Is misused neuroscience defining early years and child protection policy?

This article appeared in the Guardian:

"Neuroscience can now explain why early conditions are so crucial," wrote Graham Allen and Iain Duncan Smith in their 2010 collaboration, Early Intervention: Good Parents, Great Kids, Better Citizens. "The more positive stimuli a baby is given, the more brain cells and synapses it will be able to develop."

"With conferences such as Two Is Too Late (organised by Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom) and papers such as The 1,001 Critical Days, a set of claims are made that echo and reinforce those bold claims made by Allen: first, that we now have a set of scientific findings about the infant brain that can teach us new things about parenting. Second, that concrete events occur – from the production of synapses to the lighting up of areas of the brain on an MRI scanner – that can be interpreted in a straightforward way upon which all science is agreed. Third, with terms such as "critical periods" and "hardwiring", the thesis is put forward that brains have a finite time window for learning certain things. Fourth, that we can distil the treatment of infants into a set of behaviours that will determine the networks in their brains, either equipping them to empathise, learn, engage and produce, or irreparably failing to equip them. The connections made are endless: babies who fail to make the right neural connections will do badly at school, lack empathy, succumb to criminality, have mental health problems, and end up in a cycle of deprivation themselves."

"The child protection changes are the most extreme end of the policy shaped by neurosciences, but it's visible across all early-years policy; it can justify the removal of children who have been exposed to domestic violence or even children who may be hypothetically exposed, the mother having been abused before. It's the foundation of the Family Nurse Partnership scheme, the state intervention at week 16 into a pregnancy that has been deemed "vulnerable". It's one of the reasons given for the CanParent pilot, free parenting classes offered as a trial in five boroughs (though likely to be abandoned after only 4% of new parents took them up). A major proponent of parenting "training" is the Sutton Trust, which recently produced its own estimate that 40% of children lack "secure attachments".



"Val Gillies, a researcher in social policy at South Bank University, takes the scans head-on. "That illustration of the walnut brain is from a paper by Bruce Perry. There are no details given of the case histories of those kids. We don't know what 'normal' was. We don't know what 'extreme neglect' was. We don't even have a scale on that image. It's had the most powerful impact, but I've never seen another image like that. When people say, 'I've seen a brain scan showing what neglect does to the brain', that's the image they're talking about."

 "Immediately, there are a few things wrong with this: with no details on the case study, except for the fact that "extreme neglect" meant life in a Romanian orphanage, we could be dealing with anything, from the effects of malnutrition to a disability. But even without the drama of the image, the use of these extreme populations is misleading."

"Aside from the dodgy science, if you look at who's pushing this stuff, it's wealthy philanthropists, Heinz, Carnegie Foundation, with the same notion, that the ills of society are located in the lower orders."

http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/apr/26/misused-neuroscience-defining-child-protection-policy