Helen Hayes

Giving every child the best possible start in life should be a driving mission of every Government. Investment in the early years and in a high-quality education for every child delivers among the highest returns of any area of public spending; they are literally building the foundations of a child’s life. Governments who get policy right in these areas reap benefits in health and wellbeing, in economic growth and in lower crisis-related costs. The previous Labour Government made huge strides in this area. The longitudinal studies now confirm that children who lived close to a Sure Start centre did better in their GCSEs, and that hospitalisation of children was reduced and so was the need for specialist support in education. But a year ago this Government inherited the legacy of a previous Government who had not prioritised the needs of children for 14 years. Sure Start had been largely dismantled and school and further education budgets cut, early years funding had not kept pace with inflation, key services like health visiting and midwifery were scaled back, and SEND provision and CAMHS—child and adolescent mental health services—were stretched to breaking point, with increasing numbers of children in the care system, who are all too often being failed. Our children have been buffeted by the multiple blows of austerity, Brexit, the covid-19 pandemic and the Liz Truss mini-Budget bearing down on public services that support children, young people and their families, resulting in more of childhood being left to chance, with existing disadvantages and barriers to opportunity remaining in place and being allowed to perpetuate. The Education Committee recently published our report on children’s social care. Children’s social care is a good place to start thinking about this Government’s opportunity mission, because it is where some of the most egregious barriers can be found—for the children whose families need the most support, those whose lives are scarred by abuse or neglect, and those for whom the state has both the gravest responsibility and a huge opportunity to make a difference. The independent review of children’s social care commissioned by the previous Government described the system they presided over as in need of a “total reset”. Spending on early help and support services—the preventive, nurturing support delivered by Sure Start centres, health visitors, community nurses and early years practitioners—has plummeted, while spending on crisis interventions, including out-of-area residential placements often at great cost, have spiralled. The number of children entering the care system has been rising, and perhaps most telling of all is that the outcomes for care-experienced people are absolutely dire. This failure is so significant that, if the Government are serious about tackling homelessness and about tackling the crisis in the criminal justice system, they must turn their attention to the plight of care-experienced people, who are so vastly over-represented in both those populations. They are far less likely to be in education, employment or training than their peers, and far more likely to have poor mental health.