Scotland`s first adviser on poverty and inequality

In 2006, the Social Exclusion Unit merged with the Prime Minister`s Strategy Unit. The task force aimed to ensure that Government departments work together to deliver services. The director at the time was Naomi Eisenstadt.

The Strategy Unit "concentrates on preventative policies for hard to reach children and families deemed to have been immune from the government` drive against social exclusion to date."

The Social Exclusion Programme is the equivalent in Scotland.

Website: www.cabinetoffice.gov.uk

　
According to the Scottish Government website: "Naomi Eisenstadt, an expert in the impact poverty has on children, will become the First Minister’s independent adviser on poverty and inequality, recommending actions needed to tackle poverty and holding the government’s performance to account."

http://news.scotland.gov.uk/News/First-Minister-appoints-poverty-adviser-1a68.aspx

Given Naomi Eisenstadt`s Cabinet Office connection, that is a very strange use of the term `independent`.

Here she is speaking to the Herald:

"Scotland's first poverty adviser has attacked plans by the UK Government to redefine the definitions used to measure child poverty as "wicked".

"Naomi Eisenstadt (CORR), a leading Oxford academic who was appointed by the Scottish Government last week, said any moves to try to use measures such as debt and drink and drug addiction to assess poverty would be shifting responsibility from government to families."

"The current definition of poverty is whether a child lives in a household which has an income less than 60% of the minimum wage..."

"The Conservative manifesto alluded to introducing better measures based on "root causes" of poverty - such as "entrenched worklessness, family breakdown, problem debt and drug and alcohol dependency..."

"These are indicators which have a judgemental nature to people`s behaviour - that are saying if you are poor it is your own fault and if only you stay married and not take drugs everything would be okay."

http://www.heraldscotland.com/news/home-news/scotlands-first-poverty-adviser-tory-plans-to-redefine-child-poverty-are-wicked.130287961

Here she is in 2013 talking about the Early Years Collaborative in Scotland:

"We talked about the issue of grandparent care which is occasionally raised in England as a partial solution to the childcare provision gap. I have three concerns on grandparent care: 1) it can replicate class disadvantage, in that the home learning environment of the grandparents is likely to be similar to that of the parents; 2) the grandparents themselves are often of working age and should be in paid employment; and 3) the sensitive issue of child safeguarding within family care."

http://engageforeducation.org/2013/05/naomi-eisendtadt-blog-impressions-of-early-years-strategy-in-scotland/

That seems a bit judgemental to me.

Don`t expect changes in the early intervention approach to poverty any time soon.

Engage for Education, Strategy in Scotland 31 May 2013

Referring to the article below, full of management speak and spin, the approach to early years which Naomi Eisenstadt from Sure Start warmly welcomes is the collaborative approach which invariably involves incremental improvements on the small scale, tested and shared amongst participants. She does say that a collaborative is a promising methodology for ensuring a shared vision. It`s the SHARED VISION that is the important part. There`s still some resistance to this idea in England.

But who is to do the collaborating? It is the key players in the system who will all be collaborating together to arrive at the shared vision which those who set up the collaborative are after; the aim is that it will be supported and owned by all levels of the system.  In other words by the time those who are driving the changes have finished no-one will be quite sure how it happened. We know that Community Planning Partnerships involve the police, social services, health and education. The move towards Police Scotland and the break up of the separate police forces is in the same direction: integration and centralised planning.

This is LIKELY to result in improvements in early years services, we are assured by Naomi Eisenstadt.  No guarantee of course, because there are problems with what to measure, knowing what makes a difference, and over-bureaucratic recording systems. By the looks of things the shared vision is also likely to demonise parents and grandparents.

Naomi Eisenstadt asserts that it is parents who are responsible for getting into poverty and so must get the skills and jobs to get out of poverty. Never mind that there are not enough jobs offering a living wage for families and that many working families also require benefits to stay afloat. Meanwhile the child care provision gap which results when parents eventually find a job is better NOT managed by grandparents because they pass on disadvantages and should be out working too. So says Naomi Eisenstadt. The emphasis here is on children`s rights after all.  They are better left with strangers.

Here is what the Education Endowment Foundation has to say about early childhood interventions:

Early years or early childhood interventions are approaches which aim to ensure that young children have educationally based pre-school or nursery experiences which prepare for school and academic success, usually through additional nursery or pre-school provision. Many of the researched programmes and approaches focus on disadvantaged children. Some also offer parental support.

In most studies, the impact on attainment tends to wear off over time, though impact on attitudes to school tends to be more durable. There is no established amount of time where the fade takes place, rather there is a pattern of decline over time. Early years and pre-school interventions are therefore not sufficient to close the gap in attainment for disadvantaged children

There are a number of systematic reviews and meta-analyses which have looked at the impact of early childhood intervention. Most of these are from the US however, where children tend to start school at a later age. Evaluations of Sure Start in the UK do not show consistent positive effects and indicate that some caution is needed when generalising from exceptionally successful examples. However, overall the evidence supporting early childhood intervention is robust.

See Early Education in Childhood and Care 2011


Naomi Eisenstadt, Sure Start   

"Naomi Eisenstadt, Senior Research Fellow, Oxford University and former Director of Sure Start, visited Scotland to see and comment on our work on the Early Years."

 

"During my visit I attended an Early Years Collaborative (EYC) meeting in Ayrshire. The EYC is a very promising methodology for ensuring a shared vision for babies and young children, and a reflective, peer led system for continual improvement in public services aimed at young families."

"Participation of health in such endeavours in England continues to be challenging."

 

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