Should new fathers be getting more help to be able to support during birth and beyond?

This question was debated on Women’s Hour this morning.  Among those taking part were Dean Beaumont from Daddy Natal and Prof Tina Miller from Oxford Brookes.  Dean was up against a presenter, Jane Garvey, who took a particularly scornful approach to his suggestion that many men would welcome, and profitably use, extended paternal leave in order to begin the development of a sound relationship with their new-born.  The fact that midwives are part of the problem because they usually ignore fathers, as well as part the solution, was given an airing, but without a hint of what needs to be done in order to improve matters.  It was a reminder of how far away we still are from a grown-up discussion about the importance of fathers, as well as mothers, in the lives of their children and how services have to change in order to meet their needs.  But at least the programme debated the question.

Early Intervention on the Early Way Out?

The message implicit in an article in Children & Young People Now, the NYA publication, is not encouraging for those of us convinced of the importance of early intervention.  The government has decided to compel local authorities to reveal their early intervention expenditure by publishing a funding profile.  The move is alleged to help identify local spending on such programmes as the early intervention grant is absorbed into wider local government funding from April.  The decision was revealed in an answer to a written parliamentary question by Graham Allen MP, chair of the Early Intervention Foundation just before Christmas by the junior communities minister Brandon Lewis.

But Allen said the decision was a “tiny concession” for changes to the grant, which have widely been viewed as an abandonment of the government's commitment to early intervention.  “The very small concession is the fact that it can be tracked, and we’ll try and figure out where the money is being spent,” said Allen.  But he warned, “Local authorities are under pressure to use the money for mandatory programmes, and now early intervention will be at the back of the queue.

Andrew Webb, vice president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said the move was designed to shift the responsibility of spending cuts.  Fancy that.

As if this wasn’t bad enough, an article on Tuesday’s C&YPN reported that early intervention funding for councils is to be cut by an additional £49m over the next two years.  It’s useful to to know where the charming Mr Gove’s priorities lie.  It gets worse.  Today, the former children’s minister Tim Loughton MP, accused Mr Gove of running his ministry like the department store in seventies sitcom "Are You Being Served?”  Mr Loughton accused Mr Gove, his old boss, of behaving like Young Mr Grace, the out-of-touch department store owner in the comedy who barely knew the people who worked for him.

Giving evidence to the Commons Education Committee, Mr Loughton painted a devastating picture of the Department for Education (DfE) as inefficient and bureaucratic with an ‘upstairs downstairs mentality’.  The former children’s minister slammed the ‘declining’ priority given to children and families' issues, accusing Mr Gove of ‘complete radio silence’ on the subject.  ‘Most officials have never met the Secretary of State other than when he will troop out a few chosen people for the new year party, Mr Grace-like from Grace Brothers, and tell us we've all done terribly well and then disappear,’ he said.