Emotional wellbeing of vulnerable children is the topic of new guidance published today by NICE, (National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence). Recommendations cover home visits, early education and childcare.
The NICE guidance identifies the negative, lifelong effects on health and wellbeing if there is disadvantage before birth and in a child’s early years.
It aims to ensure services are in place to provide mental and physical support to vulnerable children.
Children living in disadvantaged circumstances are more likely to experience social, emotional and behavioural difficulties, resulting in poor health, education and employment outcomes.
The poorest 20 per cent of children are more likely to display conduct problems at aged five, compared to children from more affluent backgrounds.
The NICE guidance recommendations include:
• Each health and wellbeing board should ensure that the social and emotional wellbeing of vulnerable children features in its ‘Health and wellbeing strategy’, as one of the most effective ways of addressing health inequalities. The resulting plan should include outcomes for ensuring healthy child development and ‘readiness for school’ and for preventing mental health and behavioural problems.
• Health professionals in antenatal and postnatal services should identify factors that may pose a risk to a child’s social and emotional wellbeing. These include factors that could affect the parents’ capacity to provide a loving and nurturing environment. For example, they should discuss with the parents any problems they may have in relation to the father or mother’s mental health, substance or alcohol misuse, family relationships or circumstances and networks of support.
• Health visitors or midwives should offer a series of intensive home visits by an appropriately trained nurse to parents assessed to be in need of additional support. The trained nurse should visit families in need a set number of times over a sustained period of time (sufficient to establish trust and help make positive changes).
• Health visitors or midwives should consider evidence-based interventions such as baby massage and video interaction guidance to improve maternal sensitivity and mother-infant attachment. (For example, this might be necessary when the mother has depression or the infant shows signs of behavioural difficulties.)
• Local authority children’s services should ensure all vulnerable children can benefit from high quality childcare outside the home on a part- or full-time basis, and can take up their entitlement to early childhood education where appropriate. Attendance times should be flexible so that parents or carers have the opportunity to take up education, training or employment opportunities. Such services should also address any barriers that may hinder participation by vulnerable children such as geographical access, the cost of transport or a sense of discrimination and stigma.
Professor Mike Kelly, NICE director of public health, said: “We know that there are a complex range of factors that impact upon the social and emotional development of children.
“While most parents offer love and stability to their children, regardless of their personal circumstances, in some cases, children living in challenging environments can experience emotional and behavioural problems.
“These can have a life-long, negative effect on their future health and wellbeing. NICE is pleased to publish this guidance which will help all those involved in delivering excellent services to the children and their parents who need them most.”
For more, visit daynurseries.co.uk.