19 September 2008
MPs from across the political divide have called for cross-party agreement on a policy of early intervention with children to tackle the 'inter-generational nature' of social problems.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith and Labour MP for Nottingham North Graham Allen said the growing cost of social intervention, whether through benefits or the criminal justice system, was affordable when set against the potential gains.
Their report, Early intervention: good parents, great kids, better citizens, launched this week, said: 'Large parts of our society are massively underachieving, and the financial and social costs of this are both enormous and multiplying.'
A policy shift towards early intervention 'would enable public expenditure to become developmental and not just remedial', it added. Allen, the only MP who also chairs a Local Strategic Partnership, said: 'We need some longer-term finance, which has to come from long-term benefits that are going to accrue.'
Allen's LSP has pioneered early intervention in Nottingham, where numerous policies have been piloted, such as intensive health care support in the form of the Family Nurse Partnership. The approach focuses on assisting families and working with children from birth.
Duncan Smith said there should be policy analysis to identify the most effective approaches, which moved away from a 'static model' of measurement and accepted that the benefits of such a policy were not immediate.
The MPs aim to get early intervention on to party manifestos and included in the Comprehensive Spending Review. Leaders from the main political parties welcomed the report. 'Intervening early before problems develop is vital to helping all children reach their full potential,' said Prime Minister Gordon Brown.
The publishing of the report by Duncan Smith's think-tank, the Centre for Social Justice, and the Labour-aligned Smith Institute, coincided with a report by the Right-wing think-tank Centre for Policy Studies. This criticised the reliance on youth mentoring, a key government policy in this area. The report, Youth mentoring: a good thing?, questioned the evidence base for mentoring projects and their effectiveness: 'The government, the Mentoring and Befriending Foundation (MBF) and individual mentoring organisations should all… stop encouraging the delusion that mentoring is some kind of panacea for disaffected youth.'
The government-funded MBF, which supports organisations and tries to influence policy, rejected the CPS's analysis, however. 'It works best as part of a wider package of support measures rather than a stand-alone intervention,' a statement said.
A spokeswoman for the Department for Children, Schools and Families said: 'What's needed is a rounded approach.' She added that teenage pregnancy and drug use by young people were both falling.
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