The Rt Hon Dawn Primarolo MP, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families

NARROWING THE GAP

Speech by the Rt Hon Dawn Primarolo MP, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families, 23 June 2009, London.

Today, in London, two children will be born. These two children will be united for a few days by the maternity ward they share but divided over the coming months and years by the inequality of their respective circumstances.

With one shielded by a life of advantage and the other — through nothing more sophisticated than fluke of birth — exposed to a life of disadvantage. And, like their parents before them, they’ll enter the world at a time when economic uncertainty threatens to accelerate their paths away from each other; a time when economic realities pose serious questions for policy-makers and budget-holders.

Thirty years ago, at their parent’s birth, those serious questions were met with cost-cutting and rationalisation. And the result was an entire generation of young people left to sink or swim, with millions more left to drift onto incapacity benefit rather than being equipped with the skills they needed to prosper once the recession had past.

Under-skilled and under-resourced then, even now this generation struggles to find work and their inheritance of disadvantage has been passed — seamlessly — onto their own children. I see it in my own constituency when I talk to the people who were hit during the last recession. And I see the same inequalities played out in the failure of white, working class boys to keep pace with their peers at school; in the plurality of health problems that disproportionately affect children from disadvantaged backgrounds; and in the depressingly limited prospects of teenage parents and their children.

This is the inequity that lies under all we do: in the millions we spend on health issues such as childhood obesity; and on the millions we spend to patch over the effects of social disadvantage.

So, we must ask ourselves today is this the right time to slow down our commitment to children’s centres? Is this the time to limit our ambitions for reducing child poverty? Is this the time to reduce training opportunities for young people?

The answer, I think, is an unequivocal ‘no’. Recession sharpens rather than blunts the case for progressive reform. And now, more than ever before, we need to hold our nerve and look to prevention and investment as the social and economic imperatives. And that means all of us must now choose activism over fatalism. As Andy Warhol once said, ‘people say that time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.’

Our first challenge is, therefore, one of leadership. It will be the most powerful advocates of narrowing the gap who succeed. It will be those who pursue this programme of change with the most dogged determination that effect the most change. And this will require all of us to stand up and demonstrate that the costs of doing nothing far outweigh the costs of doing something.

Choosing what that something is, is, of course, not always as easy as it sounds in a world surfeited with options, choices, pathfinders, projects and priorities. But Narrowing the Gap has been absolutely clear about what it is that really makes the difference. Absolutely clear about what really helps the most vulnerable children and what really helps the most disadvantaged young people, which is why the programme’s recommendations are based on the very strongest research whilst also being quality checked by the frontline social workers, teachers and children’s centre staff who know what can actually be transferred from academic thesis to classroom, health clinic or nursery practice.

Our leaders must focus on these golden threads and persuade those around them that it’s not always the most vocal groups who need help most urgently and persuade those around them that we have to represent those who noiselessly endure disadvantage when the town hall budgets are set this autumn. And it will be the leaders who are prepared to fight this corner — to maintain this focus on those without voice — who will effect the greatest changes — a point that has been demonstrated time and time again through the work of Narrowing the Gap and the Centre for Excellence.

Indeed, it would be very hard to overstate how significant the quality and determination of leadership is to this programme. And that means leadership not just at ministerial level, not just at DCS level and not just at chief executive level. It means across all services and at all levels within services.

Now, the second big challenge I want to talk about is joint working. Getting local authorities, the health service, schools and central government to unite under one common ambition. When I was public health minister I saw some truly excellent examples of joint working between health professionals and other children’s trusts partners. But, unfortunately, these remain patchy, and we must now do more to ensure that those who can wield influence, such as directors of public health, are involved at every step. Because where this is done well, it can have a truly transformative effect, particularly in settings such as children’s centres and schools where we can track the value of our interventions as surely as footprints in the snow — through the reduction in teenage pregnancy rates, through falls in binge drinking and through drops in anti-social behaviour.

Let me give you a quick example from my own constituency of Bristol of how joint working between agencies can look. The city’s Learning and Communities team has been targeting parents without decent qualifications and supporting them into learning or work. Its development workers each have an individual budget and target specific neighbourhoods in close partnerships with schools, health visitors, children’s centres and many other services.

It’s already helped more than 2,000 adults to gain access to community and family-learning activities, and it works precisely because of the highly collaborative approach it has adopted whilst also having a very strong emphasis on data collection.

The issue, I think, we face in making this kind of joint working common practice is not one of selling the social justice argument. No one seriously believes the gap between those from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds should be increased. It’s about selling the financial benefits to all services of making it a priority. It’s about how we work collegiately and share the proceeds collegiately.

And this is likely to require carrot as much as stick. So, as Narrowing the Gap recommends, government should support local children’s trusts and local authorities, work with them rather than do to them, and create a simple, unifying standard behind which all partners can rally.

At the same time, though, we are going to have to hold local areas firmly to account for supporting improvements in areas like school grades, obesity rates and teenage pregnancy levels, because this programme is the touchstone issue of our time: central to everything that we do; central to the Every Child Matters agenda; central to social policy; central to the lives of individual families across the country.

I’d ask you to take this message of thanks back to your teams and on to everyone you work with, but I also hope you’ll be able to pass on the challenge that I have set out today to maintain this unwavering focus on Narrowing the Gap throughout these tough economic times. Because the investments and decisions you make in the crucible of childhood are the ones that have the most dramatic impact on a young person’s prospects. We know, for instance, that by the age of three there’s already a marked disparity between the cognitive and behavioural attainment of children from advantaged and disadvantaged backgrounds. So if we promote good children’s services, we promote one of the best opportunities — if not the best opportunity — to positively shape outcomes.

You have a quite unique gift within your grasp — the ability to help the most disadvantaged children rise above the cards that fate has dealt them. Together, we can help ensure that those two children who are born today share more than a maternity ward. We can help make sure that they share the same chances, the same aspirations and the same enjoyment in their lives.

Biography of the Rt Hon Dawn Primarolo MP, Minister of State for Children, Young People and Families

Dawn Primarolo has lived in Bristol since the late 1970s and, after a period as a member of Avon County Council, she was elected Member of Parliament for Bristol South in 1987.