She was born in November 1935 in Jamnagar in India. Her family moved to Kenya and she spent most of her childhood there. Her father was a textile merchant and she had a comfortable childhood in the East African Asian community. She was quite ambitious and her family, like most Indians, placed a high value on education but girls weren’t normally encouraged to stay on at school. I think her father saw her potential (or backed down to her demands; she could be very forceful!) and she went to University in Mumbai to study Chemistry. She graduated and returned to Kenya and taught Maths and Sciences to high school students in Mombasa. She came to England on holiday in the summer of 1963 and met my Dad through a friend and never went back. My Dad had come to England from Uganda to do his A levels in Norwich; he came at 16 so it must have been quite an overwhelming experience to leave home and cross continents like that. Anyway, he integrated very well into the local community, helped in this by being a keen sportsman (hockey in winter and cricket in summer). He went on to Leeds University and studied Engineering, later becoming an Electrical Engineer for the Eastern Electricty Board. He was also Gujerati but not from the ‘right’ family; it was considered a ‘love marriage’ (I know, but these were different times) and both their families were unhappy about it for some time so they were quite isolated. They had a tiny wedding in London in 1964 (at the India Tea Centre, I think) and set up home in Cambridge where my Dad’s job was. They then moved to a tiny village 5 miles outside Cambridge which is where we were brought up. They were very unusual in having taken the decision not to live amongst the Indian community in London; they both felt that it was very important to integrate and that this wouldn’t be possible unless they did this. I was born the following year and my sister was born 2 years later. My Mum wanted to go back to work but she was not qualified to teach in the UK so she did a PGCE at Homerton College in Cambridge. She then got a full time teaching job in a primary school in a neighbouring village. My sister and I were 6 and 8 at the time. This was very unusual; none of the mothers in our little wimpy estate worked, they were all housewives. My Dad died suddenly in October 1977; he had been fit and healthy and played lots of sport but had an irregular heartbeat which no-one thought was a problem. It wasn’t treated and I guess that’s why his heart just stopped one morning. He was 39 years old. My Mum was left a widow 10 days before she turned 42 with my sister and I to care for. There were very few other single parents around at that time and so it was even harder then than it is now. She carried on working as a teacher and then as an adviser in multi-cultural education in Cambridge and Peterborough then took early retirement. She was very interested in politics and current affairs and was a Guardian-reading lefty who marched against the war in Iraq. She was a very proud and doting grandmother to her five grandchildren. She developed breast cancer in 1999 and had very aggressive chemotherapy which was very hard on her but seemed to work. Unfortunately, the cancer came back and spread to her bones 10 years later and that’s what killed her.

I wish I’d appreciated her more when she was still here.

 Today, this  appeared in Nursery World Magazine:

“Ms Teather told delegates that more needed to be done to raise the status of early years professionals, and revealed the Government’s plans to publish a workforce review in the summer, which will consult with practitioners on the future of the qualification in the long-term and whether it is ‘fit for purpose’.”  Really? This study from Wolverhampton’s Centre for Development and Applied Research in Education found that Early Years Professionals are ‘a force for good’  EYPS is certainly not perfect but is it ‘unfit for purpose’?

“She said, ‘The EYP intended to try and raise the status, but it hasn’t done that and we know that. This is precisely the reason why we need to have a long-term think about our strategy.’” ‘Long Term think’; what does that mean exactly? Stick it on the back burner? Waste more time and money coming to the conclusion that Early Years is very important especially for deprived children; that graduate led settings lead to better outcomes for children? I thought money was scarce.

“‘There is not an easy fix. Sadly some of it is down to the majority of women in the sector. The status could be raised if a few more men were involved.

‘Men are willing to go into the youth sector, but not this one (early years). I think it’s to do with the status.’”  Well, I’m no expert but I think it’s mostly to do with the money. Look here for the pay on offer to early years staff. More playworkers and youth workers are men. The pay is better. There seem to be far more male secondary school teachers than primary school ones. Although payscales are the same in primary & secondary, because of their relative size there are far more opportunities for promotion in secondary schools and hence higher wages. In primary schools the proportion of male heads compared to male teachers is higher; Heads are paid more than teachers.

“Her comments were in response to delegates’ questions about the future of the EYP and why it still isn’t considered equal to the QTS.” I assume she didn’t answer this question.

“Claire Richmond, manager of a Coventry nursery, said, ‘We only have 20 EYPs in Coventry and there are 220 nurseries, by 2015 there won’t be enough to qualify for local authority funding.’” From what I understand, the Government’s answer to this is to cut the requirement to have an EYP in every setting by 2015!

“Her concerns were echoed by Patricia Hatherley, nursery manager at St Matthew’s Nursery and Daycare in Northumberland, who claimed that practitioners with EYP status working in the PVI sector are ‘stuck’, and still only earning £13,000 to £14,000 in a manager’s position.” Exactly. Where is the incentive to stay working in Early Years which everyone, including Ms Teather says is a vitally important phase in children’s lives with this level of wages?

“In response, Ms Teather said that the Government has committed to funding the EYP next year but it wanted to have a proper strategic look at the qualification and welcomed practitioners’ feedback.” We don’t need to keep inventing new graduate level qualifications every few years. We need to ensure the graduates we have are rewarded appropriately for what they do. Nursery funding needs to be at a high enough level to enable nurseries to pay staff appropriately. National payscales and funding to enable these to be paid would be worth exploring. It’s not just about private nurseries exploiting staff and creaming off profits either. I own and manage a private nursery and pay all my staff at least £1.40 above the minimum wage. This isn’t very much and yet I don’t make any profit. I earn less than I did 5 years ago as a teacher in a state school, even without taking into account sick pay and the ‘gold plated’ pension and despite the fact I have far more responsibility and work with more vulnerable children.

This practitioner’s feedback is that Ms Teather isn’t ‘fit for purpose’.

“That’s why, when there have been significant numbers of new people arriving in neighbourhoods … perhaps not able to speak the same language as those living there … on occasions not really wanting or even willing to integrate … that has created a kind of discomfort and disjointedness in some neighbourhoods.”

People like Cameron overstating the case of immigrants who don’t want to be a part of British society doesn’t help community cohesion. I run a children’s nursery and around 25% of our families have parents who speak English as an Additional Language. In my experience, such people do want to integrate; they sometimes find it difficult. I have lived here all my life; my parents were immigrants in the 60s. They made a conscious decision not to live near any extended family or other Asian community as they were desperate to integrate and look as if they were integrating. They both worked and paid taxes and my sister and I went to the local schools with all the English kids. Once I started school, they stopped speaking their home language at home, concerned that we would not learn English if they did. This resulted in me not being able to communicate with my grandparents. It still wasn’t easy to integrate; we looked different (we are Indian), were vegetarian and my Mum sometimes wore saris rather than Western clothes. I don’t think people should have to dump all vestiges of their culture to be integrated and welcomed as part of British society but I wonder if that’s what people like Cameron mean when they talk of integration.

One of the many unfortunate side effects of inflammatory speeches like today’s is on the success in learning English of very young children from immigrant families. Counter-intuitive though it may be, children whose parents speak to them in their home language go on to become much more proficient speakers of English. Focusing on the problem of immigrants not speaking English sends a message to EAL speakers that English is the most important language. I have many parents at my setting who do not want to carry on speaking their home language because they are desperate to be seen to be integrating and because they are desperate for their children to learn English so they can participate fully in British society. It is hard to persuade them to carry on speaking their home language at home and this can have a detrimental effect on their children’s education.

As well as maintaining their home language, immigrants do need access to English classes, ideally with crèches or vouchers to pay for childcare while they learn. But English classes are being cut .

Locally we have ‘one-o’clock clubs’ where parents with English as an Additional Language can meet and access support services in a welcoming environment and neutral venue. From what I can gather, these are funded out of the Early Intervention Grant which has been cut by 11% so whether they will continue is anyone’s guess.

Many immigrants already feel marginalised and the kind of talk we’ve hear from Cameron today makes this worse.

There has been a national campaign for the Conservative Party to stick to its pre-election promise and allow private settings to charge ‘top-up’ fees. It seems likely that the review will result in this being allowed. This is good news for nurseries who are struggling to make ends meet because they currently have to give parents 15 hours free per week with no compulsory extra charges. It would mean they could insist that parents pay the difference between what the Local Authority gives the setting to provide the free entitlement (e.g. £3.50 per hour) and what they normal charge to cover costs (and/or make a profit) (e.g. £5.00 per hour). Personally, I do not think the money paid by the LEA should have to cover profits made by private businesses; others will disagree. What is certainly the case is that without the Graduate Leader Fund or some similar funding mechanism, the amount paid by Local Authorities is not enough to cover costs when staff are well qualified. You can’t expect and would have difficulty finding, a suitable Early Years graduate who will work for £8.50 per hour, which is the absolute most I could afford to pay someone (and I do not make a profit).

If the Code of Practice changes and I am allowed to charge ‘top-ups’ I could in theory charge parents an extra £1.00 per hour for each of the 15 hours and this would generate an extra £5000 income over a typical 13 week term. This would resolve any worries I have about income for my business; in fact it would allow me to employ another graduate on 0.5 FTE which would be fantastic. The problem with this is that my parents can’t afford £15.00 per week. My nursery is in a deprived area, doing exactly the sort of thing the Government says is important: providing high quality (OFSTED ‘outstanding’ June 2010) pre-school education with signposting to other services, advice, support and training for teenage Mums, support for families with EAL and children with SEN. Most parents are single or live in households where no-one has paid employment and £15.00 a week is too much. This would prevent their children from coming to my setting. I don’t think this is right; these children have, if anything, an extra need to attend a good quality nursery.

Another concern I have is that allowing top-up fees will enable the hourly funding which Local Authorities give settings to be reduced further (locally, ours is likely at best to be frozen which is a real terms cut especially with VAT rises etc). For example, LAs could give settings £2.50 an hour and claim it is adequate because the setting is allowed to charge parents the difference. This wouldn’t work in my setting and I would have to close the nursery meaning that local children would not have access to a good quality nursery place. I would have to make four people redundant who would then be claiming benefits, costing the taxpayer money.

Hopefully, all this will be thought through before any changes are made…

She said “We have ensured there is enough money in the system through the new Early Intervention Grant (EIG) to retain the network of children’s centres”

This  article “Early Intervention Grant is cut by 11%” explains how the EIG represents a cut in funding.  (December 2010)

“Funding for intervention programmes in England, such as teenage pregnancy and youth crime support, are to be cut. Next year the government is introducing a new early intervention grant, which will be given to local authorities to distribute as they see fit. The grant will replace funding to schemes like the Youth Taskforce, the Youth Crime Action Plan, Young People Substance Misuse and Teenage Pregnancy. But it will be almost 11% less than previous funding streams. The Department for Education says in 2011-12, the overall amount that will be allocated through EIG will be 10.9% lower than the aggregated funding for 2010-11. In 2012-13 it will be 7.5% below the 2010-11 figure.”

The money isn’t ringfenced either so individual programmes are vulnerable. Michael Gove, the education secretary said: ‘The EIG is not ring-fenced, giving local authorities the flexibility to respond to local needs and drive reform, while supporting a focus on early intervention across the age range.”

And here are just a few examples of forthcoming CUTS to children’s centres:

Manchester to privatise all its children’s centres (February 2011)

“Closure threat to ’250 children’s centres”  (January 2011)

And in Lewisham (February 2011) “As part of its £88 million cuts package, Lewisham Council is proposing to cut Sure Start Children’s Centres budgets by 20% from March and then hand them all over to private providers by September”

In Hammersmith & Fulham

In Hampshire County Council

Warwickshire County Council

London Borough of Barnet

There is NOT ‘enough money in the system’, Sarah.

On Friday I heard through a primary school Headteacher in Brighton that the Council is proposing that the whole EMAS service is cut, with a small number of Bilingual Support Assistants being retained, but without any co-ordinating service.  

The nursery I work in and the school we feed have many children from ethnic minorities and many different languages are spoken. This enriches the experience for all children at the school and nursery. It has a hugely positive effect on countering prejudice because if young children spend time with a wide variety of people from different backgrounds and cultures, they are naturally accepting and tolerant. Caring for and educating children who don’t have English as their first language or whose parents speak no or very limited English, has its challenges though. In nursery, we have found the support from EMAS in the form of advice, training courses and, especially, Bilingual Support Assistants who come and work with children at the setting, invaluable. They encourage continuing use of home languages which (although this may seem counter-intuitive) is the best way of ensuring children learn English well. They are also vital in helping us to liaise with parents, acting as translators. One small example recently was with a grandmother who speaks no English and does the dropping off and picking up. She was not bringing a coat for the 3 year old child as she didn’t understand that we take children outside in all weathers; this was not common practice in her home country. Once this had been explained in her home language, she brought a coat every day.

I am not a fan of judging schools by SATs or other test results but this is the system we seem to be stuck with. The school I work in is in a deprived area and is under-subscribed. Prospective parents look at SATs scores because they are encouraged to do so and because they are published. They are put off by low SATs scores even though for the pupils concerned they are often excellent, given their starting points. My youngest son attends the school and is doing really well. He does well because he is reasonably bright and we support him and home and actively support the school. Unfortunately, many parents see what we have done as some sort of gamble.

For EAL pupils, if they have not had adequate support early on, their results will be deflated. As well as being demotivating for the children concerned, it has a negative effect on the school’s overall results. This makes even less parents inclined to choose the school which perpetuates a problem. Under-subscribed schools are forced to take children who have been excluded from other schools because they have spaces. They find it harder to recruit and retain staff, including Head Teachers. A falling roll means less money coming in to the school at a time when the talk is of schools ‘buying in’ support services rather than LEAs providing them for all schools (due to swinging cuts and to funds being diverted to Free Schools).

I sincerely hope the council think ahead to the longer term implications of cutting such an important service but the cynic in me isn’t filled with optimism.

UPDATE:

 I was due to attend training to become an assessor for EYPS on Wednesday this week. This has now been cancelled. This is because, despite Teather’s commitment to graduate leadership, Brighton University is not able to take on any more students for EYPS. The current cohort will complete their courses but the University has to re-tender for the right to offer courses in the future, none of which will start before January 2012. Presumably, the government is going to try and get the University to provide high quality training for less money, otherwise why expect them to tender again for a course which has been running perfectly well? And how is having a gap of nearly a year with no new intake of students going to provide lots more highly qualified graduate staff for Early Years settings in Brighton and Hove?

Yesterday, Sarah Teather confirmed the Government’s commitment to graduate leadership in Early Years settings.

Good news it would seem. Different studies have supported the idea that graduates leading Early Years settings improve outcomes for children attending those settings. The EPPE study found that graduate level leaders of settings led to better quality settings. This study from Wolverhampton’s Centre for Development and Applied Research in Education found that Early Years Professionals are ‘a force for good’.

Early Years Professional status was introduced in 2006 under the previous government in order to ‘up-skill’ the early years workforce and, particularly in private and voluntary-led settings, improve the level of staff qualifications. In stark contrast to countries like Finland, daycare staff in private nurseries in England have traditionally had low levels of qualifications. Existing graduates were encouraged to get their EYPS through University based study and a rigourous assessment process. The training programmes were fully funded through the CWDC (losing it’s governmental status as part of the bonfire of the quangos) and daycare settings got supply costs to enable students to be released to undertake this new ‘status’. I got my EYPS in 2007 and, like many others, have found it to be extremely beneficial in enabling me to manage my nursery and implement changes which have led to improvements in the quality of the setting and hence the outcomes for children. This high quality was noted by Ofsted who rated the nursery ‘outstanding’ last year.

Ms Teather said:

“ we will continue to invest funding in graduate programmes in 2011-12, and the Children’s Workforce Development Council (CWDC) will continue to deliver both the Early Years Professional Status (EYPS) and the New Leaders in Early Years (New Leaders) programmes.”

The money which Teather is committing to spending on training programmes for EYPs may well be a waste; how are the successful candidates going to get jobs which pay anything close to a graduate salary? And without the prospect of enhanced rates of pay there is very little incentive for people to complete their EYPS. The level of pay in day nurseries for non-graduate staff is extremely low and is often at or little more than minimum wage levels.

Teather goes on to talk about continued funding:

“As I’ve said before in these pages, the Department secured a good spending review settlement for Early Years services against a difficult economic backdrop. The Early Intervention Grant brings together funding for Sure Start, youth and family support for the most vulnerable children and will give local authorities greater freedom and flexibility in designing local services. This includes the recruitment and deployment of graduate leaders and investment in other qualifications to support the wider workforce.”

Under the previous government, a Graduate Leader Fund was created which local authorities administered to provide incentives to daycare settings to employ EYPs by subsidising salaries. This helped significantly with recruitment and retention. This is something which Ms Teather implies is a good thing which she would encourage councils to retain. But the funding is contained in the Early Intervention Grant which is being cut by 10% locally. And it is not ring fenced, so cash-strapped councils may not be able (or willing) so continue to provide the Graduate Leader Fund, certainly at the levels required to top up salaries adequately.

The previous government created a requirement for full daycare settings (open all day) to have an Early Years Professional by 2015. This, coupled with funding incentives under the banner of the Graduate Leader Fund, provided a significant incentive for nurseries to ensure at least one member of staff worked towards EYPS. This requirement has now been scrapped. Without a requirement and without adequate subsidies to wages, I can’t see how or why most profit-driven nurseries (or even those like mine which are just trying to break even) will continue to recruit or retain graduate level leaders such as EYPs. The other funding (for free nursery education for 3 and 4 year olds) is only enough to pay non-graduate level staff, and with increases in VAT and other costs, even this will be difficult.

Ms Teather: “There is a lot to feel confident about in the Early Years workforce.”  I wish I could agree.

The problem is, it is not new money and it’s nowhere near enough.

This report from the NCB: ‘consultation on schools’ funding – introducing a Pupil Premium – NCB response’ was published in October 2010. It says the anticipated figure for the Pupil Premium was around £2000 per pupil. There certainly have been cutbacks; this has been reduced to 22% of that figure in 2 months! Even the £2000 figure was considered not enough to cover the loss of funding for poorer pupils which will happen due to ‘central sources of additional funding drying up’.

The NCB refers to IFS research which is reported here 

Danny Alexander said here   ”By doing things like freezing the pay of public sector workers, including teachers, we are giving more spending power to schools but we are seeking to focus rises within that on the most disadvantaged children.” So cutting the pay of the people charged with educating our young children, including those who are deprived, is paying for the pupil premium. Along with cuts to EMA and School Sports Partnerships. Great.

Here are some of his recommendations and my comments:

“1. The Review recommends that government, national and local, should give greater prominence to the earliest years in life, from pregnancy to age five, adopting the term Foundation Years. This is for several reasons: to increase public understanding of how babies and young children develop and what is important to ensure their healthy progress in this crucial period; to make clear the package of support needed both for children and parents in those early years; to establish the Foundation Years as of equal status and importance in the public mind to primary and secondary school years; and to ensure that child development and services during those years are as well understood.”

The Early Years Foundation Stage http://www.teachernet.gov.uk/teachingandlearning/eyfs/ http://nationalstrategies.standards.dcsf.gov.uk/earlyyears

was introduced in September 2008 and all childcare settings must abide by its guidance. “The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) sets standards for the development, learning and care of children from birth to five. All registered providers of Early Years care are required to use the EYFS statutory framework.” Mr Field doesn’t seem to be acknowledging its existence much in this document.

 “6. The strategy should include a commitment that all disadvantaged children should have access to affordable full-time, graduate-led childcare from age two. This is essential to support parents returning to work as well as child development.”

I look forward to hearing about the funding that childcare settings will receive in order to provide graduate-led childcare from age two. At the moment, a subsidy is received by settings to assist with recruiting and retaining graduate level leaders in nurseries (the Graduate Leader Fund). The amount varies widely as it is left up to local councils how much they pay. And it is ending in March 2011 – hopefully this emphasis from Field means they will continue with it. Otherswise, nurseries can’t afford to pay graduate wages. Tax credits for working parents are the other way in which childcare has been subsidised to enable those on low incomes to work. I had heard these are being cut. 

 “8. Sure Start Children’s Centres should re-focus on their original purpose and identify, reach and provide targeted help to the most disadvantaged families. New Sure Start contracts should include conditions that reward Centres for reaching out effectively and improving the outcomes of the most disadvantaged children.

9. Local Authorities should open up the commissioning of Children’s Centres, or services within them, to service providers from all sectors to allow any sector, or combination of sectors, to bid for contracts. They should ensure services within Children’s Centres do not replicate existing provision from private, voluntary and independent groups but should signpost to those groups, or share Centres’ space. This should encourage mutuals and community groups to bid and help ensure that efficiencies are made. Non-working parents should spend one nursery session with their children. The pattern of provision that has been developed in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland in order to meet local needs of the most vulnerable children should act as a template to those providers in England who have successfully won contracts.”

Targeted help is already given via an ‘enhanced Health Visiting service’ which means that some families have lots of support from Early Years Visitors and are encouraged to take up services. The services are mostly there for anybody in the area to use though. That helps remove stigmatisation and resentment amongst less deprived parents who feel people on benefits are getting ‘something for nothing’. This talk of bidding for contracts, i.e. privatisation, is depressing. How can it be economically sensible to have ‘middle-men’? I am getting bored of saying it but properly funded state provision is vital in education and healthcare. Otherwise, it is very difficult to maintain consistent high quality and there is almost always a conflict of interests because any private company needs to make a profit. It’s a way of driving down wages and other terms and conditions of staff to franchise services out.

“10. Local Authorities should aim to make Children’s Centres a hub of the local community. They should maintain some universal services so that Centres are welcoming, inclusive, socially mixed and non-stigmatising, but aim to target services towards those who can benefit from them most. They should look at how they could site birth registrations in Centres, provide naming ceremonies, child benefit forms and other benefit advice. Children’s Centres should ensure all new parents are encouraged to take advantage of a parenting course. Midwives and health visitors should work closely with Centres and ensure a consistency of service is provided, with continuity between the more medical pre birth services and increasingly educational post natal work. Children’s Centres should seek to include parents’ representation on their governance and decision­making bodies.”

I am pretty sure most of the above already happens in children’s centres with the exception of birth registration and naming ceremonies. Continued Sure Start funding is needed to maintain this though. 

12. The Department for Education, in conjunction with Children’s Centres, should develop a model for professional development in early years settings, looking to increase graduate-led pre school provision, which mirrors the model for schools. The Department should also continue to look for ways to encourage good teachers and early years professionals to teach in schools and work in Children’s Centres in deprived areas, through schemes such as Teach First and New Leaders in Early Years.”

I’m glad to see Early Years Professionals mentioned, although without the capitalisation for some reason. Here is some information on Early Years Professionals (I am one of these) from the Curriculum Workforce Development Council which is losing its government funding   

“13. Local Authorities should pool data and track the children most in need in their areas. A Local Authority should understand where the children who are most deprived are, and how their services impact upon them”

Locally we use IDACI (Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index)   to work out where the most deprived children are living and target support via a funded 10 hours per week for disadvantaged 2 year olds scheme (note that this isn’t a new idea but has been piloted in some LEAs, mine included).  

“14. Local Authorities should ensure use of services which have a strong evidence base, and that new services are robustly evaluated. Central Government should make a long term commitment to enable and support the bringing together of evidence around interventions, learning from examples such as the National Institute for Clinical Excellence and the Washington State Institute. We understand this will be covered in more detail by the Graham Allen Review on early intervention.”

It is interesting to see NICE mentioned as I thought it was being cut.

“16. The initiatives for the wider society should be taken up by the Behavioural Insight Team based in the Cabinet Office. This Review recommends that it leads, along with key Departments, an examination of how parenting and nurturing skills can be promoted throughout society.”

Not another quango being formed, surely!

“20. The Department for Education should ensure that parenting and life skills are reflected in the curriculum, from primary school to GCSE level. This should culminate in a cross-curricular qualification in parenting at GCSE level which will be awarded if pupils have completed particular modules in a number of GCSE subjects. The Manchester Academy is currently developing a pilot scheme which could be used as a basis for this GCSE.”

I wonder what will be kicked off the curriculum to make space for this?

“22. Existing local data should be made available to parents and used anonymously to enable the creation of Local Life Chances Indicators which can be compared with the national measure. In order to make this local data as useful as possible, information collected by health visitors during the age two health check, which this Review recommends should be mandatory, and information collected as part of the Early Years Foundation Stage (following the results of Dame Clare Tickell’s review) should be as similar as possible to the information used to create the national measure.”

I am sure there will be a Health Visitor who can set me straight on this but from what parents tell me (and 85% of mine are disadvantaged parents – I saw the stats from the LEA last week), they don’t do a 2 year old check. Around 3 years, parents are asked to fill in a questionnaire which, if they want to and if they remember, they give to me as nursery manager to add something to saying if I have any concerns. That’s it. I think there would need to be a huge increase in funding for Health Visitors (which I think Cameron has mentioned before) to make sure this is done and done properly. But I have a feeling that if a lot of money is diverted to Health Visitors, it will be taken from other parts of the Sure Start budget. In nurseries we already assess children and compare progress and attainment to the developmental norms given in the Early Years Foundation Stage. I hope there isn’t going to be another layer of bureaucracy created so that these assessments fit in with the ‘national measure’.

There is lots in the document that I agree with but the ‘pitch’ implies that it contains many new initiatives when in fact they already exist. The problem is the threats to funding the continuation of these initiatives.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2010/nov/28/andrew-lansley-breastfeeding-at-work

“Andrew Lansley says workplaces must help mothers who want to breastfeed

Employers will be urged to provide private areas where women can feed their babies or express milk as part of a Department of Health initiative to be unveiled this week

Workplaces should offer mothers private rooms where they can breastfeed their babies or express milk for them, ministers will urge this week. Andrew Lansley, the health secretary, wants employers to do more to help women with babies as part of a drive to increase the UK‘s low rates of breastfeeding and boost children’s health. He will also propose that new mothers should be given more flexible breaks to help them express and breastfeed and fridges in which to store bottles.

This sounds like an exciting new idea but it is already recommended as good practice and has been for some time. This is from an HSE leaflet reprinted in 2009 and first published in 2001 ‘a guide for new and expectant mothers who work’

http://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg373.pdf

“Your employer is required to provide somewhere for pregnant and breastfeeding mothers to rest. HSE recommends to employers that it is good practice to provide a private, healthy and safe environment for nursing mothers to express and store milk (but this is not a legal requirement). It is not suitable to use toilets for this purpose.”

Going back to the article, Lansley says:

“Breastfeeding is one of the best ways to give babies good health, but our society doesn’t always make it easy for new mums to do it,” said Lansley. “If we can make it easier, more mums would breastfeed and they might do it for longer, giving their children the best start in life.”

Lansley wants to help narrow the gap in breastfeeding rates between women in routine and manual jobs – where 66% of new mothers breastfeed – and those in professional occupations, 88% of whom breastfeed. DH sources said the move “is a huge departure from the traditional central government approach of trying to solve problems by hoarding power at the centre and simply lecturing people about their health and wellbeing.”

I am not convinced that making it a legal requirement to provide somewhere to express milk once you are back at work will make the difference. In my experience, the problem is getting people to start breastfeeding in the first place or to continue beyond a few days. Very, very few women return to work within such a short space of time. The ones that are committed enough to want to go through the rigmarole of expressing milk at work (I have done this with my middle son and it was not easy, even though I was provided with a room for the purpose and had the best battery pump money could buy) are already ‘sold’ on the idea. Many families I work with are white, working class and the Mums are very young (mostly teenage). Their mothers were very young when they had them and didn’t breastfeed. Because they were so young when they had their first child, they were mostly living with their Mum who then had a huge influence on their parenting. So they didn’t breastfeed either. The cycle starts very early and is very difficult to break. The best way does not involve rocket science, it’s through education via Sure Start and other well-funded early intervention programmes with professional staff. Good Early Years Visitors work hard over a long period of time to build trusting relationships with families, they don’t go around “simply lecturing people about their health and wellbeing.”

Some other disincentives to breastfeed are to do with society’s attitudes to breasts in this country – I give you The Sun, page 3. You have to be made of strong stuff to breastfeed in public in my opinion because you do often get stared at. If your baby doesn’t latch on easily (this just means gets its mouth round properly to get the milk flowing) you need to be able to look at it. Which you can’t do if you are all covered up with scarves to make sure you are not offending anyone.

TV adverts for formula milk make bottle feeding seem like the norm too. I haven’t seen many adverts for breastfeeding, partly because of the last point I suspect.

One other thing that struck me in the article was this:

“The Department of Health is working with several as yet unnamed private companies that will try out the scheme which, Lansley stressed, would involve no new costs for businesses.”

Why do we need private companies? What will they do which won’t cost anything to businesses? Or will new mothers be charged for expressing milk during breaks?

There is lots of information here on a longstanding campaign against the promotion of formula milk in the developing world by NESTLE from the Baby Milk Action Coalition. http://www.babymilkaction.org/

And finally, as an employer in a small business, there is no way I could provide a separate room for breastfeeding staff; there simply isn’t the space.