At a time when early years are again in the spotlight in the UK – and not for good reasons – new IDS research explores the enablers and barriers of early childhood development in a local context, from the perspectives of families and service providers themselves.
A solid foundation of evidence now illustrates how important it is to support children (and their families) in their earliest years. Nurturing and enabling environments and responsive relationships are key to building children’s brains and their capabilities for lifelong social, emotional, and physical health and wellbeing.
The kids aren’t alright
Children in the UK – and the future of our communities – are in trouble. A decade of austerity, the ravages of the Covid-19 pandemic, a cost-of-living crisis and widening inequality have brought us to this moment. A just released and widely covered report from the Academy of Medical Sciences points (again) to concerning health issues among children and their carers including rising child obesity, falling rates of vaccination, poor mental health and perhaps most alarming, rising infant mortality – all of which of course, disproportionately impact disadvantaged communities.
And these aren’t just problems for today – they are the problems of tomorrow. Failing children in their earliest years increases their risk for future poor physical and mental health. This impacts not only them, but wider society to the tune of over £16 billion a year in costs just to address these otherwise preventable health issues, to say nothing of lost productivity and quality of life for individuals and communities.
Early years challenges at the local level
We’ve seen the challenges many families and service providers are facing up close. In our collaborative research project, Enabling Early Child Development in Ealing (ECDE), we sat down with parents and local service providers to learn from their lived experience of raising and supporting young children and families in Ealing, a borough in Northwest London. From this emerged a rich picture of the challenges families face every day, from unaffordable and unsafe housing to social isolation and poor mental health.
Service providers told us they are increasingly encountering families facing multiple and complex challenges, well along the path to, if not already, in crisis. At the same time, funding challenges and staff shortages, have made it more difficult to support families who are just getting by with the kind of preventive support needed to head off potential future crises.
Crisis prevention notwithstanding, resource limitations have also made it harder to support families to nurture children’s social, emotional, cognitive and physical development and wellbeing to ensure they have bright and healthy futures ahead of them.
For families in Ealing, system strains are manifesting in the everyday through sometimes disappointing encounters with overstretched staff, frustrating experiences navigating confusing information, being passed from service to service, and long wait times to receive specialist support. This was especially the case for families with children with additional needs, for whom getting help as soon as possible was critical for their child’s development.
In superdiverse Ealing, these challenges are also exacerbated for families that do not speak English well, are not digitally connected, or who may have limited confidence or trust in services.
Not all doom and gloom
That said, the picture isn’t all doom and gloom. As we and others have shown, at the local level, dedicated parents and carers, community groups and professionals across councils and the NHS are passionate about making a difference to children’s lives, and showing up for children and families in spite of the challenges. Ealing has a strong integrated early years offer, with health visiting teams co-located with council staff in a network of children’s centres where families can access free or low-cost activities for play and learning, and get advice, support and referrals for other needed services.
Families also described some service providers as ‘angels’ – helping them to get through tough times, or staying by their side until they got the support they needed, and making a positive difference in their lives. Community organisations working with migrant or ethnically minoritised families, families with children with additional needs, facing domestic abuse, or struggling with mental health or other challenges, also helped fill a critical gap. They approach and support families in holistic ways, and help them navigate what is on the whole, a confusing and fragmented landscape of information, services and support.
Opportunities to strengthen early years
That said, doing better for children can’t mean leaving it to a handful of dedicated and overstretched local people and organisations. Action is required at multiple levels. National actors have a critical role to play in addressing wider determinants like housing, poverty and access to healthy food. Certainly, without meaningful leadership and resources from the very top, local authorities, service providers, communities and families will continue to be pushed to the limit, no matter their dedication. Given the significant positive returns from investments in early childhood, there is a strong case for early years services to be recognised as ‘critical infrastructure’.
That’s not to say nothing can be done at the local level – every place is unique, with its own strengths to build on and challenges to tackle. The people who live and work there know their communities best, and are well positioned to co-design and deliver solutions tailored to local needs and assets.
Here are 10 key considerations that emerged from our research on how the early years system can be improved for children and families in Ealing, although they resonate with recommendations made elsewhere and have relevance across scales:
- Better coordinate and integrate health, council and community early years services to address fragmentation and enhance ‘wrap-around’ support.
- Expand accessible, appropriate and easy to find information for families and service providers.
- Embed a caring, empathetic approach across all services and support.
- Build the cultural competence of and enhance the diversity of service providers.
- Further support and work with key community organisations and build linkages with private nurseries.
- Enable parents and carers to connect with each other.
- Regularly engage diverse families for feedback, dialogue and to co-design solutions.
- Address wider determinants like housing and basic needs to reduce family stress, including by collaborating across the service landscape.
- Earlier support for additional needs and complex challenges.
- Raise awareness around the importance of caregiver-child relationships and home learning, and enable parents and carers to put this into practice.
With mounting evidence that children’s earliest environments and experiences set the stage for their lifelong health and wellbeing, the case to prioritise early childhood could not be clearer or more urgent. Supporting and empowering local communities to nurture our youngest members is not only wise, but necessary investment towards more just, equitable, and thriving societies for today and generations to come. To read more about the research findings and the ECDE project more broadly, read our report on the IDS website.
