Meeting of the Parliament 02 November 2023
I am pleased to be taking part in the debate. I hope that my previous experience can add to the conversation.
I will start by acknowledging some of the good stuff and the positive impacts, and then I will go on to suggestions that I make as a critical friend. I pay tribute to the best start grants, the food payments, the baby box and the Scottish child payment, which have inevitably made significant differences. I welcome the expansion in childcare.
We know that investment in early childhood, families, prenatal care and that crucial stage of bonding in the early stages after birth makes a huge difference. As the Dalai Lama says, the foundations of our lives are laid in our childhood, so it is really important that we get it right.
From that point of view, I would like to touch on attachment. The motion in front of us talks about child development, but it does not mention anything about attachment theory. We know that that is really important, so I want to link it in with staff training. Although I welcome the expansion in childcare, I would like the early years staff that we have to be fully trained in attachment theory. That is especially significant at the moment, because we know that our children suffered during Covid, and that it had an impact on their speech and language. I speak to teachers regularly—I was in a nursery last week—and the challenges around that are immense.