25th Anniversary Lecture Daycare Trust
“Don’t blame families, support them and help them to achieve better outcomes.” Sir James Heckman
By special invitation from Daycare Trust, the leading economist and Nobel Prize winner, Sir James Heckman of the University of Chicago, gave an outstanding lecture, delivered in the Churchill Rooms at the Treasury.
He argued that there is great economic benefit through the investment in supporting families and provision of good early years experiences, and this far outweighs the benefit of more costly programmes at a later stage.
In economic terms the long term benefit to society has a much higher return than the cost of projects such as for eg. support for those aged over 16 not in employment, education or training, reducing criminality, single, young parenthood, and concerns with issues of social disadvantage. He provided much evidence to support this and called for prevention programmes to be in place instead of remediation.
He called for professionals to work together and for the measurement base to be broadened with a focus on social or family policy rather than separation in to education, health and social care.
Sir James referred to the development of non cognitive skills as being a fundamental determinant in the longer term cognitive skills.
As an example he looked at some research from Hart and Risley, 1995, on the vocabulary of children. At the age of 2 in working class families in the US children had a vocabulary of 616 words, whereas in professional families the vocabulary increased to 2553 words.
Much to think about. The research gives credence to the belief that we have in our partnership, that our work, which delivers support to children and families in social and economic disadvantage, clearly helps change community landscapes.
More information will be available on the Daycare Trust website and as a trustee of Daycare Trust, immensely proud to be part of a campaigning organisation leading change for improvements for the lives of families.
SmithMartin Partnership LLP – engaging with communities and broadening horizons