Zoe Renton, NCB’s Head of Policy, Public Affairs and Information considers whether we are doing enough to measure the health of under-5s.
Last week there was a collective sigh of relief from teachers and children’s rights campaigners when it was announced that the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile has been given a lifeline and will be retained for 2016-17.
The government had been planning to drop this measure of every child’s early development in September, replacing it with a Baseline Assessment when children start reception classes. The new check would have had a narrower focus on literacy and numeracy.
This is good news for a very good reason.
The EYFS Profile gives us a more rounded picture of a child’s development, including their social and emotional development. When used alongside the checks carried out by health visitors it allows us to understand young children’s overall health, development and well-being, how it varies from place to place and the health ‘gap’ between disadvantaged children and their better-off peers.
We know from our own research published in ‘Poor Beginnings’ that this last factor, inequality between rich and poor children’s health, is still a major issues undermining children’s outcomes.
For example, In 2014/15 only 51 per cent of reception class pupils eligible for free school meals (a good indicator of poverty and deprivation) reached a good level of development, compared to 69 per cent of those not entitled to free school meals. A similar pattern is played out for early obesity, tooth decay and accidental injuries. Being poor is bad for your health from day one.
So the EYFS Profile, or a similar rounded measure of early childhood development, must be retained beyond 2017, and included as a key measure within the Government’s Life Chances strategy for poor children, along with measures for early childhood health.
The trouble is that health visitors largely carry out those other measures and a question mark hangs over continued funding for their work.
The Government is reviewing its public health expectations of local authorities, including requirements around the health visiting service, but there are signs that some local authorities are already considering reducing these services – Lewisham being one recent example. http://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/news/1158383/council-plans-to-reduce-health-visitor-checks
In this climate the Government must send a clear signal and maintain the current statutory framework for health visiting beyond April 2017, including the mandatory five visits and checks that each and every child receives from pre-birth to age 5. If not, then we simply won’t detect health and development problems early on and children will suffer.
We need a greater commitment to understanding young children’s health holistically and targeting those most at need. This is the approach being taken in four deprived wards of the London Borough of Lambeth, where the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (part of the Big Lottery’s A Better Start programme) is co-producing services with parents in the community to measure and improve children’s social and emotional development, communication and language and diet and nutrition from conception to age five.
The EYFS profile and the health child programme checks carried out by health visitors are the backbone to understanding and improving child health. For example, if we don’t measure each child’s BMI systematically from birth, how can we identify individual children who need support to lose weight? And for the entire population, how can we understand if public health initiatives, like the Government’s recently launched Childhood Obesity strategy, are having the desired impact?
While uncertainty surrounds the future of these checks we risk failing to look after the health of the next generation.
Last week there was a collective sigh of relief from teachers and children’s rights campaigners when it was announced that the Early Years Foundation Stage Profile has been given a lifeline and will be retained for 2016-17.
The government had been planning to drop this measure of every child’s early development in September, replacing it with a Baseline Assessment when children start reception classes. The new check would have had a narrower focus on literacy and numeracy.
This is good news for a very good reason.
The EYFS Profile gives us a more rounded picture of a child’s development, including their social and emotional development. When used alongside the checks carried out by health visitors it allows us to understand young children’s overall health, development and well-being, how it varies from place to place and the health ‘gap’ between disadvantaged children and their better-off peers.
We know from our own research published in ‘Poor Beginnings’ that this last factor, inequality between rich and poor children’s health, is still a major issues undermining children’s outcomes.
For example, In 2014/15 only 51 per cent of reception class pupils eligible for free school meals (a good indicator of poverty and deprivation) reached a good level of development, compared to 69 per cent of those not entitled to free school meals. A similar pattern is played out for early obesity, tooth decay and accidental injuries. Being poor is bad for your health from day one.
So the EYFS Profile, or a similar rounded measure of early childhood development, must be retained beyond 2017, and included as a key measure within the Government’s Life Chances strategy for poor children, along with measures for early childhood health.
The trouble is that health visitors largely carry out those other measures and a question mark hangs over continued funding for their work.
The Government is reviewing its public health expectations of local authorities, including requirements around the health visiting service, but there are signs that some local authorities are already considering reducing these services – Lewisham being one recent example.
In this climate the Government must send a clear signal and maintain the current statutory framework for health visiting beyond April 2017, including the mandatory five visits and checks that each and every child receives from pre-birth to age 5. If not, then we simply won’t detect health and development problems early on and children will suffer.
We need a greater commitment to understanding young children’s health holistically and targeting those most at need. This is the approach being taken in four deprived wards of the London Borough of Lambeth, where the Lambeth Early Action Partnership (part of the Big Lottery’s A Better Start programme) is co-producing services with parents in the community to measure and improve children’s social and emotional development, communication and language and diet and nutrition from conception to age five.
The EYFS profile and the health child programme checks carried out by health visitors are the backbone to understanding and improving child health. For example, if we don’t measure each child’s BMI systematically from birth, how can we identify individual children who need support to lose weight? And for the entire population, how can we understand if public health initiatives, like the Government’s recently launched Childhood Obesity strategy, are having the desired impact?
While uncertainty surrounds the future of these checks we risk failing to look after the health of the next generation.