Unvaccinated children would be barred from childcare in NSW under new proposals

Parents who oppose vaccinations on conscientious grounds won’t allowed to enrol their children at New South Wales childcare centres under legislation to be introduced by the state opposition.

Labor leader Luke Foley announced the policy on Sunday and said the legislation, set to be introduced this week, would plug the loophole which had allowed specialist anti-vaccination childcare centres to be set up.

The changes won’t affect children who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons, such as a specialised cancer treatment.

“We need to be encouraging vaccinations not discouraging them,” Foley said in a statement.

“Vaccinations are the only way to protect against serious diseases like polio, mumps, whooping cough, meningococcal, diphtheria and tetanus.”

Foley said his plan would also cover family day care operations.

The announcement comes after an unvaccinated NSW girl was diagnosed with tetanus earlier this month. It’s believed the seven-year-old picked up the disease through an open wound on her foot while playing in the garden of her northern NSW home.

The case prompted renewed debate in the north coast region, which has some of the lowest immunisation rates in Australia.

Unvaccinated children would be barred from childcare in NSW under new proposals

Penelope Leach denies her new childcare guide is an attack on fathers

‘I think fathers are just as critical to a child’s daily life as mothers, even though the timing is diverse,’ says Penelope Leach. Photograph: Alamy

Childcare guru Penelope Leach has defended herself against fees that she sides against fathers in her new book, which suggests overnight stays with an absent mother or father are damaging for really tiny children.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian, she says her book, about helping children caught in the breakdown of their parents’ connection, is “pro-fathers, not anti-them. The major purpose I wrote it was to assist dad and mom to perform collectively after marriage break-up, and a massive element of that is so fathers get the part they deserve and their youngsters require.”

Before publication, Loved ones Breakdown has been fiercely criticised by both fathers and psychologists for its assertion that below the age of 4, children must continue to be with their main caregiver – typically the mother – and not remain overnight with the absent parent. She asserts that it can undermine children’s security, make them much more irritable and perhaps interfere with their social advancement.

But she is hurt, she says, by stories of a furious reaction from fathers. “In the huge majority of circumstances, it’s the mom who is the major attachment figure: younger babies require a main caregiver and currently being separated from that figure can result in them difficulties. If a father was the main caregiver, I would say the child should not be staying overnight with the mom.

“But I feel fathers are just as essential to a child’s daily life as mothers, however the timing is distinct. They have a tendency to come into their own in the second 12 months, rather than at birth, and kids who have a shut relationship with their fathers do far better by way of existence in each and every way.”

Nevertheless, she is accused, by psychologists of possessing inadequate proof for her assertion that sleepovers can be detrimental. In the book – subtitled “assisting children hang on to both their parents” – she cites a review from Australia which, its authors say, has been misinterpreted. Not too long ago far more than 100 psychologists, mainly from the United States, signed a consensus statement which rejected those findings. “Policymakers and determination makers should recognise that depriving young kids of overnights with their fathers could compromise the high quality of building father-child relationships,” they explained.

Professor Charlie Lewis from Lancaster University was 1 of the Uk signatories. “The evidence however does not assistance her [Leach],” he explained. “Metanalyses [critiques combining the final results of big numbers of studies] that appear at whether or not or not it is much better for the non-resident parent to have contact with the little one display that the far more speak to there is with the non-resident mother or father, the greater the end result for the little one.”

He additional that co-residency, where the youngster lives sometimes with the mother and often with the father, “is a marker of the maturity of the two mothers and fathers”, which meant a better partnership, which was extremely much in the child’s interests.

Leach says that she does not want to be believed towards divorce – or separation the place parents are not married – which is now so regular: relationships break down irretrievably around 42% of marriages end in divorce. Her concern is about the youngsters who “are being utilized as weapons in the marital war when truly they are its victims”.

“We can argue about all sorts of issues around the edges, but we can’t argue about the harm it does,” she says. “Divorce or separation will always be poor for kids – there’s no obtaining away from it. It ranges from disruptive and sad to tragic. What’s greatest for kids is if their mother and father adore a single an additional for ever … but there are constantly tons of items that you can not get excellent for your kids.”

She reveals that she herself was a youngster caught in the crossfire as her mother and father – novelist Nigel Balchin and his wife, Elisabeth – split up, soon after a companion-swap arrangement with artist Michael Ayrton and his wife, Joan. She is an anonymised case research in her personal guide, a woman of eleven who is sent to boarding college because her father are not able to bear to allow her reside with her mom and new spouse, while her older sister escaped to drama school and much younger sister stayed with mum.

“I felt I would vanished,” says the little one in the guide. She does not know whether she survived the trauma, she told the Guardian. “We in no way know, do we, due to the fact you never know how you would have been,” she explained. “Early trauma can depart folks sensitive to stress later on on in their daily life, and I believe I am a person who demonstrates that. I’m not a laid-back kind of man or woman.”

Penelope Leach denies her new childcare guide is an attack on fathers

Childcare guru: little youngsters ought to not stay overnight with absent parent

Penelope Leach believes little children shouldn’t be taken away overnight from the parent they are attached to. Photograph: Alamy

Quite small children whose mother and father separate ought to not stay overnight with the absent father or mom, according to childcare guru Penelope Leach in a book that is presently causing controversy ahead of publication later this week.

Leach says divorce, which is now the fate of nearly half of all marriages, is also typically about the interests of the mothers and fathers, with the kids regarded as property to be shared in between them. Her guide, Household Breakdown: assisting youngsters hang on to each their dad and mom, seems at divorce from the child’s point of see, she says.

But her assertion that young children below the age of four, normally residing with their mother, could suffer emotional and developmental harm if they sleepover at the residence of the absent mother or father, typically the father, has attracted powerful criticism from some psychologists who say there is insufficient proof to substantiate it.

In an interview with Tory MP and former children’s minister Tim Loughton on the internet site of her publisher, Unbound, Leach says: “You get situations where kids are paying a week in mum’s residence and a week in dad’s home and all kinds of horrible arrangements. I get in touch with them horrible because we do know that they are desperately wrong for kids, who require the safety of a spot known as property and who, when extremely little, shouldn’t be taken away overnight from what is normally the mom – the individual they are attached to.”

It is understood she relies on a examine published in Australia in 2010 by McIntosh, Smyth and Kelaher, which was the basis for a report by the Australian Association for Infant Psychological Health. It stated that “the shared overnight care of young children less than four years of age had a significantly adverse influence on the emotional and behavioural nicely-currently being of the youngster. Infants under two years who lived one particular or a lot more overnights a week with both parents had been significantly stressed.” Older youngsters underneath four exhibited better ranges of problem behaviour, the report stated.

But Adrienne Burgess, joint chief executive and head of study at the Fatherhood Institute in the Uk, stated the study’s findings are out of line with other study on the situation and the authors themselves declare their function has been misrepresented. A consensus statement from above 100 professionals, published in the US this 12 months, had taken concern with the Australian findings. “Policymakers and selection makers should recognize that depriving youthful children of overnights with their fathers could compromise the top quality of creating father-kid relationships,” explained the statement signed largely by members of the American Psychological Association.

“Penelope Leach appears to be unaware of the [Australian authors"] most current place, let alone the furore that has been going on in the academic globe,” she explained.

Leach’s see that infants and modest youngsters form just a single powerful attachment is out of date anyway, says Burgess. “Youngsters produce multiple attachments,” she said. “There will be some attachments exactly where they invest much more time with one particular carer than yet another, but all these attachments have an influence – constructive or adverse.”

Dr Tara Weeramanthri, consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist at the South London and Maudsley NHS foundation trust, explained that youngsters have a hierarchy of attachment figures, who incorporate grandparents and other carers as properly as dad and mom, rather than getting connected to just one particular person. “When sick or distressed, they want the man or woman at the leading of the tree as it were, so if mother was the principal carer, that would be mom,” she stated. Nevertheless, “I would not share the view that youthful youngsters should not devote the evening at the father’s residence , in which the couple have separated.

“It is clearly important that visits are managed and supported by both mothers and fathers rather than the youngster being caught up in a predicament exactly where there is acrimony. “Each and every mother or father has to work to help the child’s partnership with the other mother or father, by preparing and speaking to them about it and it is greatest if the check out are component of a routine rather than erratic and tiny youngsters could want to consider a favourite toy, this kind of as a teddy.”

Dr Nigel Sherriff, senior investigation fellow in the centre for well being analysis at Brighton University and a member of the British Psychological Society, stated the suggestion that overnight stays need to not be permitted “goes against the investigation proof which strongly suggests that constructive father engagement in the early many years prospects to higher social and educational outcomes”. He extra that the idea of a exclusive attachment to one man or woman – usually the mom – was “hugely outdated now”. The theory grew up in the 1950s, publish-war, when guys came back without having jobs and there have been attempts to persuade females that they should stay at home with the kids. “All the evidence [today] suggests it is about the good quality of the relationship to the care giver and not whether it is in a distinct area or with a diverse care giver,” he stated.

Childcare guru: little youngsters ought to not stay overnight with absent parent