The Anne Marie Jones 2018 Memorial Lecture

“Early Intervention-why leave it so late?”We were delighted to welcome Graham Allen to Bangor University to give the annual Anne Marie Jones memorial lecture on 6th February 2018 on behalf of the Children’s Early Intervention Trust charity. The lecture was attended by a multidisciplinary audience. Graham was a labour MP for 30 years until he retired in 2017. He represented the socially disadvantaged, former coal-mining constituency of Nottingham North in which he was born. His opposition to the Iraq war finished his career in Government but meant that he was able to pursue his passion to improve the lives of the most vulnerable socially disadvantaged children in our society, working to provide them with the social and emotional bedrock that gives them the resilience to deal with adversity and improve their life prospects.

In October 2005, Graham became the first MP to Chair a Local Strategic Partnership, subsequently renamed One Nottingham, for which he set it the mission of making Nottingham Britain’s first "Early Intervention City". In 2009 he wrote Early Intervention, good parents, great kids, better citizens" in collaboration with Iain Duncan Smith and in 2011 was invited by the incoming Conservative Government to write two reports that led to the funding of the Early Intervention Foundation. His lecture reminded us that maximising human capability is the only sustainable answer to poverty in all its forms. Early intervention requires a raft of policies across the 0 to 18-year age cycle to break the intergenerational continuum of deprivation, under-achievement and poverty of aspiration. The Early Intervention Foundation, that was funded following Graham’s reports, reviews and publishes the evidence for programmes that promote the social and emotional capabilities of babies, children and young people, allowing them to further their language skills and academic attainment and become equipped to raise great families of their own.

As Graham clearly articulated the real vision of Early Intervention is to achieve a world in which citizens do for our society as a whole what we aspire as parents to do for our children.  This, he argued, will not only help us to raise great kids but has the power to reinvent our politics.

Graham Allen with Professor Tracey Bywater,Chair, Board of Trustees, Children’s Early Intervention Trust.