Thank you for your recent campaign email regarding support
for early years education.
While this is an important aspect of a child’s life, at this
early stage of their upbringing, I believe the primary responsibility for
looking after and educating children lies with parents. While the government
can help it is not our role to take this crucial role away from parents.
Relating to this I am pleased at the recent announcement
that a cross-Government working group will be set up to review how to improve
the support available to families in the period around childbirth to the age of
2.
The Prime Minister has asked Andrea Leadsom MP to chair a
cross-Government ministerial group which will seek to identify gaps in
available provision and make recommendations on how coordination across
Departments can be improved.
The review will build on recent Government policy in this
area including NHS England’s Maternity Transformation Programme, expanding
provision for perinatal mental health care, building parents’ confidence to
begin the learning process from the home, and supporting thousands of families
with access to free childcare.
This includes:
Record investment in early years education and childcare
support of around £6 billion by 2020
£365 million investment to enable 30,000 more women to
access appropriate, high-quality specialist perinatal mental health care by
2020/21
15 hours per week of free early education for disadvantaged
two-year-olds – nearly 750,000 children have benefited from this support
Ensuring parents in this critical period can benefit from up
to £39 million being invested to reduce parental conflict through
evidence-based intervention.
I hope this is helpful in outlining my position on this
matter.
Thanks once more for getting in touch and please do let me
know if I can be of further assistance with any other matter in the future and
I will be happy to help.
