Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour party, has today promised to end the ‘scandal of plummeting child health outcomes’ over the last 14 years.
Measures under Labour’s Child Health Action Plan include the introduction of a targeted toothbrushing scheme for three- to-five-year-olds and free breakfast clubs in every school, previously announced by the party, and expanded mental health support.
The National Association of Headteachers (NAHT) said it ‘remained sceptical about how a supervised toothbrushing scheme will work in practice.’ It added ‘further thought and additional funding’ is needed’, and emphasised the importance of making sure parents don’t ‘inadvertently think that basic care is something that can or should be outsourced to schools’.
The National Education Union (NEU) said it was unclear about who would administer the breakfast clubs and toothbrushing scheme.
Children's poor health outcomes
Labour’s Child Health Action plan comes as OECD data shows that British children are increasingly falling victim to poor health outcomes and lag behind their international counterparts. According to the political party, British children today are smaller than Haitian children, fatter than the French and less happy than Turks.
The data reveals that the UK is estimated to have more obese children than France, Germany, Poland and Slovenia. It also shows that 200,000 British children are waiting for mental health support.
The three goals of the Child Health Action Plan
Labour’s Child Health Action Plan is based around three goals for Britain’s future – A future where children are healthy, a future where children are happy and a future where children can get the NHS care they need. Measures introduced under the plan would include:
- Implementing a 9pm watershed for junk food advertising on TV and ban paid-for advertising of less healthy foods on online media aimed at children.
- A free breakfast club in every primary school.
- The introduction of a targeted national supervised toothbrushing programme for three- to-five-year-olds, delivered in breakfast clubs.
- Cutting waiting lists for mental health services by recruiting thousands more staff.
- Introducing specialist mental health support for children in every school.
- Cutting paediatric waiting times by delivering two million more operations, scans and appointments.
- Delivering 700,000 extra urgent dental appointments per year and recruit dentists in areas ‘most in need’.
- Creating a cross-departmental mission delivery board that prioritises child health and includes a focus on inequalities, wellbeing, physical and mental health.
Keir Starmer, said, ‘Tooth decay, stunted growth and stalling life expectancy should be consigned to the history books, but instead they’re the reality of Tory Britain. The biggest casualty of the short term "sticking plaster" politics of the last 14 years are our nation’s children. My Labour government will turn this around.
‘Labour will end the scandal of children being held back by poor health and regional inequalities, by slashing waits for mental health treatment and hospital appointments, putting prevention first, and fixing NHS dentistry.’
While the National Education Union (NEU) welcomed plans for a free breakfast club in every school, it said ‘school lunches are seen by many school staff as a more effective mechanism for tackling child hunger.’ The union said it hopes Labour goes further by committing to free school meals for all children, following in the footsteps of the London Mayor, who has committed to funding universal free school meals in the capital’s primary schools for another year.
The Food Foundation has similarly called for free school meals to be expanded nationally.