Influencing Parliament on child maltreatment,

prevention and early years

George Hosking, CEO, WAVE Trust

BASPCAN 2015 Congress – Free Paper Session 6Edinburgh, Monday 13th April 2015

19 Years Research

Maltreatment is the Prime Cause

Witnessing Domestic Violence

Neglect

Abuse

Future violent offenders 10 x more aggressive by age 3

Under 1s 1-4 5-9 10-15 16 and over -

500

1,000

1,500

2,000

2,500

3,000

3,500

Rates of entry, per year, on child protection register(England) – by age

• Traditional responses failing to stem tide of child maltreatment in Europe

• Report calls for a preventive, public health approach

• Few European countries have devoted adequate resources and attention to prevention

• Compelling arguments for increased investment in prevention

• Wide-ranging public health and societal benefits from prevention programmes

• Reducing CM is among the mainstay of actions required to reduce inequity in Europe

1. Develop national policy for prevention based on multi-sectoral action

2. Take action with evidence-based prevention

3. Strengthen health systems’ response for prevention and rehabilitation

4. Each country should have a national action plan with a target to reduce prevalence of child maltreatment and child homicide by 20% by 2020

What are the greatest barriers to implementation of prevention by local areas?

• “The ‘sucking up’ of resources to statutory services which meet high level needs …  there is a national pattern in this direction, too, over the past few years”

• “Given the level of savings local authorities are required to find over the next four years it will become more and more difficult for LAs to fund non-statutory services”

• “Pressure on public services in terms of funding reductions”

• “Tightening of budgets in relation to Early Years and Childcare Services at local level”

What are the greatest barriers to implementation of prevention by local areas?

• “Pressures to make savings … Organisational pressures to deal with current problems rather than future need”

• “There is a widespread, erroneous belief in the NHS, that curative treatment services area good substitute for skilled public health, preventive services”

• “Historically medicine has been seen as curing rather than preventing illness. People seek help when something is wrong, rather than in order to prevent things going wrong”

What are the greatest barriers to the implementation of prevention by local areas?

• “Finite resources and perceived/actual risk means that focus tends to be on reactive services rather than preventive”

• “Competing pressures between implementing a preventative plan and managing and responding to ‘today’s’ pressures and statutory duties”

• “Clearly demonstrating the benefits of a preventative approach … the evidence is there on an individual basis (e.g. medical evidence), but not in regard to a conclusive argument that it will save money for the public sector in the long term”

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Influencing Parliament

• Violence and what to do about it (was also Child maltreatment and what to do about it)

• Strong engagement with civil service, ministers and opposition

• Led to early years’ success with Labour Government; 10 Downing Street backed our proposals; Lib Dem support for 70/30 plan to reduce child maltreatment; cross-party support built with MPs – especially Graham Allen and Iain Duncan Smith

• WAVE authored Allen/Smith report Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens which supported early intervention

Influencing Parliament

• Created the 70/30 objective to reduce child maltreatment in the UK by 70% by 2030

• Set up a 70/30 Alliance of major charities and Think Tanks

• Appointed as the early years experts in, and drafted the early years sections of, the Allen Review of Early Intervention

• Created the expert practitioner group ‘The Early Years Champions’ with Andrea Leadsom MP

Influencing Parliament

• Invited to comment on Govt paper ‘Supporting Families in the Foundation Years’ – pointed out gap in attention to 0-2 year olds

• This led to Co-Chairing with Dept for Education an 18 month “Under 2s Special Interest Group’ study: Policies for under 2s

• Wrote final report Conception to age 2 – the age of opportunity

• This led to the creation of an APPG (All Party Parliamentary Group) Conception to age 2 – the critical 1001 days

• and Manifesto for the critical 1001 Days (Manifesto for the world’) – UN comment

Influencing Parliament

• Sold principle of prevention to Cabinet Social Justice Committee: Challenge thrown down: ‘Prove it saves money within 5 years’

• Developed an approach to do so: Pioneer Communities project

• A 5-year intensive, comprehensive, preventive approach to child maltreatment, tested in 6 local areas around the UK

• Built Treasury, Health, Cabinet Office, and cross-party support

• The goal: a major public policy to prevention in the 2020s

Influencing Parliament

• Recent APPG work – 6 month Inquiry into key policies in the first 1001 days, February 2015 Report Building Great Britons

• Recommendations: – Require local authorities, CCGs and Health & Wellbeing

Boards to prioritise development of socially and emotionally capable children at age 2, by: adopting and implementing ‘1001-days’ strategy…with particular emphasis on fostering mental/emotional wellbeing and secure attachment, and preventing child maltreatment

– Build on the ‘Early Help’ recommendations of the Munro Review by requiring and supporting all relevant agencies in prevention to work together to prevent child maltreatment and promote secure attachment

Scotland:Putting the Baby in the Bathwater Coalition

• Signatories to coalition have risen from 50 in 2013 105

• Breadth and depth of coalition, plus merits of case, led to cross-party support for prevention recommendations, changes to legislation

• Amendment to Children and Young People’s Act 2014 created statutory duty for prevention and early intervention element in every local authority Children’s Services Plan

• Changed support to parents of ‘looked after children’ to include parents of ‘children at risk of becoming looked after’

Scotland:Putting the Baby in the Bathwater Coalition

• Lobbied for major increase in Health Visitors – new 500 planned

• Secured ministerial commitment to coalition involvement in developing regulations, guidance and interpretation

• Ongoing engagement of coalition with civil servants, ministers and key parliamentarians agreed and implemented

• Working e.g. to end ‘justifiable assault’ defence for hitting babies

• 4 characteristics have underpinned success of PB in B coalition: – Common ground; Collaborative approach to government;

Focussed on only 2 issues; Coalition has been non-hierarchal, informal, democratic