Early Intervention in Childrens Services free essay sample

Analyse why there is a policy emphasis on Early Intervention in childrens services. What are the implications of this for different types of services for children, young people and families? This essay will begin by explaining what social policy is, briefly identifying the history behind it. In order to demonstrate why there is a policy emphasis on Early Intervention, there will be a focus on the underpinning values and assumptions of the different political parties, whilst analysing factors that influence social policy such as media influence, social constructions of children, young people and families, government spending and evidence based research. The implications of this on different types of services will be examined by identifying the impact of early intervention on priority funding, restructuring and retraining workforces and stigmatisation. Also different government priorities and varying implications on the same service provisions across the UK will be considered, as well as the effects of labelling and exclusion resulting from early intervention. Finally the diversity of childrens experiences will be discussed. Social policy deals with social issues, through local and national government guidelines, principles and legislation. Therefore politics influences social policy, which determines the services of our welfare state. The post-war 1942 Beveridge Report was significant in developing social policy in the UK with the introduction of health reforms based on universality and the ideology of a social democratic welfare state. Fundamentally the state took responsibility for the welfare of children and families. Conservatives were in power from 1979-1997, during which they sought to change public reliance on the state through encouraging them to take more responsibility for their own welfare, by reducing the provision of state services. When Labour came in to power in 1997, they attempted to find a balance between state and market provision. At the end of power in 2010, New Labour left a legacy in a major development of social policy, that being Early Intervention in childrens services. There is a policy emphasis on early intervention in childrens services due to underpinning government values which affect how resources are distributed and who in society is deemed to need these resources. New Labours value in the child as citizen-worker-of-the-future (Lister,2003) influenced their social policies, which prioritised early intervention as a more preventative, long term solution to social problems such as crime, unemployment and poverty. For example, the introduction of the Green Paper, Every Child Matters(ECM), an initiative formed to improve childrens lives, shaping the EYFS curriculum to ensure every childs right to grow up safe; healthy; enjoying and achieving; making a positive contribution; and with economic well-being'(DfES,2008). This portrays how social policy contributes to shaping childrens lives and why there is an emphasis on early intervention, for example, the need for children and families to understand the value of education in the wider world will be advantageous to their development and future. As highlighted in MP Graham Allens (2011) Early Intervention report discussed in Appendix 1, it was believed that such initiatives would establish a healthy social and emotional development in infancy and therefore would break the intergenerational cycle of dysfunction and under-achievement. Department for Work and Pensions,2009 in Appendix1) Therefore it could be said that early intervention policies do not take the wider social structural context into consideration. This indicates how the media is indirectly responsible for shaping social policy, through influencing thoughts about support and services affecting children, young people and families. For example, the introduction of ECM and the Children Act 2004, a legislative base for many reforms, focussed on improving professional support for vulnerable children and those in need. These initiated from the Laming Report (2003), the inquiry after the death of 8 year old Victoria Climbie in 2000, due to debates arising in media discourses.. focussed upon a general criticism of Social Services as a controlling body. (William-ThomasFound,undated in Appendix1) In addition, the media also contribute to the social constructions of children, young people and families by the type of language used, describing youths as hoodies for example, stereotyping and providing exaggerated discourses, such as what is classed as anti-social behaviour. Such ideas and assumptions influence society and governments social policies reflect this. The effects of the mass media is therefore an example of why there is an emphasis on early intervention policies. The importance of child-centred practice in Early Years, multi-agency working and parenting support are clear government values that underpin early intervention policies. Evidence of cross political party support is portrayed through the New Labour Sure Start initiative surviving a change of government. The Sure Start childrens entres programme is an example of effective multi-agency working and parent support, underpinned by the idea that childrens experiences at a young age affect their quality of life and also their future lives. This initiative was launched in 1999 in a belief that such early intervention would tackle inequalities and social exclusion, whilst lifting children out of poverty and promoting social mobility. This supports the theory that every social problem common in developed societies. has a single root cause: inequality. WilsonPickett,2009) For example, by offering core services such as childcare and before/after school clubs, more people could work, providing an income to improve child poverty and social mobility. This would also mean people would require less state benefits, freeing up government spending in this area to put into early intervention for example. Services offered through Sure Start are delivered using evidence-based interventions, for example the Family Nurse Partnership which originated from the U. S. Nurse Family Partnership with proven results in promoting child development and offering parenting support to new parents. (Department for Work and Pensions,2009 in Appendix1) Sure Start itself was evidence-based from the success of the U. S. Head Start programme, driving forward New Labours parenting agenda based on a principle from their 1997 election campaign that what matters is what works (Davies et al,2000). Therefore there is an emphasis on early intervention due to researched evidence that early intervention policies work and have been successful. However the parenting agenda could actually be responsible for contributing to the change in the state from a welfare state to a therapeutic state, therefore it could be said that this policy emphasis on early intervention has prioritised the future of children over their immediate welfare requirements. For example, funding for the universality of Child Trust Funds may have been better spent on more targeted and specialist services for children in need. There are many such implications on different types of services for children, young people and families. For example, some early intervention policies aim to move responsibility for childrens services to education, therefore childrens welfare, family and community issues have essentially become a focus for schools. (Department for Work and Pensions,2009 in Appendix1) However combining care and education involves being able â€Å"to recognise the difference between the world of the family and the world of the classroom† (Evans,2006), but not all educational practitioners are well enough trained to do this. Surely, if Social Services, dedicated to safeguarding and child protection failed on several occasions with cases such as Climbie, Holly and Jessica, and Baby P, then maybe combining care and education could be too complex and therefore less effective. This indicates there could be some disadvantages in the emphasis placed on these policy directions, as there is more pressure on childrens services to implement the new strategies, and follow additional policy guidance and frameworks, whilst undertaking workforce reforms to retrain educational practitioners to be skilled care practitioners too. Department for Work and Pensions,2009 in Appendix1) This inevitably also effects funding available for other services. For example, the Welsh Assembly Play Policy implemented under New Labour government in 2002 to provide a universal service for children to access a broad range of quality freely chosen play opportunities (Play Wales,undated), based on the value of play in childhood and the importance of children in our society. (Welsh Assembly Play Policy, 2002) However in 2010 the Coalition government has frozen grants to 132 councils (Richardson,BBC2010), which indicates that there are other priorities in government spending. Similarly there are also current proposals to close down some Sure Start childrens centres, (BBC,2011) whilst also decreasing the provision of different types of services they offer, more specifically universal services, as Coalition government values suggest that Sure Start services should be more targeted and specialist, therefore available to those that really need them. (The Conservative Party,2010). New Labour failed to do this by wanting it to be non-stigmatising through its universality (Clarke,2006), hence the socially excluded and lone parent families it was aimed at didnt get as involved as they wouldve liked. Therefore an implication of government emphasis on early intervention is the fact that New Labour didnt hit their core constituency, as middle class families took advantage of its universality. However under Coalition government it may now become stigmatised, hence services becoming more prone to not being used, thus ineffective. The implications on the governments emphasis on early intervention is evidently effecting targeted services for youth offenders in Wales. Due to a lack of money to accommodate youth offenders in institutions n Wales, they are isolated by being housed in secure units based in England, for example Ashfield, in Gloucestershire. The Welsh Childrens Commissioner believes this separation from their families adds to the pressure. This suggests that other services, such as Youth Justice, are seen as less worthy than early intervention. For example, Wales was the first country in the UK to appoint a Childrens Commissioner in 2001, with the first one not being appointed in England until Professor Al-Aynsley Green in 2005. Childrens Commissioner for England,2010) Therefore Welsh children and young people have benefited from this universal service of a childrens commissioner, acting in their best interests from the influence of the UNCRC, four years before English children and young people, which also portrays the priorities of government spending in early intervention in different areas of the UK. There is therefore an indication that implications on the same childrens services varies across the UK. For example Parenting Orders, a New Labour initiative introduced in 1998, targeted at youth offenders and their parents to offer support by first attending court. However in Scotland this never materialised, as local authorities found it to be punishing, therefore ill-suited to welfare reform. Other implications on targeted services such as Parenting Orders, resulted in parents feeling labelled as a bad parent, having poor parenting skills and therefore it made little impact on their relationships with their families, nor on their childs level of offending. Targeted services also tend to include and exclude certain members of society. For example, Parenting Orders tend to be issued to mothers, lone parents and those most socially and economically disadvantaged. Just as Sure Start initiatives provide services more tailored around mothers, for example breast-feeding sessions and therefore fathers feel excluded as the childrens centres are womens places (NESS,undated). Therefore government emphasis on early interventions, although proposed to be advantageous, are not always beneficial to those children, young people and families that they are aimed at and doesnt always reach all children either. It is therefore important to consider the diversity of childrens experiences too, as not all children experience services the same. For example, early intervention was thought as a solution to give all children a good start in life, but there are children in society who through disability, ethnicity or culture for example may experience early intervention differently. Such as gypsies and travellers, whose culture fears outsiders of their own communities, hence there is a resistance to accessing the early intervention services available to them. Therefore early intervention policies are not always meeting aims to access those who need it most and maybe concerns of discrimination and awareness of diversity should be more significantly addressed within social policies, in order to make them more effective, thus services more accessible to all. However, on the other hand the government has recognised this and proposes to do more. For example, there are plans to improve outcomes for disabled children through three priority areas; empowerment, responsive services and timely support, and improving quality and capacity. Department for Education,2010 in Appendix1) Not only will more specialist services such as the Transition Support Programme be implemented, but the government also want disabled children to be able to benefit from universal services, by improving the benchmarking of early intervention practices. Therefore the implications of government emphasis on early intervention is increasingly considering the diversity of childrens experiences and therefore a more effective and efficient provision of policy, practice and services to address inequalities and promote childrens rights. Department for Education,2010 in Appendix1) In light of this analysis, it is evident that government emphasis on early intervention is underpinned by ideas and values that are shaped by various influences in society, the discourses of which are portrayed in social policy. Although political parties share some of the same values, their manifestos are produced with differing ideas on how best to implement early intervention and often with conflicting priorities surrounding the types of services which should most benefit children, young people and families.