Bournemouth 2008: Susan Kramer's speech

• SUSAN Kramer's speech to conference as Liberal Democrat Families Spokesperson outlines her aim to extend the amount of pre-school childcare that is provided free of charge for all families:

I am really pleased to have the opportunity today to start a conversation with you on what is for me quite a new portfolio. As you know, Nick Clegg asked me to take on a cross-departmental role on families to complement the great work that Annette Brooke does along with David Laws.

But I confess, I am a strange choice. Who do the Tories turn to for insight on ordinary families? Iain Duncan-Smith of course - it's classic Cameron - if you want to understand the peasants ask the squire. Who do Labour turn to? Labour of course has found a new guru to front their conversations with families - Jeremy Kyle. I understand he won the job with his episode featuring 'I'm a binge drinker and a drug dealer, but I'll be a great dad'. So you can imagine how out of step Nick Clegg must appear in overlooking my roles as a mother, a grandmother and a one-time housewife and just taking the risk.

I have always believed that the power which Government holds is delegated to it by the people in order to live in a civilised society. But the very fact that such power is delegated only, sets a severe limit on the right of any Government to interfere with the personal lives of individuals. Perhaps this has given us a strange inhibition as a party, discouraging us from shouting out our policies for families.

We know that it is not the role of Government to tell families how to live their lives and it is certainly not the role of Government to select one family structure as the "ideal" choice. But Liberal Democrats recognise 'real' families, as they exist in all their variations and complexity - traditional families, families centred on heterosexual but also gay and lesbian relationships, multi-generational families, step-families, extended families and single parent families.

And we argue for Government to provide support and opportunity for those real families since they are indeed the foundation on which our society rests. Labour has made progress, but it has been slow and stilted and has failed to do anything beyond tinker at the edges of a system that is failing families every day.

Labour has demonstrated that it cannot stand up for families that are struggling with a changing world of demands and stresses. It has improved maternal leave but has done little for fathers, and it is the absence of a relationship between fathers and children that is one of the major causes of the social breakdown that blights so many areas - from anti-social behaviour and crime that undermine society to school failure and eating disorders that devastate the individual.

When the Tories talk of families they prefix it with the work 'traditional'. They are stuck in a mid-20th century time-warp. David Cameron won't help real, modern families because he doesn't understand them. His party is so uncomfortable with non-traditional relationships that every time it returns to family policy the centrepiece is once again a tax-break for marriage or tentatively persuading mothers to stay home - but without the meaningful funding to let them do so. £20 a week, or simply shifting the timing of child benefit - these are hardly answers - but they are the headlines. How inadequate - how superficial - how Cameronesque.

Let me address, in what is a brief speech, four areas in which Government needs to act to strengthen families in their ability to enhance our lives and happiness, which after all is what we all desire.

Families, whatever their structure, raise our children. Allow children to grow loved, happy, healthy and educated and we have achieved our goal. Early bonding between parents and child is key and that is as true for father as well as for mother. We know, for example, that fathers who bond early with their children are far more likely to continue a close relationship with them even if the partnership with mum breaks down.

But do we realistically allow both parents that time and opportunity for bonding? Do we even attempt to value it? Do we challenge the stereotype - as countries like Sweden do - that it is only mothers who stay home with small children?

As Liberal Democrats, we were ahead of the other political parties on the policies that would allow a mother to stay home for the first year of a child's life. Why not make it 'parental' leave. And if both parents are willing to play a part, extend that leave to 18 months? That way we not only enable close bonding and affirm parenting for both parents but we also give the family flexibility.

Now, I put forward this idea first and foremost because it benefits families and children. But can I suggest to you that creating a dynamic for fathers as well as mothers to take meaningful time away from work to bond with and care for a new child has a rather desirable side-effect. It challenges the temptation to discriminate against women in the workplace. In fact since you men can father children throughout their lives - it will be men to whom Sir Alan Sugar will have to put the question: 'Are you planning to get married and to have any children?'

But families require ongoing flexibility to manage the continuing challenge of bringing up young children. Over these last months, I have been looking at childcare options for young children under five. We held a consultation session on this issue only yesterday. One in four mothers already work part-time and 40% work full-time, and for nearly all of them flexible, quality affordable childcare is a major concern. This will become yet more pressing as economic hard times worsen and even more families feel the pressure to have more than one income in the household.

I am the Granny of two toddlers - which is why the 12-hour days of conference week are such a doddle. My daughter and daughter-in-law are typical of young mums - women who love to care for their kids but find a life without 'work work' as it were, leaves them feeling that their minds are drying on the vine. The mothers that I have spoken to, overwhelmingly want the ability to work part-time when their children reach 18 months or so.

Mums who stay at home often say they would love to have meaningful part-time work not just for the money and to keep up a career but for the sake for their sanity. Mums who are in work full-time would often leap at the chance to cut back to part-time if only it was an accepted career strategy, treated as a normal work-pattern by employers.

Well let's start taking the desire for part-time work seriously. In our consultation we looked at providing at least 20 or 25 hours free child-care every week for every child from the age of 18 months until the start of school at 5. This would not be conditional on working - I'll explain more about that later - but it would enable part-time work without child-care worries. I believe that a programme like this would lead to a seismic shift towards work structures that make part-time quality jobs far more feasible.

Let me go back to that reference I made to childcare provision for 18 month to five years being available both to parents who work and to those who do not. I recognise that this will be a challenging commitment, but I believe that it is vital if we are to give every child a real opportunity to achieve its potential. We have to break those shackles in British society today; shackles which mean that it is still the parents' income which predicts the future success for a child not that child's innate ability. The Scandinavian countries have broken those shackles. We can, if we are willing to act.

The statistics make it clear that it is usually the children in workless households who are most vulnerable to being left behind by their peers, even from the day they start school, because they have lacked the stimulation and opportunities to develop that other children take for granted.

One of my local teachers pointed out to me just last week, that children in many disadvantaged homes are hearing 300 or 400 words a week and that forms the basis of their development. But children in typical homes hear 3,000 to 4,000 words a week. He went on to say that with that difference, week in week out from birth, you have to expect a gap that is almost impossible to bridge. To be already behind when just learning to speak and run is a pretty devastating handicap to overcome.

So I am not talking about childcare as 'just watch over baby' but using it as a tool to bring to all children, if their parents are willing, those pre-education experiences, the enriched play and preparation for formal learning that gives every child the opportunity to flower. The 20 hour childcare provision would wrap within it and bring to a much younger group the commitment to early years' education.

In effect we would be extending the early years development focus, which today starts at age three, to all children from 18 months. And if you don't think that this provision would be used, let me tell you that 96% of children aged three already use the early years education provision. If we do it well, and we must, and we offer it with flexibility and sensitivity to the child's age, I believe we can give all our children a meaningful chance to reach their potential.

We would have to make sure that the training of child-minders and nursery workers is focussed on quality. That training must recognise the requirements of children with special needs and disabilities. And for those parents who choose to stay home, who choose not to work or choose to use informal childcare such as a grandparent or a friend, we would need to make sure that they had access to these development opportunities also.

But while early support for all children is crucial, we have to go further for those families who are ensnared in complexities and crises that fall outside the mainstream - the most vulnerable families.

Vulnerable families face serious issues of poverty; many suffer from drugs or alcohol abuse amongst family members. But I would like to take a few moments to talk about the most neglected issue of all and that is how we respond to severe mental illness within the family.

This Government, and other governments before it, have failed utterly to meet the needs of families with severe mental health problems. My staff surveyed local authorities up and down the country to try and get a grip on just the scale of the problem. Most local authorities had few answers to any of our questions. Others reported nearly all children in care in some way affected either by mental health problems in the family or suffering themselves.

When we looked for coherent services to respond to families with mental health problems we found the occasions of those services to be rare. We found fragmentation and confusion, and the children were nearly always the losers.

Here is just one illustration. The backstop, the last resort for families with the most need of intensive therapeutic treatment requiring residential care, is one hospital only, in all of England, Wales and Scotland. It is the Cassel hospital in my constituency and it can barely serve 20 families a year.

Now you tell me if this makes any sense if the alternative to treating the family is to take away the children and put them in care. Tell me if it makes any sense to leave mental illness untreated when we know that 85% of children in penal custody show signs of personality disorder and 10% show signs of psychotic illness. And tell me what sense it makes to treat the adult and forget the child or the child and forget the adult.

It is time that each area of the country had a recognised hub of mental health expertise in dealing holistically with families with the capability to provide outreach across our communities.

Let me touch on one last issue. I don't have time to do it justice, but it is an area that most of us in politics, with some noble exceptions, have failed to face up to and it is the issue of the family courts. I am not impressed by the tactics of some of the extremists who say they speak for fathers, but I am impressed by many of the arguments of the other groups that represent both Dads and Mums who have little or no access to their children.

Sometimes there are very good reasons for limiting a parent's access, but I join those who believe that it is compatible with putting the child's interests first, to start with a presumption that both parents will continue to be part of parenting and custody even when their own relationship breaks up.

And I also join those who are extremely worried by the stories of parents separated from their children, for life sometimes in fast-track adoptions, in what appear from the outside to be arbitrary decisions by social services or judges. The secrecy that cloaks family courts was intended to protect the child from unwarranted intrusion.

It was never intended to prevent the judgement of professionals from being questioned. I cannot believe that we are unable to find a way to provide transparency in these life affecting decisions while shielding the child from public or press view.

Throughout this speech I have avoided the phrases that Labour so loves like 'feral children' - and the Tory labels of 'dysfunctional families' and 'broken society', designed to create a divide between a supposed 'nice us' and 'nasty them'. Frankly, we are all in this together. I think that families are pretty amazing. And despite all the predictions of the pundits, they continue to thrive.

So let's join with families and make sure they have the tools that they need - time for both father and mother to bond with their children by offering extended parental leave; support for parents juggling work and family with free part-time childcare in the early years; development opportunities through enriched childcare for even the youngest children so that they are not shackled by background and income; support for families in the crises of mental illness and family break-up.

It may be news to Cameron and Brown that we live in the 21st century. But real families, our modern families know who they are and how they want to live. We Liberal Democrats will support them and celebrate them - all of them.' [http://www.libdems.org.uk/conference/bournemouth-2008-susan-kramer-speech-812313;show]