MP's mission to help babies
As well as being an active Conservative MP and a member of the Treasury Select Committee, South Northamptonshire's Andrea Leadsom has another cause that's close to her heart.
For the last ten years she's been actively involved in a project that helps young parents to bond with their babies and now she wants to extend it to Northamptonshire.
The Oxford Parent Infant Project (OXPIP) offers counselling and therapy services to parents and babies to help them develop more loving and secure relationships.
Ms Leadsom says that the first two years are vital in a child's development.
"The human brain is itself only partially formed when you are born", she told MP during a recent debate.
"It is the earliest experiences of the human baby that literally hardwire his or her brain, and it is these earliest experiences that will have a lifelong impact on the baby's mental and emotional health".
The average family requires ten sessions of therapy which costs £75 a week. The charity says its success has been independently proven and saves the need for more intensive financial and emotional intervention in later life.
Today, during a debate on Sure Start centres, Ms Leadsom revealed that the OXPIP project is to be extended:
"I plan to launch a pilot scheme in 2011 for a Northamptonshire parent infant project that will mirror what OXPIP has been doing so successfully for 13 years in Oxfordshire.
"Working closely with children's centres in Northamptonshire, I hope to show, prove, demonstrate, document and evaluate the value of really early intervention services in making a real difference to the quality of families' lives", she told the Commons.
The former banker has three children of her own and we're told she'd like nothing better than to see this work.
Welcome to the political blog for the East. I'm Deborah McGurran, the Ö÷²¥´óÐã's Political Editor for the region. From Lowestoft to Luton, this is the place for politics with an eastern twist.
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