MPs highlight bond between babies and carers in first 1001 days

Members from eight political parties have come together to lobby Government to put better measures in place to support perinatal mental health and stronger attachment between babies and their parents in the updated 1001 Critical Days Manifesto, which was originally launched in 2013.

The new manifesto states that around 26 per cent of babies (198,000) in the UK are estimated to be living within complex family situations of heighted risk where there are problems such as substance misuse, mental illness or domestic violence, while 36 per cent of serious case reviews involve a baby under the age of one.

Evidence published earlier this year by the All Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) for 1001 Critical Days in the report, Building Great Britons, identified the cost of poor perinatal mental health and child neglect as more than £23bn a year.

APPG chairman and former children’s minister, Tim Loughton MP, said that the  Government has done a good job of dealing with the problems of dysfunctional families through the Troubled Families Programme but a ‘pre-Troubles Families Programme’ is now needed, which deals with the causes of poor attachment and the resulting diminished life chances that flow from that.

He said, ‘It really is false economy not to be dealing with this earlier and I am glad that ministers are at last waking up to the fact that this is a problem which can be dealt with at relatively modest cost if we have a coherent programme that can get stuck in early.’