Lucy Rigby

By Lucy Rigby lucyrigby

Many working families feel under pressure because the systems they deal with haven’t yet caught up with the reality of modern family life.

Mums and dads tell me that they struggle to balance work and spending time with their children, that childcare provision isn’t as affordable or available as they need it to be, and often that they feel caring for children is not a shared burden but one which is too heavily borne by one parent.

We need to modernise and improve our approach to family life, to relieve the pressures on working parents. We should do it not just because hundreds of thousands of people in Britain would benefit, and it’s the fair thing to do, but also because good work and family policies are good for Britain. The more people who are in work, the more tax revenue coming in to the Exchequer and the lower our benefits bill.

What’s more (and this is obvious), stressed, frustrated employees aren’t good for business or productivity; and stressed, frustrated parents aren’t good for children. Britain succeeds when working families succeed.

The truth is that family life has changed dramatically over the last 20 to 30 years. There are more women in work and fathers have become more involved in family life. Seven in ten younger working fathers now regularly drop off their kids at school, for example, and many want to spend more time with their children. My Dad tells me that, 30 years ago, it was thought of as a bit strange to see a man pushing a buggy down the road – now it’s commonplace.

Many modern families, with both parents in full or part-time work, struggle to cope with the demands of juggling work and children. Half of parents say that the current way they organise work and care is through ‘necessity rather than choice’.

The lack of affordable childcare and a place shortage means many families can’t get decent childcare. Childcare costs have risen by 30% since 2010, while available childcare places have plummeted by over 40,000.

Also, our system of parental leave restricts parents’ choices about how to organise work and care. The Government’s new shared parental leave is about to come in, but take up is expected to be minimal because it doesn’t go far enough to recognise what families need, with no extra help for families to spend time together with a new baby. And the businesses who are going further to help working fathers take more leave are receiving no support from government.

Change is needed. First we need more affordable, high-quality childcare, so that no parent who wants to work can’t. My party have pledged to help families with the cost of childcare by extending free childcare from 15 to 25 hours a week for working parents of three and four year olds.

We’ll also tackle the shortage of decent childcare places – providing an additional 50,000 childcare places by ensuring that Sure Start Children’s Centres are using their buildings either to offer childcare directly or allowing local providers to use their premises.

Second, we need to allow new dads to play a larger role in their newborn’s life in those early, precious weeks. The last Labour government introduced a right to paternity leave and this week my party announced that we will support new dads through a doubling of paternity leave, to four weeks, and an increase in paternity pay to at least £260 a week.

Lucy Rigby is Lincoln Labour's candidate to be the city's next MP. She is a solicitor and lives in central Lincoln.

By Lucy Rigby lucyrigby

Earlier this month, I wrote about the importance of mental health and the fact that one in four people in Lincoln will at some point suffer from some type of mental health problem. Lincoln Labour Students (our passionate and energetic youth wing) are currently running an excellent campus campaign, ‘Revise’, around these very issues.

Given this background, it was very good news when, last week, my party committed to a radical improvement in mental health provision with more emphasis on prevention, early intervention and better support – particularly for young people – as part of our plan to sustain and improve the NHS.

At present half of all hospital in-patients have a mental health condition, rising numbers of young people are needing serious mental health support, and unaddressed mental health problems are costing the NHS billions each year in terms of worse physical health.

There is a false economy in the provision of mental health services; it is a heavily neglected area, which is in turn increasing pressure on the NHS and hospital services. To ensure that the NHS is sustainable, we have to take action to improve mental health services – that means smart investments that will help to save money.

We have therefore committed to properly integrate mental and physical health provision with social care, to ensure problems get identified and addressed as early as possible. This would include ensuring that the training of all NHS staff includes mental health so problems get spotted. Also, people with complex physical and mental health conditions would be given a single point of contact for all of their care.

We also need to take more action on child mental health. At present, just 6% of the mental health budget is spent on children, even though three quarters of adult mental illness begins before the age of 18.

As well as increasing the proportion of spending on younger people, all teachers would be trained in child mental health so they are equipped to identify, support and refer children with mental health problems.

Good child mental health is critical for academic attainment and future employment prospects: children with emotional problems are twice as likely to struggle with reading, spelling and maths.

Preventative care is key, and investing in talking therapies. According to the government figures, it saves the taxpayer £1.75 for every £1 invested, through reduced physical healthcare costs and reduced welfare costs. Labour have committed to an expansion of talking therapies, working towards a 28-day waiting-time standard (it is currently up to 3 months) for access to both adult and young people’s talking therapies. Local authorities, the NHS and schools would work together to ensure all children can access school-based counselling or therapy if they need it.

Each of these measures would help put us on a course to becoming a more mentally healthy society. And underpinning it all of course should be a cultural shift, such that talking about mental health is just as common and ordinary as discussing physical health.

Lucy Rigby is Lincoln Labour's candidate to be the city's next MP. She is a solicitor and lives in central Lincoln.