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Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill

My Lords, I support these amendments. My name is attached to one amendment but I am equally enthusiastic about the others. The noble Baroness’s comment that educating parents is good for children is entirely right. It takes me back to an early visit that I made to a Sure Start centre, where the school was thoroughly involved in the process of catering for the parents who could come along. We should not forget that many parents who were not enthusiastic about their own education would often happily do as requested and drop their child at a particular point because they were not allowed beyond that, so we cannot expect them to much appreciate how things have changed since then. Now we have schemes where the adult can learn IT skills or go in for art classes and do the kinds of things that they might have been deprived of doing as a child; and/or they can work with their own children in the nursery classes on learning through play, which we are now back to hearing about as the way forward in every sense. I thoroughly support that kind of approach. I fully support the other two amendments in relation to the safeguarding side of things and the requirement that community services must include health visiting and community mental health services. It is crucial to recognise that these centres could be other places in which early signs of special needs could be detected and worked on. I support the amendments.