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Early intervention needs to be hammered home, or the next generation could be condemned to repeat the mistakes and problems of their parents, work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has said.
Speaking at the Centre for Social Justice's report launch, What next for early intervention?, Duncan Smith said investing in early intervention now could turn out to be the smartest decision that national and local government could ever make.
"I am committed to this, and I am more and more certain that my government is committed to this," he said.
Duncan Smith acknowledged, however, that there was some persuading left to do, not only within government, but among the national press and members of the public.
"National papers don't really get it, they always argue that 'all you are doing is intervening and teaching people how to parent, how ridiculous'.
"There is also a need to persuade people that their fears about dysfunctional families are best met by early intervention, such as children's centres, not by late police intervention thundering down their street with sirens blaring, because nobody feels good about that – least of all them," he said.
The report seeks to provide a framework for early intervention, for professionals taking crucial commissioning and funding decisions at a local level.
It brings together evidence from a wealth of recent reports – Munro, Field, Allen and Tickell – on the overwhelming need for an early-intervention approach to tackling child poverty and deprivation.
Duncan Smith brought the issue of early intervention to the fore when he published a cross-party book on the subject with Labour MP Graham Allen in 2008.
He told the audience how he would like to see the case for early intervention become a cross-party issue that is carried out, "no matter what political party is in power".
He praised Allen's second report, released earlier this week, as having "opened the door to break down the excuse that governments simply can't do long-term funding".
In the current tight fiscal climate he made the case for social investment to shore up long-term investment for programmes like Sure Start and children's centres.
"Not only does this model create a way for investors to do something positive for the wider community, but they are also able to see a return on their investment at the same time," he said.
Quoting Sir Ronald Cohen, known as the 'father of venture capital', he said:
"Social enterprise and 'impact investing' look like the wave of the future."
Pressed by the chair of Home-Start Wandsworth, Laura Lewis, on ensuring a constant dialogue between local and national government, Duncan Smith spoke about his role as chair of the social justice cabinet committee in "ensuring silos across government are broken down and looked at as a collective".
Talking further about local authority involvement, he said it was "critical" that they did not take the list of 19 programmes in Graham Allen's first report, which he saw as representing the best in the field of early intervention, as final.
"I don't believe Graham ever intended that. I certainly don't. What works in Islington won't necessarily be the same as what works in Ipswich," he said.
Chris Robinson, CEO of the Mayor's Fund for London, which focuses on the 630,000 children in London living in poverty, spoke of how they believe that the way out of poverty is a "decent job".
Gracia McGrath OBE, chief executive of early intervention charity, Chance UK, "brought the voice of children to the room".
She demonstrated how intervening early in a child's life can change their pattern of behaviour before it goes "from how a child expresses themselves, to how a child is".
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