NCB welcomes the government's focus on children and young people within its Plan for Change and we look forward to hearing more detail in a number of key areas.
By making improvements to early childhood development one of six key pillars of its Mission-led plan, the government has sent a powerful message that the needs of children and young people are central to its programme for a decade of national renewal.
Bridget Phillipson’s commitment to make early years her department's number one priority has been backed up through the Best Start in Life pillar and a commitment to ensuring a record number of children reach a Good Level of Development by the time they reach Year 1.
This is plain good sense: the foundations for virtually every aspect of human development – physical, intellectual and emotional – are laid in early childhood. Commitments to enhance integrated family support in the first 1001 days, to improve the quality of early education and childcare, and to spend £250m on a new offer for Family Help, all feels like an excellent start.
We welcome the government’s focus on children thriving in education and a particular commitment to make disadvantaged children and disabled children and children with special educational needs a priority. Acknowledgement of the importance of a sense of belonging is also very welcome, and NCB has considerable expertise in this area, having recently launched our Belonging Matters schools programme.
But although we are pleased by the overall direction of travel, we would like to see this positive start supported by action in six key areas:
- Alongside the Opportunity Mission, a focus on good physical and mental health will be a prerequisite for improving outcomes, but the Darzi investigation highlighted huge shortcomings in children's health services. The Labour Party manifesto committed to the healthiest generation of children ever, yet a focus on children was sadly lacking in details of the Health Mission. The 10 Year Health Plan must do better and put children at its heart.
- We welcome the acknowledgement of belonging as an important area of focus for the Opportunity mission. We would like to see specific detail, however, on how the government plans to address the barriers to education and the impact on wellbeing caused by bullying, for example through the introduction of anti-bullying leads in schools, mandatory staff training and a duty for schools to record bullying incidents.
- Good intentions will mean nothing to those children and families living in temporary accommodation, going hungry, and under acute financial stress. The ongoing levels of child poverty will fundamentally undermine the Government’s ability to create opportunity for all. The new Child Poverty Strategy must include binding targets for reducing child poverty set out in law, and we must see significant investment in social security at the Spending Review if the government is serious about its pledge to give all children the best start in life
- A commitment to raising the percentage of children achieving a Good Level of Development at age five is a vision shared by our Early Childhood Unit. However, this will only be achieved through a robust early years workforce strategy, created in consultation with the sector, which offers career and qualification pathways with the appropriate level of salary and recognition to befit such fundamentally key role and responsibilities.
- We urgently need to move forward with the government’s commitment to introduce a Single Unique Identifier, which will be a key driver in effective data analysis of cohorts at risk of poor outcomes (e.g. disabled children and those with special educational needs, children missing education, or children looked after) and in supporting joined up services that provide better quality care and support for more children and young people.
- The focus on disabled children and children with SEN is welcome and much overdue. We hope that this will include the government tackling the long waiting lists for children awaiting diagnosis and specialist support and beginning the process of rebuilding the trust of families frustrated and let down by the SEND system.