Parent support services: Right from the start

It is what happens at home that really affects the life chances of under-fives, but policy-makers have tended to consider this a private matter. Should it remain so? Anne Wiltsher looks at another way

When the children come into the early years unit at Barton Village First School they don't know the noises of a cow or sheep, or even some of them a car or a train. At three and a half they have the literacy levels of a child with English as a second language, according to early years manager Elma Cameron. 'They don't know nursery rhymes. Their listening skills are poor and they've no idea how to hold a conversation,' she says.

The school, based in a poor part of Oxford, has a speech therapist working with small groups of children. 'One child had delayed speech development because of his home background. He couldn't make some sounds because he couldn't blow. This was because he'd been on a bottle until he came to school and had had no solid food.'

Why do the children have such poor communication skills? 'When they're babies they're put in a pram or cot all the time,' says Elma Cameron. 'They're not stimulated. The mothers have the TV or music on all day long and don't talk to the children - they think the TV will talk to them. A lot of houses don't have books. Unfortunately, many of the parents don't know what to do with children because their own parents haven't modelled it for them.'

Parent power

There could not be a clearer illustration of the need for direct support for parents at home with babies and young children. And early years experts made a call for just that - not just for disadvantaged families but for all parents - at a conference last month entitled 'Literacy: birth to school' organised by Peers Early Education Partnership, commonly known as PEEP.

PEEP, which employs about 50 staff and is funded by Government grants and charitable trusts, has been providing such support in deprived areas of Oxford since 1995 by running group sessions and home visits for parents of under-fives. It offers songs, rhymes, books, play packs and scrap to use with babies and pre-school children. Sessions are also held with parents in pre-schools and nursery classes.

'I'd like to take the PEEP approach everywhere,' says Penelope Leach, writer and honorary research fellow at the Royal Free and University College Medical School, who spoke at the conference. She is alarmed at the invisibility of parents' vital role when it is they, not the professionals, who have the most influence on their child's development. She believes that the current professional and media focus on early years risks disempowering parents, who may feel alienated by 'professional jargon' and 'education policy-speak'.

'Parents are not just a child's first teachers - they are partners for life,' says Penelope Leach. 'Research confirms the importance of secure attachment for cognitive and emotional development, and children learn most from the people they're most attached to. A baby prefers its mother's voice and face to any other, and we need to show this to the mothers of newborns. We need to show parents that children have a real need for stimulation and that what they do is not just play.'

Professor Christine Pascal, director of the Centre for Research in Early Childhood at the University College Worcester, also calls for universal family support. 'Irrefutable international evidence indicates that the years from birth to school are formative for children's long-term well-being and achievement,' she says. 'Ministers are targeting disadvantaged families, but my experience tells me that all families need support.'

Under-threes in the UK spend four- fifths of their time at home. Despite this, says Rosie Roberts, national director of PEEP, the Government's thinking 'relates almost entirely to settings, and to involving parents in the work of those settings'.

Blueprint plans

So just how would this universal service operate? 'I don't think it's my place to be very specific,' says Rosie Roberts. 'What's needed is the will to do it, then there needs to be some policy making, with the sort of process that was used to set up Sure Start. It should be carefully set up on a cross-departmental basis after wide consultation with parents and practitioners.'

What she does not want is an authoritarian approach. 'No-one wants an intrusive, didactic "nanny state" that aims to tell parents the methods they must use, that makes judgements about "good" and "bad" parenting. These are some of the dangers raised by this issue.'

She reckons that the cost would be about 200 per child per year generally, and 100 per child per year in Sure Start areas where there is already an infrastructure for home visits - incidentally, Naomi Eisenstadt, head of Sure Start, urged Sure Start delegates at the conference to introduce PEEP. The High/Scope project shows that parenting support is cost-effective in the long run, and a study giving further evidence was published in the British Medical Journal last month.

There is no reason why PEEP could not be the model for a national service. The first research into the effectiveness of the programme shows a significance difference in literacy and numeracy outcomes, as well as some evidence of improved self-esteem, in three-year-olds who have been in PEEP for only one year.

The programme covers about 2,000 children under five in the catchment area of Peers School, a secondary school in Oxford, with which PEEP has always been linked. The parents of the 300 to 400 babies born each year in the area are contacted within eight weeks of the birth and about half sign up to free weekly group PEEP sessions in local halls. Parents there share songs, rhymes and books as well as play activities, such as 'peep-bo' and treasure baskets.

For those who don't want to go to the weekly sessions there is the offer of a folder of activities being brought to their home and explained. There are activities for every age up to five. 'We are reaching about 80 per cent of children this way,' says Rosie Roberts. She puts down the success to the PEEP welcome, emphasis on songs and stories and a respectful offering of information, rather than a didactic approach, which builds on what parents already do. A video and audiotape make the folders more accessible.

Nursery support

PEEP also employs nursery teachers to run parents' groups at pre-schools and school nursery classes. Barton Village First School's early years unit has had a PEEP group since January 2000, although PEEP from birth is not yet available in the area. 'I asked the parents what they had got out of the group,' says Elma Cameron. 'They said they had tried out things at home they would never have done before, like talking about pictures in books and doing activities on wet days.'

While the PEEP teacher takes the session, Elma Cameron has time to pop down to the local pre-school. 'I am trying to introduce PEEP sessions there, and by working through the family centre as well, I hope to work with children from birth.'

She sees this as the best way to improve standards in the school. 'I used to work in middle school but I thought, "What these children need is to get help as young as possible". That's why I moved to the nursery. But really you've got to start at birth. I want to break the cycles that have been set up in families.'

Baroness Ashton, the minister for early years and primary school standards, says, 'Partnership with parents is at the heart of our policy for early years education and childcare'. But is it? The Government's main thrust remains directed at Sure Start, which it sees as the best use of resources, and it will be an uphill task to persuade those who hold the purse strings that all parents need the well-thought out approach that PEEP provides. Although, with Gordon Brown's wife expecting a baby, who knows?