Wellbeing and Nurture: Physical and Emotional Security in Childhood

Citation

Clark H, Royal P, West H, McGlone F, Walker S, Devine SL, Barlow J, Albon D, Elfer P, Norman A, Sigman A, Graham C, Hutchinson C, Harris G & Murray A (2020) Wellbeing and Nurture: Physical and Emotional Security in Childhood [A Report by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on a Fit and Healthy Childhood]. All-Party Parliamentary Group on a Fit and Healthy Childhood. London. https://fhcappg.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/ReportWellbeingandNurtureFinal140720.pdf

Abstract
While there is increasing concern about developing and reinforcing children’s physical and emotional security, researchers have been busy working out the actual mechanics, even at the cellular level, of how this can be achieved. This report will provide a concise update on what is known about optimising children’s wellbeing and security in childhood and far beyond. ‘As human primates, we are wired for touch, whether we like to or not’ says Francis McGlone, a professor of neuroscience at Liverpool John Moores University…… ‘Brains are good’ he says, ‘If they’re lacking something, they’ll tell you to take action.’….With the lack of social touch mandated by Covid-19, your brain may well be telling you that you desperately need a hug’: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/touch-skin-hunger-hugs-coronaviruslockdown-isolation-ctactile-afferent-nerve-a9501676.html ‘Evidence from previous pandemic studies shows that children isolated or quarantined are more likely to develop acute stress disorder, attachment disorder and grief…. The longer this continues, the more profound the difficulties will be and the greater the cost and challenge will be to overcome them’: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jun/20/childrens-mental-healthwill-suffer-irreparably-if-schools-dont-reopen-soon The experience of nurturing touch for infants is now known to be an essential requirement for social brain development and the subsequent development of secure attachment. When the All-Party Group on A Fit and Healthy Childhood decided to contribute to the ever-increasing public discourse about child wellbeing and nurture by making it the subject of our seventeenth report, we did so against a society backdrop that even the most positive of commentators would describe as ‘fractured’. The trend towards individualism as opposed to what is understood by ‘community’ has been thrown increasingly into sharp relief in the early years of the 21st century, but the fall-out from the 1989 toppling of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime and the exposure to world opprobrium of his infamous Romanian orphanages are equally relevant to a 21st century understanding of child development and wellbeing. The permanent damage to the adults that these neglected, socially starved children have become is the subject of recent findings in the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences’: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1911264116 and ongoing research in the UK and Sweden shows that much mental illness experienced by children and young people today has its genesis in the early days and months of a new life. Basic human contact is just as central to a child’s development as nutrition. Emergent neuroscientific evidence shows that nurturing touch is essential to foster the physical and emotional security that every child neds in order to thrive. The unheralded and cataclysmic effect of the Covid-19 pandemic makes these arguments relevant in a way that we could never have envisaged originally. This report has unexpectedly been written in a new and unwelcome world in which: ‘Milestone birthdays are being celebrated over video calls; elderly people are talking to neighbours through windows and those who live alone are going without any human touch at all, as they obey the government guidelines to stay at home and keep 2m (6ft) apart from others’: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52279411 ‘At the still point of the turning world… there the dance is …and do not call it fixity’ (TS Eliot, ‘Four Quartets’). Pandemics don’t stand still. Requirements for social distancing will be removed; there will be a medical ‘answer’ to Covid-19. But here we argue that things cannot go on as before. The experience of Covid-19 has taught us that: ‘What’s happening now is that, for the first time in evolution, people aren’t able to experience this thing we usually take for granted. You don’t miss something until it’s gone – but when touch is removed, people will notice that there’s something missing, even if they can’t pin down what it is.’ (Professor Francis McGlone: ‘The Independent’ as above). In examining the ways in which children grow and develop, we can learn from that because their physical and emotional wellbeing and therefore that of our future society will depend on it. This report represents what we have learned and we hope that it will contribute in a small way to the making of the brave new ‘post-Covid’ world.

Keywords
Holistic approach; fundamental movement skills; Ofsted; playgrounds; LGBTQ; sex education

Notes
Additional Authors: Lucy Upton; Jeff Thomas; Monika Jephcott; Emma Whewell; Eunice Lumsden; Edwina Revell; Anna Hodgson; Kathryn Salt; Paula Lochrie; Fraser Brown; Pamela Murray; Mary Lubrano; Kate Day; Jessica Gribble