Last year, the Petitions Committee raised concerns that new parents and their children had been overlooked in the government’s response to the covid-19 pandemic.

The report last year found that new parents had missed out on crucial support they could usually expect to receive during this vital time for them and their children. Moreover, many employers had not met their health and safety duties towards pregnant women over this period.

The committee is now revisiting this issue as government support has not been sufficient enough. This report presents updated findings on how covid-19 has continued to affect new parents and further recommendations for how the government can better support this group.

These include:

• Providing additional funding and resources to allow catch-up mental health support for new parents
• Funding local authorities to arrange in-person visits to new parents by appropriate local authority, voluntary organisation or health visiting staff before the end of the year
• Reviewing monitoring and enforcement activity relating to employers’ health and safety obligations to pregnant women
• Legislating as soon as possible to introduce the planned extension of redundancy protections for new and expectant mothers.

The continuing challenges

The challenges and restrictions facing new and expectant parents have changed substantially. Most significantly, the the rollout of safe and effective vaccines has allowed many restrictions to be lifted.

For new and expectant parents specifically, local restrictions on visitors and birth partners in hospitals and maternity units have been relaxed and childcare settings remain open. However, there have been continued petitions highlighting the difficulties new parents and the services they rely on have continued to face over this period.

These have included calls for:

• Extensions to paid maternity leave and maternity exemption certificates
• A review into childcare funding and affordability
• Additional funding for health visiting service.

The report concludes that despite restrictions easing, the pandemic’s impact is still being felt by new and expectant parents.

Commenting, Neil Leitch, chief exec of the Early Years Alliance, said:

“The committee is absolutely right to call for an independent review into early years funding and affordability at a time when many settings are fighting to remain open and many parents are struggling to balance work and childcare.

“The pandemic has taken a huge toll on a sector already struggling to remain viable, and clearly, substantial further investment into the early years is needed to ensure that providers can deliver affordable, accessible – and crucially, sustainable – early care and education.

“The report is also right to highlight the need for government to focus its pandemic recovery efforts beyond school-aged children – and while we support the call for greater recovery investment for babies and new parents, much more must also be done to support the recovery of young children attending early years settings, who have seen their access to vital early education disrupted by the pandemic.”

“If the government is truly committed to helping families recover from the impact of Covid-19, it must ensure that this includes helping parents of babies and young children to access the services and support they need.”