During pregnancy and then from birth to five years old, the critical foundations for our adult lives are built. Early childhood is the period when we are learning to understand that we have our own thoughts and feelings, and that others do too. This stage in life helps us to build the scaffolding for our future adult wellbeing.
To grow well and to be able to cope with the inevitable challenges life throws at us, we are reliant on this capacity being maximised during those early years. It is of benefit not just on an individual level, but also for our roles within our family, our community and indeed our whole society.
In adolescence, there is another period of significant development and rapid growth – and it is then that the emotional and social scaffolding already in place is really tested. I know from my work with vulnerable young people and adults that in adolescence a tremendous amount of positive change can happen, as the brain is, as the experts say, “plastic”, with the potential to reshape and change through the experience of relational connections.
However, achieving this kind of change is much harder for young people – and for those working with and supporting them and their family – than it would have been if they had been offered the right support at the right time in their early life. Almost half of the attainment gap at 16 is already in place before children start school, and a child’s development by 22 months serves as a strong predictor of educational outcomes at age 26.
At 12, Ricki was on the road to being a “bad” statistic when I met him. He was placed for adoption at two years old, but it never happened. He often went missing from where he lived, starting fires and hanging out with unsafe people with whom alcohol was readily available. It was clear to me he was “mad as hell” with everyone and everything – he’d been badly let down by adults in his life and he made it quite clear to me that I was as welcome in his life as a headache.
But I took time to read his family story and to find some of his birth family to talk to, and it became clear that his behaviours were all about trauma, loss, separation and grief. Every single adult who was important to him had let him down, and the system of care that had severed his family ties had let him down too. However, with me turning up repeatedly, we slowly moved forward. He began to learn how to trust me, but it was excruciatingly slow and painful for him. Ricki is an example of what can happen to young people if we do not get it right in those early years.
There is a need for sustained financial, cultural and emotional investment in the early years. If you invest in families and the socialisation of children through fun, play and emotionally regulating environments, there is a direct benefit for them and their community. For instance, you will see less antisocial behaviour if children are connected to their community from an early age – they will respect it later. Quite simply, if you feel valued and of worth, you will give that back to others around you in your network. As they grow into adolescence, children will be less at risk of exploitation, and less likely to find themselves subject to the intervention of the family court, the police or the criminal justice system.
In my many years in social work, I saw the positive impact of central government initiatives such as Sure Start children’s centres. Seeking and receiving help in a space in which you were also looking after your children meant that support became free from stigma and shame. I would therefore always call for a return to a centrally driven national policy like Sure Start. Parents do not need things to be done to them, instead they need to be worked with, as partners, and welcomed with simple acts of care and kindness.
We also need wraparound services for children, with schools being potential community hubs. Early education and childcare infrastructure can be used as an anchor for holistic services and support for young children. For instance, the Reach Academy Feltham offers a cradle-to-career pathway running for two to 18 year olds. Its founder and the CEO of Reach Foundation, Ed Vainker, told me that “the school has used the relationships it has in the community to deepen its work”. It has a perinatal offer, with 300 parents and babies referred in the past two years who have learned how to build secure relationships with their infants from before birth.
We need to be supporting, not undermining, vulnerable parents who are facing income, social and health inequalities. I worked with a new mum who had been in care herself, and there were concerns about the potential risk of harm to her baby. I clearly remember the difference that connecting her with a “grandma” through a befriending scheme run by the local Home-Start programme made to her confidence as a mum. She had little experience of being parented well herself, but this simple fix of offering her an empathic mentor meant she learned to manage the life she had built for herself and her baby. As well as investing in and supporting the skills, knowledge and pay of our early years workforce, we need to invest in and welcome members of the community who want to help and support the children and families in their neighbourhoods.
The economic case for early years investment is evident too – the cost of not investing in early childhood is £16.13bn a year in England. This is the price of the remedial steps we take to address issues – from children in care, to short- and long-term mental and physical health issues – that might have been avoided through action in early childhood. But the return on investment in our children between birth and five years old is more than an economic one. It is fundamentally about the kind of society we want this generation and future generations of children to grow up in.
I return to Ricki. Life turned out all right for him: he overcame the trauma, loss, separation and grief that characterised the early part of his life. My part in his journey ended with us meeting years later and me finding a thriving adult with a secure sense of the kind of father and partner he wanted to be. He defied the statistics.
Beverley Barnett-Jones is associate director at Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and a member of the Royal Foundation Centre for Early Childhood Advisory Group
