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Special Educational Needs and Disability (Support) Bill

I agree. Such conditions need to be spotted early. In the centre that I visited, a fully trained teacher was working with children aged under one. One might ask what on earth a trained teacher was doing in a room full of babies. The answer is "Here is someone who has worked in a school, someone who has observed child development and is an expert on it." That teacher tells parents that they should read books to babies, which I must confess that I have completely failed to do. Tiny babies were lying on their backs being read stories by their parents, which is absolutely fantastic. It is the highest-quality child care service that we can possibly offer, and we should offer it to every child: to children on the Lupset estate, and to children in our poorest, lowest-income communities. That brings me to my next point, which relates to babies with clear disabilities. A parent who is aware that a child is deaf or blind may be battling to get that child into a Sure Start children's centre. If I had a child who was deaf or blind, I would certainly want it to go to one of those centres. Everyone knows that parents of disabled children have myriad hospital appointments with physiotherapists, or with speech and language therapists. If a parent wants to continue to work, it is much easier for the professionals to come to the child—although we have introduced the right for parents, particularly those whose children have disabilities, to work flexibly—than for the parent to be constantly leaving the workplace and taking the child to hospital. It may take half an hour to travel to the nursery, an hour to travel to the hospital, an hour to wait to see the professional and an hour to return the nursery. That is the day gone. Frankly, most employers are not prepared to put up with that.