Lone Parent Employment

: According to Helen Bee's book, ““The Developing Child””, there would never be a right place. I studied that book in the 1980s, when there was a real change in attitude to child development. It could easily be said that a child might be in some sort of care, outside the home, from birth. There is no reason why, if we make decisions on the basis of the development of a child, there has to be an age element. We have to consider what people prefer for their own families and accept that. Although I chose to work from day one after the birth of both my children, which was my choice and that of many other women, lots of women have never made that choice and are influenced by other voices saying, ““This might be bad for the development of your child.”” I do not want to give an age in respect of the development of the child. Instead, I want to look at how families cope at different stages—not of the child's development, but of the care available for the child that the parent can be confident about. Sure Start is involved in the very early years. Incidentally, I make a plea to the Government, as we need to extend Sure Start to older age groups. Sure Start helps children around the age of five, with some schemes letting children who are a little older through the door—but we will not say too much about that. If a child is in Sure Start aged five, with a sister and brother aged six and seven, we need to consider how we can move that provision on, because it is so useful to people who want to get into the workplace. At the ages we are talking about, there are school places available, so mothers tend to look outside the home for something to do, knowing that the child is in a secure, safe place during the day. We need to consider flexible working, which we were talking about earlier, because work patterns tend to operate around the school day. That almost brings me to the schools Bill, but I will not venture into that too much, Mr, Gale, which I am sure you will be pleased about. On the issue of caring for a child throughout the day, I attended a seminar by somebody who runs an academy. We will call it a school, rather than an academy, for the ease of my tongue. He opens up at 7 am, so parents can go in, and there is flexible working for the teachers and teaching assistants, so that somebody reliable is there from 7 o'clock in the morning right through to 6.30 in the evening. The school is open to the families all that time, so they have that reliability. We need to consider the reliability of the care of the child, which is the key, rather than whether a child has reached a certain point in their development. There is a lot of evidence suggesting that a child's development accelerates when they are in the company of other children. It is useful for children to have that social interaction and organised play as a means of learning. The attitude that working mothers are doing a disservice to their children by not staying at home is starting to change, but it can do so only through experience and through people knowing that, once a system has been put in place, they can rely on it as genuinely safe and something that will not be taken away from them. The idea that parents go into Sure Start with their child and develop that understanding has been key to them changing their role and going out to work. I want to see more people taking up the opportunity of working because of all the things that the hon. Member for Yeovil said about what happens then economically to the family and also throughout their lives. Presenting a role model to the child is so important. So many children used to be brought up in households where no adult had ever worked. That was particularly true when certain industries, particularly coal and steel, were collapsing in areas around Yorkshire. It was the natural pattern, for generations, for some families not to work at all. The growing number of lone-parent families also became a pattern, which was regrettable. However, the answer is not to wag the finger at those families and say, ““You bad person, get yourself sorted out.”” Our duty must be to the children in those families and to get the families economically viable, so they can have the kind of life that they need. We know that if we do not do that, the health of the children and the parent will be affected, and all of us in the long term will pay a heavy price, because of either their ongoing behaviour or the cost to us as a nation of their ill health. It is sensible to ensure that people go to work. Instead of looking at the moral imperative—it is a strong, good idea for lone parents to work and we should deal with the social attitudes mentioned by the hon. Member for Yeovil—we should consider the strong economic imperative for us to ensure that this happens, even if it means switching the balance a little, so that the work force, who used mainly to be made up of male earners in two-parent families, include all people—men and women, and one and two-parent families alike. We should not say, ““These people can be left out of the system.”” There are two benefits from doing more to encourage people into the system: the moral and the economic. To get to the position that the hon. Member for Yeovil was talking about, there has to be a great deal of investment in the infrastructures that I am talking about, which means extending not just the Sure Start scheme, early breakfast clubs and after-school clubs, but child care generally. It is pleasing to see the number of child care places increasing, but some mothers want a different system, partly because they have not yet had the opportunity of a Sure Start scheme in their area. Such schemes are not yet universal. We need to consider more closely the reliability and credibility of such schemes, and people's sureness of the safety of their child in the hands of somebody they approve of. Some local authorities put a great deal of time, care and energy into these issues, and child minders are an essential part of the infrastructure that we need to have in place so that lone parents can take up opportunities. For example, a woman who phoned me recently was concerned that she had been invited for an interview and wondered what that meant for her. The first thing she thought was how, if she was made to take a job—she had not yet understood that nobody was going to make her do anything—she would know that her son would be cared for after school. The traditional ““what if?”” came in straight away. She wondered what would happen if the hours were too late, or she did not like the job. I had to persuade that person to go to the interview and not worry about the ““what ifs?””, because there was no question of her being made to do a job until 6 pm, meaning her son would return to an empty house; her being unable to find a child minder in her street—she would not want him to go any further from home that—and the local authority not being able to get child minders fast enough because they have to be checked out. I said, ““Never mind the ‘what ifs?'; just go and find out.”” That woman did find out. She was told about what the benefits could be of going into work, which is another essential part of this process. By talking to her about those potential benefits—as the hon. Member for Yeovil said, some people are concerned that they might lose their housing and council tax benefits—a calculation could be made to show that, at a certain earnings point and taking into account various amounts of tax credit and a sum of money to pay for a child care place, she would be better off. Such analysis might make a difference for her. That process has made us see that there is another possibility, although that woman is still concerned that the system might not be robust and that she might try a job but later realise that her son, as she predicted, was not doing his homework and starting to fail in school because she had been, as she would see it, guilty of neglecting him, which is her concern. She might retreat to the home if she thinks that the safest and best thing for her child. Those are the real issues that parents are challenged with and try to make decisions about. They need support in making those decisions. The conversation that the woman I have mentioned had with the adviser at the jobcentre was good, and, as far as I could see, she was not forced into anything at all. All the adviser did was open up the possibilities that might be available to her. I met both those women in the same week, and I almost felt that I wanted to introduce them to each other and say, ““Look what it can be like.”” We need to do much more to tell people about what things can be like. We are combating a huge set of social attitudes that, it is fair to say, have not caught up with the modern world. Sometimes I am surprised that people can watch certain television programmes—sometimes soap operas—and see all the ideas from around the world, yet still believe that everybody in their street is going to point and wag a finger at them. However, they believe that because it often happens. I went to a community centre in my constituency where women gather together, usually while the children are at school, and share information. The idea is that they should gain knowledge, but they also share information. Unfortunately, some of it is incorrect. I often find myself having to debunk the myths about what would happen if they got a job. One myth might be—it is absolutely true, because Elsie said so—that the women would not get the money that everybody said they would, and that if they ever claimed benefits again after they got a job, they would have to wait for months. Some believe that they would have to wait six months, or even longer, because their benefits would have been stopped. We are battling against those myths all the time when people make those decisions.