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Meeting of the Parliament 16 May 2012

16 May 2012 · S4 · Meeting of the Parliament

Item of business

National Parenting Strategy

Bibby, Neil Lab West Scotland Watch on SPTV

I will certainly give the minister some suggestions later in my speech.

Better preparing and supporting parents in the responsibilities and opportunities that are provided by parenthood gives us the chance to set out how we would like our children to grow up. It is vital that we use the opportunity to do just that and—crucially—to support parents rather than simply to lecture them. We need to develop a strategy that embeds in our culture the idea that it is natural—that it is expected, even—that all parents need advice and support at some stage. We must challenge the stigma that says that only vulnerable parents and parents at risk need a helping hand. That is why Labour members want to see more action from the Government to support parents and other guardians. We want to see the Government deliver on the promises that it has already made, and we want to take the opportunity to make other suggestions.

We want the Government to support parents. That should include working with local authorities, health boards and the voluntary sector to improve the existing network of family centres, and it should start with communities in which there are the highest levels of deprivation. Family centres provide support and advice for parents as well as specialised intensive work with vulnerable children. That can include play sessions, transition support, mentoring and respite. I know that both the Labour and the SNP manifestos included a commitment to a new generation of family centres, so I expect that we will see specific plans for that detailed in the strategy.

It has been mentioned that we also need to see action to increase free childcare and nursery provision for three-years-olds and four-year-olds. As we know, the SNP Government made a pledge on that back in 2007, and it could be introduced now with a simple piece of legislation. Instead, childcare measures are being folded into a children’s bill that will take years to implement. We want action to support parents and other guardians sooner rather than later.

We support initiatives such as the FAST—families and schools together—project, which is run by Save the Children. It aims to boost the chances of children in the UK’s most deprived areas by supporting parents to improve their children’s learning and development at home so that they can reach their full potential at school.

According to Save the Children, teachers have reported, after just eight weeks, a 10 per cent improvement in reading, writing and maths among children who are enrolled in the FAST programme, and that 73 per cent of parents have become more involved in their children’s education. That demonstrates significant developments in a short time. I was pleased to visit one such project in Clydebank late last year.

We also need a corporate parenting strategy that will improve our performance as corporate parents to the most vulnerable children who most need our help. We hope and anticipate that commitments to those ideas will be part of the national parenting strategy.

We need action from the Government to support parents and other guardians. Although the Scottish Government talks a good game in that regard, we would feel more confident if the Government had already delivered on its commitment to support parents and on the promises that it has made. There would be no better way for the Scottish Government to show that it is serious about supporting parents and other guardians than to deliver on those specific promises.

I mentioned increased nursery provision earlier; another such commitment is on kinship care. The level of financial support for kinship carers is less than the support for foster carers in far too many local authorities, and we hear from kinship carers about patchy support depending on which local authority area they live in. Patchy support is little better than no support at all.

We know that the First Minister committed on 27 September 2007 to providing £10 million to fund financial support that is equivalent to that which is paid to foster parents. Successive SNP ministers made further commitments that the promise would be met via the concordat with local government by 2011 at the latest, but that is still not happening.

In 2007, the Scottish Government promised aid to kinship carers—who are often elderly and making sacrifices to help children, and who are seeking not massive sums but simply equal treatment—and yet it did not deliver. What does that say about the Scottish Government’s commitment to supporting parents and guardians?

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Meeting of the Parliament 16 May 2012

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