Early Years Healthy Development Review Interview with Politico

As the spending review looms, Andrea Leadsom is hoping for a win on early years support, an issue she’s campaigned on for two decades. “Investing in the early years can have a profoundly positive impact on the life chances of babies — supporting families to give their baby the best start,” the Conservative MP and former Cabinet minister tells Influence.

Background: Leadsom’s wide-ranging report on the first 1,001 “critical Days” of a child’s life was published earlier this year at the request of Boris Johnson. Unusually for work by a backbencher, it went through the full Whitehall write-round process — meaning its recommendations are now government policy.

But but but: The tricky next step will be securing the cash to make its raft of recommendations a reality. Leadsom’s central case is that, when it comes to a host of societal problems, “prevention isn’t only kinder, but it’s also much cheaper than cure.” She’s argued that the U.K. spends billions tackling poor mental and physical health, addiction, and crime — and could do itself a big favour on each of these issues by giving children a better start in life.

Patchy provision: Leadsom’s report sheds light on early years services that, despite dedicated staff, can be “patchy, not joined up and often do not deliver what parents and carers need.” It can be hard for parents-to-be to know what support is available in their local areas, with families “left to work out for themselves not only what help they need, but also where to find it.” Parents can end up relaying the same information to a host of different public services and health care professionals who can themselves be swamped by a heavy workload. The review also found a lack of clear accountability either at local or national level for giving kids a good start.

Joining the dots: “It is vital that parents and families know where they can access early years services and can do so in a seamless way,” Leadsom tells Influence, with parents telling the review they wanted a mix of good face to face and online support (a trend accelerated by COVID). The review sees plenty of potential in the government’s fledgling “Family Hubs” idea, promised in the 2019 manifesto and which Leadsom believes can help join the dots for services like breastfeeding, mental health and childcare support.

Counting the cost: The report explicitly warns the government about the “expensive future consequences” of inaction, a case bolstered this week by the Institute for Fiscal Studies. The think tank found “strong evidence” that Sure Start centers — which have faced steep cuts since 2010 but are still seen as the blueprint for bringing disparate early years services together — “decisively” reduced hospitalizations during childhood and adolescence. “Evidence from Sure Start shows that large-scale, holistic interventions can be effective in improving children’s health. It is particularly exciting to find evidence that the benefits persist (or even grow) after children are too old to attend the centers,” the researchers said.

Implementation stations: Leadsom’s review pitches 29 actions to improve early years support. An implementation team is now beavering away in Whitehall, drawing up a spending review bid, cracking on with top priorities including digitizing the “Red Book” (which records a child’s health but is still largely paper-based) and working with councils on joining up services. The team also wants every local authority to offer a “Universal+” early years service to families who may need more targeted help with issues like disability, debt, language barriers or drug and alcohol support.

Pod save Westminster: In a bid to keep the momentum going, Leadsom’s launched a podcast, sharing parents’ experiences of starting a family in lockdown.

Keeping it in the family: Leadsom’s mum Judy, a former midwife, is the latest guest on the podcast, which has also discussed the science of early years development, and quizzed Cabinet Office minister Penny Mordaunt on her work to bang heads together in Whitehall. As well as Mordaunt, Health Minister Jo Churchill and Education Minister Vicky Ford are tasked with making the report’s recommendations happen, and Leadsom is hopeful the time has come for an early years boost. “I hope the podcast will shine a light on the importance of the 1,001 critical days and how vital it is that every baby gets the best start for life,” she says.