Ms Sarah Haight:

I can share a little bit about the evidence behind 2Gen approaches. There is a strong and growing body of evidence in the United States. We know the return on investment in early childhood programmes is as high as 13%. We also know the greatest predictor of a family's overall economic mobility is the parents' educational attainment. We know now from brain science that people's brains change and adapt when they become parents, just like babies brains. This is true of mothers and fathers. These bodies of research inform 2Gen approaches.

One example of its impact in the United States is Tulsa, Oklahoma, where there is a large early childhood centre called Cap Tulsa. The leaders at Cap Tulsa realised that many parents of children who were enrolled were seeking greater opportunity, namely, better jobs and wages. They created an employment training programme in the health field, training parents in nursing and health technology. In studying the impact of this 2Gen approach, researchers found that the children of parents enrolled in job training had higher rates of school attendance and the parents themselves reported lower rates of stress. This is applicable to this conversation because what we are seeing is that when the whole family is addressed in its need, in this instance, it is an educational and economic need, there are improved results for both generations. We like to say that you cannot give one member of the generation a balloon and the other a dead weight. These types of efforts are gaining momentum across the US and they demonstrate both the effectiveness and the efficiency of 2Gen.