Oral question asked in the House of Lords, by Baroness Walmsley (Liberal Democrat). It was answered on Tuesday, 13 June 2006.

Parents

Question: My Lords, does the Minister accept that assistance for families consists of more than financial support and that if families can access services early before their difficulties reach crisis point, it can be more cost effective than expensive interventions later? In the light of that, what are the Government doing to encourage children’s information services, schools, nurseries and everyone dealing with children to work together to support the hard-to-reach families who, perhaps because of language or cultural barriers, do not know what services are there to help them?

Answer: My Lords, I agree that supporting families is not only about income, but it is an important component of it. A whole raft of policies has an impact on the outcomes for families, and for children in particular. For example, the Government have introduced issues and policies such as increased maternity leave and pay, paternity leave and pay, adoption leave and pay, a new entitlement to parental leave and we have responded to the request for flexible working. We have created 1.2 million childcare places, we have guaranteed full or part-time nursery places for all three and four year-olds and we have set up more than 500 Sure Start schemes which are focused on providing a range of health, parenting and family support. I have already referred to tax credits. There is a plethora of other regeneration programmes to tackle issues of inequality and we have increased child benefit by 26 per cent in real terms.

Secondary information