I hope Penelope Leach's book Divorcing better will help many parents to care for their children and cut down on the amount of suffering that many children go through.
BUT we still need to do far more than produce a book that many parents stressed out or in great pain themselves will not be even able to consider the advice.
The NSPCC website
states that "support through pregnancy and first year can ensure positive
parenting for a lifetime. Babies under one are particularly vulnerable to
abuse and neglect, they are EIGHT times more likely to be killed than other
children in the UK!"
Intervention is
costly and difficult and comes too late; maltreatment usually has
lifetime negative affects, again being costly and difficult. A retiring judge
Alan Goldsack QC stated a couple of months ago that he thought that children of
criminals should be taken away from their parents and put into care!
"a dysfunctional
family would often have £250,000 spent on them, ‘but if we get in early and
removed children we could save thousands’."!
He is right about the
financial cost, but putting children into care is not addressing the problems
and is also very costly and does little to break a heart breaking cycle. There
are a number of fairly simple, low cost ways of providing a great deal of
prevention which could drastically cut the need for costly intervention, costly
mental health services, doctors being over run, and result in more general
productivity, leading to a happy and healthier nation.
Suggestions:
1. Give all 'parents
to be' antenatal support and education including counselling for any trauma or
abuse they may have suffered as children. This would also give professionals the
ability to be more aware of where extra support may be necessary in the
future.
2. Give all new
parents infant massage sessions of at very least six weeks in the 'International
Association of infant massage' way that aids bonding and attachment, at the same
time as supporting new parents it helps them to see their child as a person with
needs as they are taught to always ask permission from the infant and respond
appropriately when the infant shows when it is not welcomed. Parents learn from
one another and how to communicate in a positive and respectful way with their
child. This helps the child’s brain to grow healthily which enables better
health all round, aiding later speech and education ability. There are many
studies that show the huge benefit of infant massage.
Also still give extra
support for those parents who need it, in the first two years of the child's
life.
3. Introduce the
'Roots of Empathy' programme (as Scotland is) which strives to break the
intergenerational cycle of violence and poor parenting. (http://www.rootsofempathy.org/) into
every school AND to home educators.
It should not be up
to charities to provide the support every parent needs to be successful enough
parents!
