Britain needs to undergo a major overhaul of the provision of support for babies and mothers, a health minister has said.

Dr Dan Poulter, who also works as an obstetrician, said there needed to be a move away from an approach that "picks up the pieces" of broken families to a preventive approach from the earliest days of pregnancy to avoid mental and physical problems later in life.

He also called for a change in the work of midwives and health visitors as he endorsed a cross-party manifesto demanding a renewed focus on support from the moment of conception to a child's second birthday. This is a period of 1,001 days.

The manifesto – The 1,001 Critical Days, which is to be launched on Thursday – calls for a greater focus on the mental needs of mothers after evidence showed that the earliest emotional experiences of a baby will have a major impact on the development of its brain.

The manifesto, to be launched by the Conservative MP Andrea Leadsom with the support of the former Labour welfare reform minister Frank Field, the former Liberal Democrat social care minister Paul Burstow and Britain's only Green MP, Caroline Lucas, calls for a new "holistic" approach. It says:

• "At-risk families" should be given better access to services that promote better interaction between parents and their babies with the help of videos.

• All parents should have access to antenatal classes that address both the physical and emotional aspects of parenting.

• Birth registration should be offered by local registrars in children's centres to ensure that almost 100% of families are involved with the centres.

Leadsom told the Guardian: "At the moment we stick the perinatal period into silos so if you get pregnant you see your GP and you get allocated a midwife. When you have had your baby you get allocated a health visitor and some people find their way to the children's centre. All the focus is pretty much on the physical health of mother and baby – weight gain and so on. And likewise in children's centres it is about weaning and feeding.

"There is no real provision for the mental health of mum and baby. The neuroscience shows us that the earliest experiences of a baby, right from in the womb, determine their emotional resilience throughout their life. So we know that high maternal stress during pregnancy can lead to a thinning of the arteries of the baby so that the baby in later life can go on to have problems with strokes and heart disease. We know that maternal stress can lead to antenatal and postnatal depression.

"All those things mean that in the perinatal period a woman can be extremely vulnerable to mental health issues. As a direct result of a mum's mental health her baby's earliest experiences will be profoundly shaped. A baby's brain development – the key growth of the prefrontal cortex is between six months and 18 months – will be shaped by that baby's earliest experience. So a baby that is loved and talked to and smiled at, where mum makes eye contact and talks to the baby – their brain will develop at a vast rate of knots. A baby's brain makes a million connections per second in the first year of life, stimulated by the earliest experiences. The hardwiring of the brain, all those billions of synapses – those neural pathways are made according to the earliest experiences … If you are securely attached to your primary caregiver – usually your mum, could be your dad or a grandparent – then there is nothing you can't do. You will be emotionally resilient and that will stay with you when life throws things at you."

Leadsom said the manifesto would not be costly because there should simply be new training of midwives and health visitors within the existing structures. "It is a minimal cost," she said.

Poulter, who said there needed to be a new focus on preventive care, said David Cameron was fully supportive of the aims of the cross-party manifesto. He said the government was investing in 4,000 more health visitors – a 50% increase.

The minister said: "We want to give each and every child the very best start in life and ensure we improve the quality of care available in terms of both physical and mental health available to mums and around childbirth … We want to make sure we can move away from a model of care that sometimes waited for mums and families to struggle and pick up pieces and move towards a model of care that is much more proactive and having much more of a holistic focus on recognising that the bond between mum and baby is so very important in determining a child's future life chances.

"It is a changed approach from a reactive model of care to a proactive, supportive and preventive approach which pays the exchequer back many times over by this early investment. It is good for the taxpayer but more importantly it is much better for all families but particularly very vulnerable families."

Burstow told the Guardian: "The evidence is really compelling. It shows that the support, particularly of the mother, but actually, in those very early formative days and weeks and months, of the family, to be able to really connect and for their baby to be really able to connect with them, makes a huge difference to the way in which the child develops, their brain develops and their life chances."

Field said: "We are trying to get the political parties to agree a no-child-falls-behind commitment in each of the general election manifestos. We list the key moves to break that link between parental poverty and a child becoming a poor adult."

Lucas said: "There is so much evidence now that demonstrates that early intervention not only makes a huge impact in terms of a child's life chances but is extremely cost effective as well. At a time of economic difficulties lots of interventions can be deemed by this government to be too expensive. But this is one where if you intervene early you are saving costs well down the line. So that makes it an initiative that has real political traction."