Early Years the key to reducing violence

Detective Chief Superintendent John Carnochan tells us how the Violence Reduction Unit is supporting early years initiatives and work with parents.

Violence affects us all, no matter who we are, no matter where we live. Much is made of the need for more police on the streets. But while this would undoubtedly reduce violent crime in the short term, in the long term 1000 health visitors would be more effective than 1000 police officers. Early years education and support is key to reducing violence in the long term. It’s the nearest thing to magic without being magic. And that is why it’s a vital part of the Unit’s work.

Most important years

Research confirms the most important years of a child’s life are up to the age of 3. The safe environment parents create for babies at this stage is vital: this is when they acquire the non-cognitive or ‘soft’ skills that allow them to negotiate life: skills such as empathy, compromise and negotiation, the skills that allow us to make good decisions – and bad ones.

People often ask how a group of people from the same block of flats can turn out to be so different. Why does one person become a teacher, yet their neighbour grows up to be a violent offender? It’s what happens behind the front door, the way a child is brought up, the way it is spoken to, the behaviour it observes that shapes the adult it becomes.

And it is a process that begins even before the child is born.

Imagine a pregnant woman living with a violent partner. How can she provide a safe environment for her baby if she cannot provide it for herself? Living in such circumstances inhibits the development of the unborn baby in the same way as excess alcohol consumption or smoking. The baby is then born into a situation where its mother’s ability to do everything she can for it will be seriously inhibited by the stress and aggression in her world. A cycle is then established, where violence becomes part of everyday life, a pattern imprinted indelibly on the child.

Parenting is difficult

Parenting is difficult and parents – whatever their circumstances – need all the help and support they can get. Parenting, whether that be by a single mother, a mother and a father, a grandparent, whoever, is an absolutely fundamental element of society. Only parents have the access to children in those vital early years, not teachers and certainly not police. Children whose parents successfully pass on vital life skills enter school ready to make the best use of education; those who lack them quickly become detached and excluded.

Children don’t come with a manual. No one teaches you how to be a good parent. This is why we require early years initiatives, schemes that will offer support and advice on parenting. Such schemes should run hand in hand with antenatal care, so that they can be easily accessed by whoever needs them, giving them the confidence to cope with all the difficulties parenting brings. This necessitates a universal service with health visitors on the front line, identifying potential problems and offering support where it is most required.

Support programmes

The VRU has called for such a service in their 10-year plan, which advocates a national policy and local delivery of universal and specialist support programmes around parenting and early years by 2017. Health visitors, who already provide an excellent universal service, are ideally placed to deliver this. We must develop a model that makes better use of well-trained nursery nurses and social workers to deliver specialist and targeted services where they are needed as part of an evidence-based parenting programme.

This is not about bad parents and good parents. It is about breaking the cycle of violence for future generations by showing them that it is not an inevitable part of life. And it is about recognising the need to help and support those at risk, so their child is not assigned to a life of failure from the moment it draws its first breath.

For more information on the work of the Violence Reduction Unit, visit the Action on Violence website.

'It's never too soon to learn'

As part of the VRU’s commitment to early years, 400,000 leaflets were handed out to P7 pupils across Scotland in March last year.

The leaflet, which details simple, everyday ways to help to reduce the risk of violence in a child’s life, gives parents the knowledge to help bring up their children to understand that violence is preventable rather than a fact of life.

Supported by Kathleen Marshall, Scotland’s Commissioner for Children and Young People, the initiative also saw posters carrying the messages sent to doctor’s surgeries, libraries and prisons nationwide.

Since the initial launch, the VRU has been approached by schools, local authorities and police forces from around Britain asking for more information and copies of the leaflet.