weeks.
The Early Intervention Foundation published Spending on Late Intervention: how we can do better for less, which said that £17bn a year is spent on picking up the pieces from damaging social problems. Meanwhile, the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Conception to Age 2 cited a figure of £23bn spent on the consequences of failing to deal with perinatal mental health and child maltreatment in the first '1001 critical days'. The Lords Affordable Childcare Committee called for a review of early years funding in its report, and the All-Party Parliamentary Group on A Fit and Healthy Childhood has just produced an extremely comprehensive report, with recommendations for every aspect of young children's lives (see News, pages 4-5).
These various reports are heartening in that they are in-depth, have drawn on the expertise of early years professionals and are the result of co-operation across the political spectrum. It would be fantastic if they could somehow be pulled together to maximise the chance of change, but the fear must be that their power and energy will dissipate in the pre-election frenzy.
Calling managers
Don't miss the next issue of Nursery World on 23 March, which will have the Spring 2015 Nursery Management supplement with it. This will have some fantastic features in it, including a special report on early years staff who suffer work-related pain, based on our major survey, a look at the crisis in recruiting students to Level 3 courses in the wake of changes in GCSE requirements, and advice on dealing with allegations against your nursery. We also visit multilingual nurseries and examine the benefit of hiring external specialists.