Helping parents to bond

The Sutton Trust exemplifies the well tried formula of a third sector organisation acting as a think-tank, lobbying the Government to push forward the Government`s agenda, whilst the Government then refers to the charity to justify its actions. It is a formula that is beginning to wear a bit thin. As Nicola Horsley says (see below) it is increasingly the third sector which provides the evidence base to support government policy and not rigorous neuroscientific studies. However, this is not how the Sutton Trust sees it:

The Sutton Trust has funded and evaluated programmes that have helped hundreds of thousands of young people of all ages from low and middle income homes. We have published over 140 research studies that have had a profound impact on national education policy. Our work is highly influential among leading politicians and opinion formers, and attracts prominent coverage in the national news media.

http://www.suttontrust.com/home/

 

Perhaps the Sutton Trust is part of the problem. Children and Young People Now reported the extraordinary claim by the Sutton Trust that 40 percent of children do not form strong attachments with their parents in the first few years of life. The Sutton Trust recommended that Children`s Centres should do more to help parents bond with their babies in order to narrow the school readiness gap and prevent problems arising in the future. Help should be given to troubled families even before the child`s birth.

"Its research also found that a quarter of children reported avoiding their parents when upset because they have ignored them in the past, and 15 per cent resisted their parents because they cause them distress.The report welcomes government-backed parenting support programmes, such as the Family Nurse Partnership and Troubled Families initiative, but concludes intervention needs to happen at an earlier stage in order to prevent children experiencing long-term effects of poor parenting."

- See more at: http://www.cypnow.co.uk/cyp/news/1142990/childrens-centres-focus-attachment#sthash.xrdo5wWW.dpuf

The Sutton Trust report has been criticised by Nicola Horsley, Research Fellow on the Brain Science and Early Intervention Project.

"You might expect a claim like ‘there is a burst of brain development when attachment bonds are made’ to cite a neuroscientist but the reference supporting this quote is the work of Sue Gerhardt, a psychotherapist who is one of the founders of the OXPIP parenting programme; and her book Why Love Matters: how affection builds a baby’s brain, is core reading for practitioners delivering the programme.

The Baby Bonds report features only one neuroscientist in its bibliography and that is Jack Shonkoff, director of the Harvard Center on the Developing Child, which is a partner of the UK’s Early Intervention Foundation. Increasingly, third sector organisations like the Early Intervention Foundation and ‘strategic philanthropists’ like the Sutton Trust, and not rigorous up-to-date studies or neuroscientific thinking, are providing the ‘evidence’ on which policy is based...

When nurses tell us that they are under pressure for their delivery of a parenting programme to be seen to have a direct effect on future prison populations, it is clear that family life has become atomised beyond all recognition. We are left with a science of parenting where family support used to be and this can only serve to further isolate those who are consigned to the 40%." Nicola Horsley

http://weekscentreforsocialandpolicyresearch.wordpress.com/2014/04/10/are-we-the-60-percent-claims-about-attachment-as-an-evidence-base-for-family-policy/