, poor housing and poor nutrition, and they are less likely to participate fully in education.

Those are dangerous conditions for a child’s development and welfare, and we often see several generations of the same family suffering from the same problems.

Children need the state to intervene to help them to break the cycle, and it will never be a cheap option.

The best way of doing that is working with the family.

That work must be intensive and continuous, because a lifestyle that has been learned over generations cannot be put right by a couple of short parenting classes.

Resources are tight, and finding funding for such intensive intervention is not easy.

However, if we do not fund it, the costs to us will be even higher, because it is also clear that the later the intervention, the greater the cost.

I remember the discussion in the Health and Sport Committee in which it was suggested that we should concentrate all our efforts on children and forgo any intervention with the parents, but I find that approach difficult because parents are the most important influence on a child’s life.

Helping the parent will ultimately help the child.

However, the later in a person’s life that intervention happens, the higher the cost to the person and to wider society.

If the intervention comes only when the child grows up and becomes a parent, the problem has doubled.

Therefore, it is imperative that at-risk groups are identified quickly.

Other issues besides living in poverty and having parents with addiction problems indicate which children are most at risk.

They include living in disadvantaged areas, being brought up in households in which there are poor parenting skills or in which there is conflict and domestic abuse, and living in a home where they are not provided with adequate support, perhaps because of illness or disability.

Health visitors have their part to play, as their intervention with the family during the early years will pick up those issues and they are able to guide parents towards solutions.

However, we cannot leave it to one group of professionals alone.

If we do that, we will fail.

For example, midwives interact with women in pregnancy.

Early intervention should start at that stage.

Drug and alcohol consumption, as well as a poor diet, in pregnancy can affect the unborn child.

Greater reporting to social work and child protection agencies should be encouraged through continuous professional development within the health and education sectors.

The Benefits Agency also has a role to play but seldom gets involved. Anyone on benefits will be pretty close to poverty.

Surely staff in the benefits offices have a role in identifying those who are at risk and pointing them to support services.

A study this week showed that children who had poor diets and ate more processed food at the age of three had lower intelligence quotients in future years.

How do we tackle that?

We all know that processed food is cheaper.

Some families really cannot afford to provide a balanced, healthy diet.

The Labour Party has long promoted policies to help young people in that position.

We introduced free nursery care, breakfast clubs and the child trust fund, increased child benefit and introduced tax credits that were designed to lift children out of poverty.

The Conservative party in the Parliament has used its debating time to highlight the importance of early intervention.

I am grateful for that, but I say to the Conservative members—this is meant to be constructive—that they should try to extend their influence to their Conservative colleagues in Westminster, impress on them the importance of the issue and urge them to stop dismantling the much-needed support that vulnerable families receive.

They should ask their Westminster colleagues not to freeze child benefit and to remove the restrictions on family tax credits.

Yesterday, I listened to news reports that child care is more expensive in Scotland.

That prevents low-income parents from working and damns their children to poverty.

The abolition of the child trust fund also takes money from the most needy in our society.

I was also horrified to hear that the Child Support Agency will top-slice absent parents’ contributions to their children’s upbringing.

That literally takes the food out of the mouths of children.

The Conservative party would do us all a great service if it used its influence with its Westminster colleagues to stop those policies, but we cannot forget about the cuts that are being imposed on local authorities by yesterday’s SNP Government budget, which the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in the Parliament supported.

The budget will lead to the closure of breakfast clubs, as well as to cuts in the numbers of teachers and support staff—the very professionals who are trained to assess children’s needs.

We owe it to future generations to get it right.

By getting it right for every child, we benefit not only financially but as a society.

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