Today, the Children’s Commissioner has launched the results from her ‘Big Ambition’ survey. The survey, which engaged over 350,000 children, young people and adults, covered 10 themes of family, education, social care, youth work, online safety, health, safety from crime, jobs and skills, unaccompanied children seeking asylum, and thoughts on ‘a better world’.

The report details that just one in five children in England believe their views are important to the adults who run the country, while only 10% of teenagers believe they have the power to influence the issues they care about.

Findings from the survey show that this generation of children is engaged with the world, full of practical solutions and optimistic for their futures – but they are frustrated and disempowered because their experiences are rarely reflected in policy making. Children are keen to resolve the kinds of issues and worries that were previously unique to adults. They want to be asked what they think and their responses listened to, with action taken to affect change.

The survey also captured the voices of babies by asking parents to respond on their behalf and by engaging with organisations that advocate on their behalf. The iHV was delighted to be able to engage with the team at The Children’s Commissioner’s Office and to participate in roundtable discussions, presenting the views of thousands of health visitors who engage with millions of babies every year.

The Children’s Commissioner, Dame Rachel de Souza said:

“I want this paper to serve as a call to action, for whoever forms the next government, to decide now that they will commit all their energy and effort to improving the lives of children.

“The policies proposed in this paper draw directly on what children themselves told us. As such, they are ambitious. They would make the rights children are entitled to a reality and provide a positive vision for what childhood could be like if only it were reimagined through the eyes of children.

“Children don’t feel the need to debate why it will be beneficial in the long term to ensure that every family has sufficient financial capacity to support their children. They simply state that no child should go hungry, because it is wrong. They do not talk in the language of targets, and they do not set the bar at what is simply easy to achieve. They speak in terms of fairness. Children believe that true inclusion means that no child is left out. As such, our policies are designed to improve the lives of all children.”

The Children’s Commissioner will shortly be publishing a cohesive and ambitious policy framework for the next government to improve children’s lives and to make the rights children are entitled to a reality. This will include a welcome recommendation for a joint children’s workforce strategy to ensure those working with children are caring, professional and equipped to do their jobs, and that there is a strong pipeline into senior leadership roles. And this includes a call to strengthen health visiting. The recommendation aims to ensure, “additional health visitors are recruited so that all babies and children receive their checks in person, regardless of where they live, and can access the ongoing support they need.”

iHV CEO, Alison Morton, joined the launch event in Parliament today.  As supporters of #ChildrenAtTheTable, we back the @ChildrensComm call to action in #TheBigAmbition for the next government to commit to putting all their energy and effort towards improving the lives of children and young people. Read #ChildrenAtTheTable response to #TheBigAmbition: https://buff.ly/3IRParG

The Children’s Commissioner for England has published a report looking at the provision of early years services for children across the country, alongside a warning that many nurseries are at risk of closure, hitting the life chances of some of the most vulnerable children and holding back the economic recovery following lockdown.

The report, ‘Best Beginnings’, is an in-depth examination of early years provision in England. It describes a system that is disjointed and often failing to target those disadvantaged children with development problems who most need early help.

It comes amid a recent warning from childcare providers that one in four nurseries and pre-schools fear closure within the year, rising to one in three in the most disadvantaged areas, as a result of the coronavirus lockdown.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director iHV, commented: 

“Best beginnings is a powerful and very well researched report from Anne Longfield, the Children’s Commissioner and her team. It recommends a strengthened holistic, cross-government approach to ensuring that every infant is supported to meet its full potential, whether through strengthened community services, including health visiting, or a strengthened childcare/nursery offer.

“I particularly liked the starting point: There are certain things that every baby needs as the foundations for a healthy, happy life:

  1. Loving, nurturing relationships with parents and carers
  2. A safe home free from stress and adversity
  3. The right help to develop good language and other cognitive skills
  4. Support to manage behaviour and regulate their emotions
  5. Good physical and mental health and access to healthcare”

“Helping parents achieve this for their infants is the essence of health visiting.”

The report shows the need for an overhaul of the early years system in England. It details how too many children, particularly those growing up in disadvantaged families, are already behind by the time they start formal education. Last year, 29% of five- year-olds in England were not at the expected level of development by the time they started school, including 45% of children receiving Free School Meals. In Middlesbrough, 38% of children are not achieving the expected level of development aged 5, while in Dudley and Sandwell it is 35% of children.

The report sets out how starting school behind can undermine children’s life chances. The Commissioner’s office analysed data on all children in England who had not met the expected level on half of their early learning goals at age 5 and tracked them through to the end of primary school. These children were:

  • five times as likely to end up being excluded by age 10
  • twice as likely to have had contact with children’s social care by age 11
  • three times more likely to be struggling with reading at age 11
  • four times more likely to be struggling with writing at age 11.

Recent research also shows these children are more likely to leave school with no GCSEs, more likely to suffer some form of mental ill health and more likely to be obese.

The Children’s Commissioner is calling for a new ‘Best Beginnings’ early years investment plan, ranging from Children and Family hubs to midwives and health visitors, to tackle these problems at the beginning of a child’s life rather than waiting until crises develop in later years. While some foundations of an excellent early years service are already in place, the Children’s Commissioner is urging the Government to bring together and turbocharge these services into one system which provides first class provision that works for families and ensures that all children, including the most disadvantaged, get the best possible start in life.

The Children’s Commissioner makes a number of recommendations including:

  • An emergency recovery package for the childcare providers whose finances have been worst affected by Covid-19. Government should also reconsider the design of Universal Credit which makes it hard for lower earning families to get help with childcare, as parents have to pay costs upfront and then wait to be repaid.
  • An expanded offer of 30 hours free childcare and early education for all children aged two, three and four, and 15 free hours for all one-year-olds, so that early years education is seen as part of ordinary life, in the same way that school is.
  • A cross-government ‘Best Beginnings’ strategy led by a Cabinet Minister for the Early Years. This would set out how a revitalised and extended Healthy Child Programme, the Early Years Foundation Stage, Children and Family Hubs, antenatal services and the Troubled Families Programme would work together.
  • A Family Guarantee of support for under-fives and their families delivered by health visitors, early help and Troubled Families workers, family nurses or family support workers based in Family Hubs.
  • A national infrastructure of Children and Family Hubs. These would be a centre point of support for children and families and act as a gateway to multiple services. Each hub would be a base for universal services so that every child is reached.
  • A Government review of early education and childcare funding to ensure it is working as effectively as possible to help children and families who need it most.
  • A single system for supporting families with early years education and childcare, with fees charged in relation to families’ incomes as they are in Sweden and Norway.
  • A national workforce strategy for the early years, focusing on staffing across existing health, local government and early years settings.
  • Better sharing of data between different services, so children who need help do not fall through the gaps or go unidentified. This should include more effective use of a child’s NHS number and Unique Pupil Number so it is possible to match children in different databases.

The Institute of Health Visiting (iHV) comments on today’s publication of Bleak Houses: Tackling the crisis of family homelessness in England by the Children’s Commissioner.

iHV is saddened to learn that 124,000 children are now classed as homeless with some children needing to be housed in shipping containers. The councils blame this on a shortfall in their income of £159 million.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director iHV, said:

“Whilst this sounds like a lot of money for the government to find, the actual costs of short, medium and longer term negative consequences for these children and their families on the fiscal purse will be very much more, including costs to the care, health, education, social security and criminal justice budgets.”

 

There are thousands of children in England who are living in homeless families, stuck in poor quality temporary accommodation, often with low prospects of finding something permanent. There are many others who are at risk of ending up homeless. This report shines a light on this homelessness crisis and shares the experiences of some of those children.

 

 

 

The Children’s Commissioner for England, Anne Longfield, has published a new report that brings together a range of information held by various government departments, agencies and others to reveal the scale of child vulnerability in England.

The report, “The Children’s Commissioner’s 2018 Report into Childhood Vulnerability”, estimates that 2.1 million of England’s 11.8 million children – one in six – are living in families with risks so serious that they need some level of help. The study also warns that for 1.6 million of those vulnerable children, the support is effectively ‘invisible’ – we don’t know if they are actually getting any coordinated help, despite the difficulties they are growing up with. Some of the risks these children face include parents with mental health problems or parents who are alcoholics or have substance abuse problems.

Dr Cheryll Adams CBE, Executive Director of the Institute of Health Visiting, commented:

“The Institute of Health Visiting welcomes this very helpful report looking at the current status of services for our most vulnerable babies and children.  It is very sad to see how the cuts to local authority children’s and public health funding have resulted in so many more children being put into expensive and life changing care proceedings.

“We welcome the Commissioner’s call for more investment into health visiting services for the most vulnerable babies, but this also needs to extend to the universal service for all families.  We know that the majority of need isn’t conspicuous.

Dr Adams continued:

“Well trained and resourced health visiting services can not only prevent children ever needing referral to care services, but also ensure that all vulnerable babies are identified long before their difficulties become overt and needing referral for specialist help. Through their support to parents, health visitors can help to ensure all children have a more positive start in life with the service seeking to avoid children ever needing care proceedings.

“Investing early to save later needs to be a new direction for policy. It could have huge implications for the health and welfare of many vulnerable or potentially vulnerable children and families, whilst resulting in many savings to the exchequer.”