Member News
By Tony Grew - 4th August 2011
An organisation that offers personalised support to parents with children under five has welcomed a new report on parenting and child development.
Home-Start's volunteers support families across the UK. Today it backed Centre Forum's new report on early years development and social mobility.
Centre Forum said the single most important factor influencing a child's intellectual and social development is the quality of parenting and care they receive and the quality of the home learning environment that this creates.
"What parents do is ultimately more important than who parents are," according to the report.
"Parents from all social and educational backgrounds can and do provide home environments that are highly conducive to child development.
"However, the evidence also suggests that children from poorer backgrounds are much less likely to experience a rich home learning environment than children from better-off backgrounds.
"This fact is one of the crucial factors perpetuating the pervasive discrepancies in life opportunities that mark the invisible and pernicious barriers of social immobility."
Centre Forum said government must set aside accusations of "nanny state" interference and fulfil the coalition commitment to "support a culture where the key aspects of good parenting are widely understood and where all parents can benefit from advice and support".
The think tank also backed the government's aspiration to a culture change towards recognising the importance of parenting, and how society can support mothers and fathers to give their children the best start in life.
Annie O'Brian, head of communications at Home-Start UK, described the report's findings as "extremely important".
"Parents don't just need more advice: they need a helping hand from a real person," she said.
"We believe the trusted, confidential, supportive relationship that our volunteers develop with the families they support - visiting every week in families' own homes - is crucial to this campaign's success.
"There are very, very, very few 'bad' parents – 25 per cent of the 34,000 parents we helped last year referred themselves for support.
"The rest were referred by midwives, GPs, health visitors, teachers, social workers, etc.
"65 per cent of the parents we supported last year cited isolation as their main reason for needing help.
"Being away from immediate and extended families, moving to new areas to find work, suffering from post natal depression or bereavement, or being brought up in the care system all break the chain of 'good examples of parenting' from within people's own families.
"Home-Start's volunteer often become the relative or friend that the family has left behind. They work alongside the parent to give their children the best start in life.
"If people didn't have a good example set to them by their own parents, or didn't see good parenting going on – how can they possibly know what to do to help their own child develop?
"Parenting is not instinctive."
Centre Forum said it is "imperative" that the government investigate how to ensure that participation among those from lower-income backgrounds in new parenting initiatives is actively encouraged.
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