Oliver James
Clinical psychologist Oliver James is regularly asked to give his expert opinion in books, on television and in the national press. But in his view, expertise is nothing when compared to the qualities he sees in Home-Start people.
"I believe today that the greatest impediment to parents in developed nations is the drive for economic growth- apparently at all costs. Yet the evidence is clear that once a family earns enough to meet its basic material needs (about £15,000 a year), it makes no difference to levels of happiness or mental health how much more they have. What matters is the relationship you had with your parents in the early years.
"I seriously think the greatest challenge facing us is to devise an electoral system that results in the sort of people who run Home-Start Schemes being elected. Just imagine what kind of world it would be if it were run by people who know the fundamental importance of meeting the needs of children.
"The psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott argued that a small proportion of people, perhaps only 10%, are the ones who keep the rest of us sane. They are very rarely rich, powerful or famous. All they do is get on with setting a good example. They are those very rare folk who seem automatically to say and do sensible things and really do practise what they preach. They do it because it fulfils them and just by having contact with them, we function better ourselves.
"I only wish I could say I was such a person, but I have never comes across an organisation which seems to have more of them than Home-Start. The work it does is not just important because it helps parents. Even more important, many of its members are truly exemplary to the rest of us."
