The Early Years Matter – FACT. That is according to Professor Susan Deacon`s independent report which by some extraordinary coincidence apes many other independent reports globally.
"The period before birth and in the early months and years of life has a profound impact on a child’s life, on their physical, mental and emotional development and, in turn, their life chances. Our intuition tells us that. A vast body of research and evidence proves it beyond doubt. So investing our time, energy and resource in a child’s Early Years makes sense – for the individual, the family, society and the economy."
"We know - not think, but KNOW - that a greater focus and investment on Early Years and early intervention - particularly where a child’s needs are greatest - provides a real prospect of turning this situation around. If we don’t act now, if we just do more of the same, we will simply stack up problems for the future."
There is no evidence to support this way of KNOWING.If the `Solihull approach rap` sounds ridiculous, that is because it is. Yet the Named Person is expected to accept the myth of the first three years without question.
"Challenging the prevailing myth-heralded by the national media, Head Start, and the White House-that the most crucial brain development occurs between birth and age three, Bruer explains why relying on the zero to three standard threatens a child's mental and emotional well-being far more than missing a few sessions of toddler gymnastics. Too many parents, educators, and government funding agencies, he says, see these years as our main opportunity to shape a child's future. Bruer agrees that valid scientific studies do support the existence of critical periods in brain development, but he painstakingly shows that these same brain studies prove that learning and cognitive development occur throughout childhood and, indeed, one's entire life."
Sir Harry Burns, professor of global public health at the University of Strathclyde, has an incredibly myopic view of the social origins of health and wellbeing.
Speaking at the launch of the Early Years Collaborative on 1 October 2012, he began by talking about detecting and treating diabetes in order to prevent deaths and equated that with the need to share information about families in difficulty in order to prevent future problems.
"The situation is very similar for children. In Scotland today we have hundreds of children living miserable lives, poor quality lives, unsupported, living in families of great difficulty and those children are destined for failure. They are destined to be unhealthy. They are destined to do badly at school. They are destined to have difficult lives that may end up with criminal convictions, and so on. The evidence around that link between experience of early years and poor outcomes in later life is just as robust as the evidence that links diabetes with poor outcomes if it`s left untreated."
Actually, statistically speaking, it looks more like he is making the link between diabetes and what happens to children coming out of the care system, but that is not something he wants to draw to anybody`s attention. His mission is something else.
"The challenge you are about to take on," he says to his audience, "is to look at that evidence and commit yourselves to collecting the data that allows you to detect the problem and agree on the evidence based interventions to manage it. That`s really really important."
He is urging the children`s workforce to collect the data that allows them to detect the problem. The problem is going to happen some time in the future, of course, and the future could lead to any number of problems, or none at all. So that is quite a challenge. If the audience is feeling nervous - and they seem to need encouragement from Sir Harry - there is no surprise there.
Then having detected the problem, by identifying families in difficulty, I suppose - although by doing that they have not actually identified the `problem` at all because that lies in an uncertain future - the children`s workforce must agree on the evidence based interventions to manage it.
To which we must ask the question: how can you have an evidence based intervention when the outcome, and therefore the evidence, lies in the future which is yet to be determined? Well, you can`t.
Elsewhere, Harry Burns has drawn comparisons between Liverpool, Manchester and Glasgow. The disadvantaged in these cities have the same socio-economic backgrounds; the same rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease, for example, but in parts of Glasgow outcomes are much worse, according to Sir Harry. When he examined the data he found that the poorer outcomes in Glasgow were due to additional factors like suicides, violence, alcoholism and drug addiction.
Now that is pretty bad. Sir Harry recounts that when an Australian visitor heard about that his immediate response was to say: "That`s what happened to the Australian aborigines."
It gave me quite a jolt to hear it expressed that way. It`s as if some Scots are living on reservations in their own country without any hope at all; and just like the Australian aborigines, with these early interventions being put in place, they will lose their children in greater numbers. The myopic view is going to pile injustice on top of injustice.
Sir Harry goes on to say that in the past few weeks, it has suddenly dawned on some southern European countries that they are storing up trouble for the future, given the economic climate they are facing. So they are very interested in what Scotland is doing to support children in the early years.
Now as far as I`m concerned, Sir Harry has just blown it, because there is an admission there that the economic climate bears down on families and children.
This is a good place to have a look at the discussion between Yanis Varoufakis and Noam Chomsky who have a lot to say about the hypocrisy, financial fraud and willingness to crash whole countries that goes on amongst the elite in Europe and elsewhere.
By getting a wider perspective, it will be clear that anybody who says that a country can pull itself up by the bootstraps by focusing on what goes on in the uterus and the first few years of life, is talking absolute rubbish.
There`s a very good reason why Sir Harry got a knighthood. It`s these same elite groups who want the data.
"SNP ministers are preparing to fight back against critics of its controversial `named person`scheme by launching a major new information campaign to win over the public."
"Senior figures in the administration have approved a public relations blitz designed to tell Scots what the named person scheme is and how it works."
"It was derided last night by opponents of the scheme who condemned the use of taxpayers’ money to promote what they said was an unpopular policy."
Will this appear as the Scots are told how it works?
There is much in Scotland to be proud of, but frankly many aspects of our culture and behaviours, the level of some of our social problems and, not least, our failure to give some children the most basic level of protection and support should be cause for us to hang our heads in shame. It is not enough just to turn away, to blame the Government of the day or to leave this to others to sort. We can all do better.
The Named Person offers a signpost to assistance. Parents need to call on that support and, when necessary, be directed and empowered towards a different path. The Named Person is about facilitating ‘a nudge’ −or as it would probably be in Scotland, ‘a shove’ −within the system, to make sure families get the services they need, when they need them...
Like Harry Burns at the launch of the Early Years Collaborative: shaming, nudging, shoving? I doubt that will be part of a campaign. So which version of the Named Person scheme will be used in the public relations blitz? The single point of contact version which involves multiple contacts over the weekend and summer holidays? The optional version, unless the Named Person has a number of wellbeing concerns and needs to get the bigger picture? Or could it be the working in partnership version - and your views really count - unless, of course, ChildrenCount needs to check how many times your kid has had anal sex in the last thirty days?
Let`s skip over the proportionate data sharing that amounts to a non consensual sixty pages on a family`s file, and all the rest, because it`s getting more than a bit seedy, and do think plants ! No PR campaign is going to blot out parental awareness of the devious scheming that has been going on, and for what ? For data that is none of the government`s business.
As for Harry Burns, he should not have been going to Europe and the rest of the world promising them the results of the great Scottish experiment before he`s even asked for parental consent. After all, that is not something a government has the right to give. [Article 8, ECHR]
"Aileen Campbell, Minister for Children and young people visited Pinkie St Peter’s Primary School to see some Early Years Collaborative work in action..."
"During the visit, Ms Campbell saw how the nursery and school is helping children develop their communications skills to support learning and build their confidence and resilience. With help from Puppet Animation Scotland, teachers have been trained to use puppets to help children to vocalise their feelings and emotions."
"This work is currently being tested using Early Years Collaborative improvement techniques and is already showing improved interactions from the children who have participated."
What they mean by improved interactions is that children learn to use words like anger, frustration, sad, embarrassed, excited, upset, scared. These might be useful skills to have when children progress and start filling in psychological surveys and questionnaires, but as an aid to building confidence and resilience I am not so sure. Young children grow in confidence by `doing`, not `introspecting`. In the presence of understanding adults, children should not need to worry about their feelings and have to spend hours explaining them. Behaviour is something else.
Last week the primary school produced a podcast talking about the `Nurture Room` which is a special room where children go to share their feelings. One child described the room as a very quiet place you can go to when something is wrong. The windows are big and lots of sunlight shines in. There are two sofas, cushions on the floor and puppets, if you need a rest or to `chill`. There are lots of games, so you will hardly ever be bored.
Of course, some children have special needs but that is another matter entirely. The point is schools are more and more mainstreaming nurture and wellbeing.
Parents, on the other hand, are being encouraged to read and story tell with their children to improve literacy, attachment and brain development. For many children, it won`t do anything of the sort because that will depend on what happens in school.
We`ve had warnings in the Scottish Daily Mail that parents who reject Named Persons could face a visit from a social worker but dig back through the documents and the early warnings were there that social workers were going to get more involved.
For instance, from the Education and Culture Committee, November 2013, we have How could decision-making processes be improved?
The committee`s view is that GIRFEC principles make the difference to outcomes - whatever that means to real families in practice - but do admit that this can lead to earlier and more frequent interventions that result in more children coming into care. In other words, they are well aware of the implications.
As a way to address these issues the committee believes that GIRFEC should have a partner policy: early permanence. `Permanence` is a term that covers legal orders which fix children firmly in a `forever family` with no way back. That could be `reunification with the family` of concern, kinship care or adoption which is the preferred arrangement since once that is done no judge in the land will undo it. Another way to look at this is to see that procedures have to be managed `early` because adopters for older children are thin on the ground.
If you want early interventions such as these, joining pieces of low level wellbeing concerns together in a report, that has the result of amplifying potential problems, in theory at least, is one of the best ways to go about it. So is parallel planning.
Parallel planning
"We want to promote parallel planning, where local authorities start to plan for potential permanence at the same time as working with families towards reunification. This does not prejudge the outcome but it does mean that if reunification is not possible a plan is already in place to help ensure the child has a permanent home as quickly as possible."
Parallel planning originated in America as many of these schemes do.What happens is that a potential adopter becomes the foster carer of the baby/child while the team that wraps around the birth family decides whether or not the child should be returned to their care. Parents in this situation haven`t a hope of that happening. The bottom line is to say: the child has settled well with the foster carer; it would not be in the child`s best interest to return it to what may be a precarious situation. It`s a rigged system.
The committee also say:
"Both early intervention and early permanence are needed to meet our aims of reducing the number of children on long term supervision requirements and increasing the numbers finding secure legal permanence. Focusing on these two areas in the years ahead, and through the shared actions set out in this response, will lead to a system of intervention and substitute care that wraps around the child and is effective, affordable and swift."
Since more children are going to be taken into care, processing the cases faster, looks like the answer. It is understandable that cash strapped local authorities want to reduce the amount of time they spend working with families, that is, the amount of time they spend with children on long term supervision requirements. But that thinking looks more like an attempt to improve the situation for the system [reducing costs] rather than improving it for families. Given that many cases will begin with low level wellbeing concerns the amount of false positives are bound to increase. Rushing these cases through the system, with no way back, will be an injustice for many families. That does not worry Aileen Campbell.
"In oral evidence, the Minister described ‘tangible progress’ in terms of adoptions from care doubling; and large increases in the proportion of younger children becoming looked after." [That is, on supervision requirements which must be processed swiftly.]
What does Promoting adoption positively actually mean in these circumstances?
