COM0018
Written evidence submitted by What About The Children?
- What About The Children? (WATCh?) would like to address points 1 & 5 of the Commissioner’s commitments: Understanding and celebrating childhood, and a machinery of government that best helps children flourish.
- A society ambitious for children must ensure that the context for raising babies and children is properly supported. This requires a fundamental step change with the needs of children driving policy.
- Wide-ranging peer-reviewed research confirms that it is the quality of the infant/adult relationship from conception, through the period of rapid brain development in the first 30 to 36 months of life, that is the single most important protective factor for children's emotional wellbeing and their future physical and mental health (Schore et al). The infant/mother relationship is ‘the most important relationship in a child’s life’ - ‘this first relationship determines the biological and emotional ‘template’ for all future relationships’ (Perry B).
- If parents are to fulfil their key role of ensuring optimum brain development we urgently need a change in political will if children are to flourish.
- Government should put in place:
- A Cabinet-level Minister for Families to lead genuine integrated, multi-professional, cross-departmental approach to service provision and funding.
- Fiscal policy that genuinely prioritises families and their role/work in raising children. Currently the UK compares very unfavourably to other OCED countries on the tax burden of a two parent family with two children, with one parent in paid work and the other undertaking the essential care of the children.
- High quality relationship education in schools, with information about child development, particularly the importance of consistent, sensitive, loving care for optimum brain development.
- Easy access to relationship support that has mainstream appeal.
- Genuinely universal services which include preparation for parenthood with provision accessible and tailored for the different needs of mothers and fathers.
References
What About The Children? APPG for Conception to Age 2 The First 1001 Days
Evidence for Enquiry: factors affecting optimal development.
Dr Carole Ulanowsky Professor Sir Denis Pereira Gray (2015)
www.whataboutthechildren.org.uk
Building Great Britains Report 2015
www.1001criticaldays.co.uk/buildinggreatbritainsreport
“The Taxation of Families (gap) - International Comparisons” (2012) Care Research Paper ISBN978-0-905195193)
Families in Britain Report, IPSOS Mori/Policy Exchange, quoting Office of National Statistics (2008) ‘Working Lives’ accessed at www.statistics.gov.uk/cci/nugget.asp?id=1654, cited in Cabinet Office/ The Strategy Unit (2008) ‘Families in Britain: An Evidence Paper’ Department for Children, Schools and Families.
Perry B Born for Love: Why Empathy is Essential --and Endangered, with Maia Szalavitz, 2010, ISBN 0-06-165678-X
Schore, A.N. (1994) Affect Regulation and the Origin of the Self: the Neurobiology of Emotional Development. New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc.
Schore, A.N. (2013) ‘Bowlby’s “Environment of Evolutionary Adaptedness”: Recent Studies on the Interpersonal Neurobiology of Attachment and Emotional Development’ in D.Narvaez, J.Panksepp, A.N.Schore, T.R.Gleason Evolution, Early Experience and Human Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press
Schore, A.N. (2014 i) The Science of the Art of Psychotherapy. Unpublished Lecture/Masterclass given at Centre for Emotional Development, University of Brighton (23.9.14)
Schore, A.N (2014ii) Family Care Meets Attachment Science. Unpublished lecture, Portcullis House, Westminster (25.9.14)
October 2015