TELL US ABOUT YOUR WORK AS CO-CHAIR OF THE THINK-TANK?
I co-chair the think-tank and partnership with my colleague Sally Noden, who works for Action for Children and is Newcastle’s Inner West locality lead. My professional background involves being an area lead for (then) Sure Start Children’s Centres, our family has fostered many babies, and my university teaching and research is concerned with children, so it’s a subject close to my heart.
Sally and I work with the think-tank to foster relationships, and the understanding and trust that comes from that is the basis for our questions, listening, organising and influencing. I support a shared conversation between organisations that want to see Newcastle as an even better place to be born and to grow up. Our think-tank, and wider city partnership, have an action plan, we run a popular annual conference and we are always extending our activity with plans for a seminar series.
WHAT ARE THE PRIORITIES AND AIMS OF THE THINK-TANK?
The current action plan focuses on parent-infant relationships, poverty and inequality, and embedding our ‘Better for Babies’ commitments. Historically, we have always had that infant mental health focus, and that remains important. Understanding how we can provide warm, responsive, consistent and safe care that helps babies thrive is a real passion for us. As Newcastle upon Tyne is in the North-East of England, we are mindful of the levels of disadvantage and health inequalities faced here, and how babies can often be forgotten in policy and strategy.
Part of our work is keeping children from birth to age two high on the agenda of partnerships and for comissioners of services. Our third priority is finding ways to use a set of commitments we have called ‘Better for Babies’, which focus on understanding the principles of child development, considering infants and their parents/carers in everyone’s work, noticing opportunities to support families, understanding our specific contributions and being ready to take action.
WHAT CHALLENGES DO FAMILIES AND CHILDREN FACE IN NEWCASTLE?
Newcastle upon Tyne is a region facing particular sets of disadvantages (as well as being a wonderful place, I have to say), so that is a huge context for our work. We know that factors such as low household income, poor-quality housing, lack of high-quality services and environments for children from birth to age two, as well as many other factors, work together in complicated ways to put stress on families and to limit opportunities. We are positive about families, and facing these challenges does not mean that families can’t be great, and babies can’t thrive, but it’s an unfair challenge.
We have changing communities, adding wonderful variety to the city, so we have to work hard to understand what the challenges are in supporting all infants across the city today, not ten years ago. A huge challenge is the lack of resources to support babies, their parents and organisations who support them. Specific initiatives such as ‘Best Start for Life’ are great, but we also want to see mainstream budgets for children’s services, and resources for our voluntary sector colleagues increase as a smart investment and matter of social justice. The evidence is clear about the importance of sufficient, sustained funding – for parent-infant relationships, childcare provision, family support, high-quality and stimulating environments, and so much more.
CAN YOU TELL US MORE ABOUT YOUR WORK AT NORTHUMBRIA UNIVERSITY?
My day job complements the work of the partnership, because I teach undergraduates, postgraduates and Doctoral students who either want to go on to work with children, young people and families, or are already in those valuable roles.
I am passionate about high-quality, engaging and interactive teaching and research, so that we can model what we want to see in practice – meaningful shared thinking, deep understanding and activity that includes and transforms everyone involved.
YOU’VE SAID YOU LIKE TO BE VISUAL IN YOUR APPROACH TO GET PEOPLE TALKING. WHY DO YOU THINK THIS WORKS?
I started my academic study as an art student before applying the arts of community work with families at the start of my career, so visual methods are integral to all I do. Like so much good work in early education, I show that ‘making things visual’ is not about being an artist, but about having better conversations, materialising our thinking and helping us ask different sorts of questions in different ways. Visual methods, designed and used with purpose, can support children’s and professionals’ reflexivity (thinking about our thinking) and allow powerful perspective change. I’ve managed to use visual methods in our partnership – in planning events, and in communicating our mission, which reminds people that we are also here to celebrate and enjoy our work!
YOU USED TO MANAGE CHILDREN’S SERVICES AND SURE START PROVISION. WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE STATE OF THIS PROVISION NOW?
There is promising work being done through Family Hubs, but the sector still lacks cohesion and some practitioner groups lack meaningful career progression and support. Culturally, we face the challenge of work with young children being a gendered, low-skill and low-pay occupation, and that is unfair. In summary – there is much good practice in current provision, but it is too patchy.
IF MONEY WERE NO OBJECT, WHAT IS THE ONE THING THAT WOULD MAKE A DIFFERENCE TO IMPROVING THE MENTAL HEALTH OF BABIES?
Only one? Well, if each Family Hub could have a dedicated specialist to support parent-infant relationships work, that would transform the lives of many families who don’t know where to turn, and would raise the profile of supporting warm, responsive, safe and consistent relationships for infants at the most formative point in their lives.
