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Act Now: Early Years and Childhood

A visual representation of the issues involved in Early Years and Childhood
"Act Now: Early Years and Childhood" by the Common Sense Policy Group is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)

The common-sense notion that investments in childhood are critical to outcomes in adulthood is all too often dismissed on grounds of cost, or ignored by politicians focused on short-term gains. Whether it be the removal of free milk by the Thatcher Government or the continued debate over free school meals, the failure to apply basic cost-benefit analyses to return on investment leaves the UK more dysfunctional, anti-social, unproductive and unequal. As universal early years provision in some American states has shown, as well as comprehensive support for families in many European countries, investment in children pays off – creating healthy, active adult citizens capable of making good on our vision. We argue that this can only be achieved by reversing child poverty through a Social Safety Net, introducing free school meals for all, investing in early childhood services and education consistent with our Education policies, and future proofing choices affecting children by embedding Equity Impact Assessments and levelling up the UK with Well-being of Future Generations Bills in England and Northern Ireland. This represents a fundamental investment in the children who will be responsible for rebuilding our society in future decades.

Recommendations

The policy recommendations in this section are drawn from the work of the Child of the North group and the York Cost of Living Research Group. They come from a series of recent reports and are based on research evidence and the lived experience testimony of the low income families who have participated in the Changing Realities and Larger Families research projects and young people who have engaged with the Child of the North All-Party Parliamentary Group. The overarching policy aim for children should be to invest in welfare, health, education and social security systems that support children, particularly in deprived areas and for those experiencing the greatest inequalities in outcomes. The Government should:

  1. Introduce our Social Safety Net, which will radically reduce child poverty and remove the two-child limit and benefit cap; or, at the least, increase child benefit by £20 per child per week, removing the two-child limit on universal credit and legacy benefits and ending the benefit cap.
  2. Tie rates of social security support to the cost-of-living; and immediately pause the five-week minimum wait for Universal Credit.
  3. Introduce free school meals for all and auto-enrol all eligible children; make the Holiday Activities and Food Programme scheme permanent, and extend support to all low-income families.
  4. Allocate additional funding to secondary and post-16 providers to address the lag before the new (fairer) National Funding Formula takes effect, and implement the National Audit Office’s recommendation to evaluate the impact of the NFF. 
  5. Adjust the National Funding Formula to include the child health burden borne by schools.
  6. Expand the Health Improvement Fund to support Family Hubs, health visiting, and children’s centres with investment proportional to need and area-level deprivation.
  7. Embed Equity Impact Assessments into all policy processes at national, regional and local levels; use Children’s Rights Impact Assessments to evaluate the specific impact of policies on children and young people; and use devolved Citizens Assemblies that include young people to make sure their voices are included when making policy decisions.
  8. Pass the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill to bring England and Northern Ireland into line with the progressive future generations law and policies in Wales and Scotland.