Debate contribution: Early Intervention and Family Support Services: North Antrim

Debate contribution by Mr Jon Burrows on 26 May 2026.

MLA

Mr Jon Burrows

Party at the time

Ulster Unionist Party

Date

26 May 2026

Type

Debate contribution

Business

Adjournment

Heading

Early Intervention and Family Support Services: North Antrim

Assembly identifier

Official Report component 5583481

Read the official Assembly record

Text

I thank my North Antrim colleague for raising this important subject. There is nothing more important in our society than children and young people. They should be our number-one spending priority. The Health Minister uses the phrase "shift left": if we really want to get into a preventative model for the delivery of public services in Northern Ireland, early intervention, early years and family support are critical. Not only are they vital in order to do the right thing for our young people and our families, but — realpolitik here — they are our future workforce. They are our future carers and our future public servants. There are grave challenges in our society at the moment with increasing numbers of children who have additional needs, delayed development and special educational needs who are missing key milestones. It is really basic stuff. Teachers tell MLAs and others all the time about children coming in who are behind in milestones, such as being toilet-trained. Those are serious issues. At the outset, I will say that what we need to do as a society is pick up things as early as possible. Let me give you one example. I spoke recently to two excellent speech and language therapists, who work in a speech and language therapy (SALT) team. They said that speech and language issues are identified years after they could have first been detected. There is a pilot in England that I found out about only today. I cannot remember the acronym for it, but it did a sample of children and found that it identified speech issues about three years earlier than normal. That allowed the intervention and allowed the children to flourish. The basics of literacy and numeracy flow from being able to communicate. Therefore, we need to shift everything way to the left. There is some excellent work going on in health, with gateway services, family support and intervention teams and the community and voluntary sector, but we need to do more. There are a number of things that I want to address. The first is that investment in early years is absolutely critical. Support for parents in raising children and dealing with the challenges of today around screens and social media is something that we need to instil at the earliest stages. Teachers report an increased number of children coming to school who are behind in milestones but are fluent in using an iPad. When they go to take a screen off a child, the child becomes dysregulated. Because of busyness, pressures or issues that might be in the home, such as domestic violence, parents find it difficult to deal with issues such as taking a screen off a child. There are increased levels of homeschooling and anxiety or emotionally based school avoidance. That causes me huge concern about safeguarding, because we do not have a proper understanding of the numbers, and no proper assessment of the risks that are posed to children has been done. A lot of significant reports, most of which have been commissioned in England, say that children who are homeschooled are at a much higher risk of abuse and neglect. I saw that at first hand in the police. It used to break my heart. While I am firm on law and order, I have compassion, because I know there is a bit of a postcode lottery in life. If you grow up on one street, the chance of you becoming involved with police interventions is far higher than if you grow up on a street a couple of miles away. You are much more likely to die younger and have a lower quality of life. There is a postcode lottery, and we need to equalise opportunity. That is where early intervention is key. It also comes down to things in the Education Minister's portfolio such as childcare. Every time the subsidy that is available for childcare goes up and parents are given more money, it has an inflationary impact on childcare costs, because local childcare providers put prices up. It benefits nobody. Parents who want to work cannot work and do not get support. They come home frazzled and unable to support their children. There are so many issues. Ballymoney is a good example. There are two childcare providers in Ballymoney. Regional inequality is a big thing. I welcome the debate that Ms Mulholland has secured. It is critical that we help people early, give them the best opportunity and look after the members of our future workforce, who will eventually look after us.

762 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

Assessment

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Assessed 21 October 2026 at 15:41 UTC by jev-1.13.0 (requested as typesafe/jev) under rubric 2026.10-r9, methodology 1.9.

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