Sector welcomes Field's review but doubts government will act
Joe Lepper
Friday, December 3, 2010
Children's professionals are pessimistic the government will act on the recommendations made in Frank Field's review of poverty.
His report The Foundation Years: Preventing Poor Children From Becoming Poor Adults calls for greater investment in early years education.
Funding should be shifted towards the first five years of children's lives and weighted to help the most disadvantaged, it states. It also calls for all disadvantaged children to be provided with affordable, full-time, graduate-led childcare from the age of two.
But Megan Pacey, chief executive of the charity Early Education said: "Shamefully, many of the decisions of the coalition government in the course of the comprehensive spending review and subsequent announcements fly in the face of [the evidence presented by Field that better early years education will lift families out of poverty]."
Policies that have concerned her include the removal of ringfenced funding for early years grants while protecting school budgets, and the removal of requirements for children's centres to offer full daycare and to hire someone with both Qualified Teacher and Early Years Professional status.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber backed Field's call for early years education to be better funded. But Barber said the review failed to take into account wider measures to improve families' incomes.
"The biggest problem faced by poor people is still that they haven’t got enough money and face debts that put intolerable strains on their finances," he said.
"We have reached a critical point in the debate about poverty, inequality and welfare in Britain. We remain a country with an exceptional level of economic inequality that needs significant fundamental structural change and government investment."
Family Action chief executive Helen Dent also called on the government to invest in reducing income inequality.
"One of the major ways in which income inequality can affect the families we support is housing. If families can’t afford decent housing, with security of tenure and access to a good school then this impacts on family stability and educational attainment.
"We find in our work with disadvantaged families that poverty may also be a factor in creating neglect if a parent can’t properly provide for their children in terms of food, clothing and warmth. So while we’re encouraged by the Field report, further action to tackle the whole spectrum of disadvantage that affects poorer families is vital," she added.
Child Poverty Action Group's head of policy Imran Hussain said there "are some good ideas on early years" in Field's review but also warned against having a "too narrow a focus" on combating poverty.
He called for a "broad strategy across income, disability, fair pay, childcare, housing and basic living costs," adding, "to end child poverty, we will need to address structural problems such as our economic dependency on poverty-pay jobs and the high levels of in-work poverty it causes".
Other recommendations made by Field are the creation of "life chance indicators" to measure progress in improving children's outcomes. Councils need to work better together on anti-poverty measures.
The Daycare Trust's acting chief executive Anand Shukla is among those to welcome the report.
"It is excellent to see such emphasis given to the early years and the recommendations to move funding gradually towards the early years," she said.
Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children, which runs children's centres across England, said: "Frank Field has hit the nail on the head. The first five years of life are ‘make or break’ for many children. As a country we have a duty to give every child the best start we can."
Funding should be shifted towards the first five years of children's lives and weighted to help the most disadvantaged, it states. It also calls for all disadvantaged children to be provided with affordable, full-time, graduate-led childcare from the age of two.
But Megan Pacey, chief executive of the charity Early Education said: "Shamefully, many of the decisions of the coalition government in the course of the comprehensive spending review and subsequent announcements fly in the face of [the evidence presented by Field that better early years education will lift families out of poverty]."
Policies that have concerned her include the removal of ringfenced funding for early years grants while protecting school budgets, and the removal of requirements for children's centres to offer full daycare and to hire someone with both Qualified Teacher and Early Years Professional status.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber backed Field's call for early years education to be better funded. But Barber said the review failed to take into account wider measures to improve families' incomes.
"The biggest problem faced by poor people is still that they haven’t got enough money and face debts that put intolerable strains on their finances," he said.
"We have reached a critical point in the debate about poverty, inequality and welfare in Britain. We remain a country with an exceptional level of economic inequality that needs significant fundamental structural change and government investment."
Family Action chief executive Helen Dent also called on the government to invest in reducing income inequality.
"One of the major ways in which income inequality can affect the families we support is housing. If families can’t afford decent housing, with security of tenure and access to a good school then this impacts on family stability and educational attainment.
"We find in our work with disadvantaged families that poverty may also be a factor in creating neglect if a parent can’t properly provide for their children in terms of food, clothing and warmth. So while we’re encouraged by the Field report, further action to tackle the whole spectrum of disadvantage that affects poorer families is vital," she added.
Child Poverty Action Group's head of policy Imran Hussain said there "are some good ideas on early years" in Field's review but also warned against having a "too narrow a focus" on combating poverty.
He called for a "broad strategy across income, disability, fair pay, childcare, housing and basic living costs," adding, "to end child poverty, we will need to address structural problems such as our economic dependency on poverty-pay jobs and the high levels of in-work poverty it causes".
Other recommendations made by Field are the creation of "life chance indicators" to measure progress in improving children's outcomes. Councils need to work better together on anti-poverty measures.
The Daycare Trust's acting chief executive Anand Shukla is among those to welcome the report.
"It is excellent to see such emphasis given to the early years and the recommendations to move funding gradually towards the early years," she said.
Anne Longfield, chief executive of 4Children, which runs children's centres across England, said: "Frank Field has hit the nail on the head. The first five years of life are ‘make or break’ for many children. As a country we have a duty to give every child the best start we can."
