Early Child and Family Support: Principles and Prospects. Part 3
For parents and practitioners who are impatient for change
The following extract is the third of three from Chapter 5 of ‘Early Child and Family Support: Principles and Prospects’ written by Peter Limbrick and published by Interconnections in 2022 (ISBN 978-0-9576601-9-9).
Chapter 5: Prospects for offering effective integrated early child and family support to all families
Offering effective integrated early child and family support to all families who want it must be the aim in any country if we want to move beyond projects supporting only a limited number of children and families. There is no logical reason for supporting some families in any city, region or country while leaving others who want help to cope on their own. But this selective approach is happening everywhere. This chapter addresses major barriers to progress with suggested ways forward under five headings:
- Out-dated institutional attitudes and medical conservatism (In Part 1)
- General prejudice and discrimination (In Part 1)
- Families as an oppressed minority group (In Part 2)
- The common failings in top-down reform (In Part 2)
- Local early child and family support task forces to accelerate the pace of change
5. Local early child and family support task forces to accelerate the pace of change
I have talked of personal frustration in how slowly effective integrated early child and family support is being implemented since I started working in this field half a century ago and since Team Around the Child was first published twenty years ago. While some localities in some countries are moving very slowly towards effective systems, others appear to be static or regressing and some have no systems at all. This was the problem at the beginning of this century and has been made worse since then by the number of children orphaned and/or damaged and traumatised in conflict zones, by the number of families displaced by turmoil in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and other countries and by growing populations of people moving, perhaps because of climate change, to places where they have a chance of finding water and food. It feels that children who have a nurturing family life, adequate nutrition, a stable home and mental health could be becoming the exception. Many cities, regions and countries that are already struggling to develop early child and family support must, in their planning, cater for significant numbers of families moving in on a temporary or permanent basis.
In the previous pages of this book I have suggested many features that I feel must be built into early support that is being newly established or enhanced. But these changes need favourable conditions some of which lie beyond the powers of local parents, practitioners and managers. I am never sure how significant and lasting social change happens but I suspect it largely lies beyond the powers of politicians who are often elected for only short periods of time.
If we discount politicians and chief executives in public services as reliable proactive catalysts for reform of early support for children and families, then it seems to me we have to look for some form of grass-roots activism in which parents are not left to campaign on their own. This leads me to the idea of local early support task forces which I will define for now as follows:
‘A local early support task force will be independent of, but in a constructive relationship with, local authorities and will work to improve the local early support system or, if there is not one already, to establish a new effective integrated early child and family support system. Membership and activities will reflect local conditions. Parents and other family members will be at the core alongside local practitioners who are in close contact with families and have a deep sense of the need for reform. In addition there can be people from local academic institutions, caring activists and others with campaigning experience.
Each task force’s main work will be to build constructive dialogue with executives and managers in public services, with local politicians, press and media, colleges and universities and with other local voluntary organisations and campaign groups concerned for people of any age who have impairments. The purpose of this outreach is to make the unmet needs of children and families known and to recruit support for change.’
I hope readers can envisage some sort of early support task force in their own locality. I outline below possible task force activities to build effective early child and family support and to counter some elements of oppression but in doing this I am aware that, once a new task force comes into being and the local situation is acknowledged, it will be obvious where it needs to focus its energy and creativity.
Parents, siblings, grandparents, and other family members would be representative of local families. They might no longer have pre-school children in their families but are committed to improve support and have the necessary time and energy to be activists in this cause. Practitioners know at first hand what local families experience and want to support parents in fighting for change knowing that parents and family members cannot campaign effectively on their own. Parents and practitioners have different backgrounds, experience and knowledge and can take power with each other from this broad base.
My definition above has referred to caring activists. In Caring Activism: A 21st century concept of care, caring activism is described as a secular concept of care for vulnerable people of any age who are struggling with ineffective support or with no support at all. Caring activists can befriend vulnerable people, provide practical support and advocate for change.
I was also careful to include people from local colleges and universities because, in my view, academics carry a responsibility to support effective integrated early support which they have not yet taken up. This view is included in Integration made possible:
‘It has never seemed logical or fair to expect practitioners to settle easily into joint working arrangements when they have had no experience of it or preparation for it in their university or college courses... Relevant professional training would: encourage practitioners to see the whole picture of a person’s condition and situation in addition to the more focused concern their discipline requires; offer a Systems Theory perspective emphasising interconnections and interdependence; provide opportunities in lectures and projects to mix with people on other courses to learn about their studies, concerns, practice, ethics, etc.’ p 115
I do not imagine any two early support task forces being the same in how they come into being, how they are composed or what they focus on. Also, each might choose an alternative name to task force. But it might be helpful if I describe in hypothetical terms what a local task force might achieve as follows.
Collecting local information as a starting point
This will launch the evidence base. It will build up over time and should include a summary of unmet needs of children and families and of good practice from local agencies and services. Real stories, written or filmed, about children and families, positive and negative, will be valuable when approaching people and organisations for support. Support from academics would be valuable in collecting and presenting this information. A crucial part of this research is to find out if there is any government legislation or guidance focused on babies and infants who have significant challenges to their development and learning and/or focused on support for families.
Avoiding reliance on the top-down approaches
The initial impetus for change might come from frustrated parents and practitioners forming a local task force. It might be from senior people starting a top-down process and wisely deciding to help promote a grass-roots task force in a combined top-down and bottom-up effort. A major role for the task force in this will be to keep a strong awareness of the dangers inherent in top-down approaches and argue to build effective antidotes into the planning.
Countering oppression
No local task force should expect to achieve this fully but each could usefully address particular elements of families’ oppressed situations. For example, financial impoverishment would be explored, acknowledged and talked about in press and media. The evolving early support system could provide support and information about benefits and debt management, could design an approach to help employees secure more flexible work arrangements to allow for care and hospital visits and could support students of any age seeking more flexible course arrangements so their studies do not have to be terminated.
Reasons can be explored when social isolation is a significant issue for local families with an effort to remove barriers that discourage or prevent family members of any age taking part in social activity. This will include helping local groups, organisations and facilities to be more aware of this group of families and learn how to welcome their members and accommodate to their needs. Local siblings who are becoming or have become carers are a group deserving of all possible help in this.
When exhaustion is an issue for local parents, they can be surveyed to find common factors. Helpful approaches might then include helping service providers create new systems that rationalise appointments in terms of repeat visits, distance of journeys, etc.
I do not need to write a long list here. Activists in a local task force knowing local families, being aware of local resources and being motivated by an urge for change will be inventive, brave, creative and forceful far beyond the limits of what I can say here to counter elements of oppression. While individual children and families will be helped along the way, the main purpose of each task force is to help build an effective integrated early child and family support system in which common elements of oppression are anticipated and addressed.
Encouraging and supporting local education services to be involved
This effort will depend on the present level of involvement. If the local education services are aloof from babies and pre-school children then there will need to be a prolonged campaign to show their senior people and elected officers what the unmet needs are and how education could be brought to these children in practical terms.
Where there is some involvement of education services, then this can be reviewed by the task force to evaluate how babies still at home are supported, the level of inclusion in nurseries and kindergartens, the involvement of specialist teachers (for example in sensory loss and autism) and the skill levels of education practitioners in helping parents learn how to support their child’s attachment, development, learning, quality of life and self-esteem.
Countering institutional attitudes
This will no more be a quick local campaign than would be ending oppression, countering prejudice and discrimination or adjusting the balance between health and education supports. The champions in this are surely family members who will speak from the heart of their real experiences from birth (or conception) onwards. They can speak of the support they expected to receive, the support they did receive and their hopes for families following in their footsteps. They will speak about attitudes, emotions and humanity. They will speak of what helped them, what did not help them and what set them and their child back.
The methods can be seminars, workshops, conferences, residential weekends and any other ideas for getting family members, practitioners and managers into the same space to listen and talk to each other. Perhaps practitioners in the taskforce, or others with necessary skills, will facilitate these exchanges so that strong emotions are given appropriate space at the same time as allowing constructive conversations.
Countering prejudice and discrimination
This means reaching out beyond the small world of children who have significant challenges to their development and learning to the big world of each city, region or country’s general population. Effective relationships between each task force and the local press and media will be essential. There should be regular press releases about all aspects of the task force’s work, human interest stories describing some of the joys and frustrations of families and articles that relate current affairs, democratic issues of the moment and new official guidance or legislation to this small oppressed population of children and families.
There can be valuable co-operation here between the task force and local organisations and campaigns focusing on people with disabilities and perhaps established by disabled people themselves.
When there is a combined top-down and bottom-up approach with elected officers and senior people at the top of local services working in collaboration with a grass-roots task force, there will be many rich and productive opportunities for sharing information, getting messages out to the bigger world and supporting each other’s efforts and initiatives. Successes, small or large, will come directly from the commitment, energy and imagination of task force members. The task force’s drive for reform might even filter up through elected officers, press and media to influence discussion at national government level.
As I write, there is a story on a different subject developing in the national press and media in my country. It is about racial discrimination in English cricket teams and has burst into public awareness quite suddenly with a persecuted player giving a witness statement to a government committee. Amazingly, press and media coverage has almost equalled that given to two major events happening at the same time: COP 26 in Glasgow and the UK government’s failed attempt to disband a committee that had exposed the corrupt activity of one of its own members of parliament.
I take encouragement from this unexpected exposure of serious oppression that had up to this month (November 2021) remained hidden, having no great interest to the general public, press, media or government. I do not feel competent to analyse how oppression that had long bubbled under the surface so quickly gained widespread attention. But I am sure one factor was the detailed personal story of one well-known cricketer subjected to prejudice and discrimination that was then followed by other players coming forward to tell their stories. I am sure this will result in permanent reform of the game.
It will be a giant step forward if there can be this sort of exposure of the oppression suffered by the families considered in this book. Local early support task forces can work to expose oppression of families on their patch and hopefully one day the stories will add to a reform momentum.
Peter Limbrick, November 2024.Comments welcome.
