Baroness Walmsley
To move that this House takes note of the measures being taken by Her Majesty’s Government to prevent and address the abuse of children and vulnerable adults.
Lord Newby (LD)
My Lords, I remind those speaking in the next debate that it is time limited. When the clock reaches seven minutes, noble Lords should finish their speech, as they will have spoken for their allotted time. If a noble Lord is happy to take an intervention, I am afraid that the time taken up will have to come out of their allocation.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to lead this very topical debate today and look forward to hearing what all noble Lords have to say about this important matter.
I believe that this is basically a humane country, and public tolerance of any kind of abuse of vulnerable people has diminished enormously over the past few decades. But I am afraid that we have a problem and it could be growing. Today, we have heard evidence in the Lampard report of the failings of the system to protect children and vulnerable people within the NHS from the foul predations of Jimmy Savile. I trust that, when we have had time to digest the report and the other reports that are under way, we will be able to give due time in this House to discuss the lessons learnt. In the mean time, we know we have a problem with sexual and physical abuse of children, older people and disabled people. We hear of new cases every week. Of course, the law forbids this sort of behaviour, but, sadly, it does not prevent it happening, and the effects on victims last a lifetime.
The figures are disturbing. The UK’s latest report to the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child admitted:
“The number of children in England who were subject to a child protection plan increased by 47% between 2008 and 2012”.
This is the same percentage increase as that recently reported by the NSPCC in cases of emotional abuse being reported to the police. I welcome the Government’s plans to clarify the law on that in the Serious Crime Bill.
Last year, the Children’s Rights Director consulted children in England receiving care services and found that 10% felt that they were not enjoying their right to be kept safe from all sorts of harm. Last May, the National Crime Agency reported that a new threat has emerged on the internet. While the number of static images of child abuse remains stable, there is a sharp rise in live streaming of videoed child abuse and paedophiles’ use of the “hidden” or “dark” web. These sites do not emerge when one is using normal search engines and are therefore not easily detected. These people are unscrupulous and clever and we need more resources to catch them. I was pleased to note that, following government initiatives, the Internet Watch Foundation is now able proactively to seek out criminal content and, thanks to funding from a number of UK ISPs, has tripled the number of staff engaged in finding and destroying such imagery.
Recent high-profile cases, as well as that of Jimmy Savile, have shown that there are others who have got away for years with abusing children or vulnerable adults. In some cases, nobody knew about it apart from the victims. They did not have confidence that they would be believed or that anything would be done, and therefore did not report it. In some cases of elder abuse, the family has resorted to placing hidden cameras in the room, in order to prove the unacceptable treatment of their elderly relative by those charged with caring for them.
However, in most of these cases there were suspicions. Indeed, in some cases professionals looked into the issue and wrote reports, which were then ignored. This tells me that we need a massive culture change. Many serious case reviews indicate failures to protect, failures to report abuse or act upon reports, and failures of professionals to communicate with each other and with the authorities. I suppose that it is inevitable that we focus on failures, but while we lament those we must remember and applaud all those who care for children and vulnerable adults in a professional and compassionate way. I do believe that attitudes are changing, and it is hard to believe that the reports from Rochdale, which at the time were not acted upon, would be ignored today. The culture has changed, but my question today is whether it has changed enough. I do not believe that it has.
So I now pose three questions. Are we doing enough to prevent abuse happening? Do we know enough about how and why it happens, and what works in other places? Are we doing enough to deal with the perpetrators, and bring justice and support to the victims?
Perhaps I could deal first with prevention. Prevention involves providing training and qualifications, screening staff and volunteers—in the way that Jimmy Savile was not screened—and ensuring that children and vulnerable people know their rights, and know where to go for help if they are attacked. Prevention also involves decent child protection services, and proper therapeutic treatment for perpetrators, so that they do not do it again.
I have always felt that a child is his or her own best protector. We can do what we can to protect a child, but we cannot sit on her shoulder all the time. This is why it is so important that children are taught in every school, through a balanced PSHE course, how to protect their own personal integrity and how to keep safe, including in their use of the internet. They also need to be taught what a healthy, non-abusive relationship looks and feels like, and who to turn to in case of fear or of actual abuse. I believe that this is every child’s right.
Schools need proper oversight from Ofsted of their safeguarding policies and practice. Indeed, Ofsted is the only statutory body given specific responsibility for ensuring that schools keep children safe. Unfortunately, the methods and infrequency of Ofsted inspections make that difficult to do—my noble friend Lady Sharp will speak in more detail about the shortcomings of the inspection system. Then we need to provide decent children’s services. I have every sympathy for cash-strapped local authorities and social workers with large caseloads, and I support the policy of giving freedoms to local authorities to spend the money locally in the best possible way for them. However, I am very relieved that, after careful consideration, the Government have announced that they will not allow authorities to delegate children’s safeguarding services to profit-making organisations. It is vital that there is no chance of the profit motive being put before the welfare of a child.
We must then minimise the opportunity for perpetrators to reach vulnerable children. Here, the DBS checks, formerly called CRB checks, and training for organisations in safe recruitment practices are vitally important. Many organisations have found to their cost that DBS checks alone are not enough, as they only identify those who have offended before, and are no use against first-time offenders or those who are clever enough to avoid detection. There has recently been some streamlining of the system, and the numbers being barred have fallen. I would like to ask my noble friend the Minister how that new system is working. I know that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, will have more to say about this.
Many serious case reviews have highlighted failures of professionals to communicate. I believe that there is a very strong case for some common training elements for those working with children, so that the professionals understand each other’s perspectives, and are more likely to communicate with each other during their career. The Lucy Faithfull Foundation has an excellent programme called Stop it Now! to raise awareness about the dangers of child abuse, and to help those who are concerned about their own sexual proclivities to avoid offending. Such preventive work is to be applauded, and we need more of it.
In the case of care of older people, it is training, qualifications and proper oversight that is needed. Families need to know what quality of care is being offered to their elderly relatives. I was therefore delighted to read in a Parliamentary Answer last week that regulations will soon be introduced to allow the CQC to take robust action against providers that do not offer an acceptable quality of care, and will produce ratings of care quality to provide users with a fuller picture than they now get. Will my noble friend the Minister comment on these plans? I would also like to ask why a Law Commission recommendation to streamline disciplinary codes covering more than 30 health and care professions has been shelved by the Government. It seems to me that such arrangements could act both as a deterrent and as an effective measure for dealing with wrong-doing.
I turn now to knowledge of abuse. Knowledge means doing research about causes and about what works, bringing information together and disseminating knowledge of best practice. Knowledge also means ensuring that those who know what is going on report the facts to the authorities. I have been informed by lawyers who acted for dozens of Jimmy Savile’s victims that the most shocking revelation of all was the number of victims who had reported what had happened at the time to someone in their institution, only to be ignored and their claims covered up. One girl in Stoke Mandeville told a nurse what Jimmy Savile had done, only to be told, “You’re making a mountain, you silly girl. Do you know what he does for our hospital?”. That is why I believe that we need mandatory reporting, which would make it a new offence for those in a position of caring to fail to report knowledge or reasonable suspicion of abuse in a regulated activity. By “regulated activity” I mean schools, hospitals and so on, as defined in Schedule 4 to the Safeguarding Vulnerable Groups Act 2006, although the definitions would need amending to exclude such confidential helplines as ChildLine and Stop It Now!. This has been done successfully in Australia, so I do not believe that it would be a problem here.
We would also need to deal with patient confidentiality, such as when a child discloses information to a doctor. The fact is that many of Savile’s offences took place in schools, hospitals and prison institutions, where vulnerable people and children should have been able to rely on being safe. Fortunately, we now believe children better than we used to. However, in many cases, in order to secure a conviction we need the corroboration of adults who know what has happened. Keir Starmer, the former Director of Public Prosecutions, knows this well, which is why he supports this change in the law. Victims universally support such a change, and tell us that it would not prevent them from reporting the abuse themselves. Indeed, they would be encouraged to do so if they knew that the person to whom they confided was obliged by law to do something to make it stop.
Often ChildLine advisers will encourage children to report the abuse to a trusted adult. In that situation, the child must be able to have confidence that, if they do so, their disclosure will be properly dealt with, and no concern about reputational damage would get in the way of that adult doing the right thing by that child. The only way they can have that confidence is to make failure to report abuse an offence. The intention is not to put people in prison but to change the culture, and I believe that it would help workers to report abuse if they saw it as a public duty and not as telling tales. There is also considerable public support for this. In a recent independent poll of the public, 96% of people supported it.
We also need more research about how mandatory reporting is working in Australia, and I call on the Government to support a current application to the Nuffield Foundation to fund such a research project. Its aim is to identify barriers to identification and reporting by teachers of suspected child sexual and physical abuse and serious neglect, and to identify effective practice. This would fill a declared gap in the DfE’s research portfolio.
Of course, mandatory reporting would apply not just to teachers. I also support the call from 88 MPs, led by Tim Loughton MP, to ask the Home Secretary to set up a Hillsborough-style inquiry into organised sexual exploitation of children. We need to restore trust in the system by learning the lessons of all the cases that have come to light, rather than just having the present drip-feed of information.
Finally, I come to my third question. Justice involves encouraging victims and witnesses to come forward and ensuring that they are treated properly, so that they can give their evidence clearly and consistently. Justice for potential victims also means that perpetrators are given programmes to tackle their perversion and ensure that they do not commit more crimes. Without those programmes, those imprisoned may well go on to reoffend after release. We are not protecting children if we allow that to happen.
I was recently privileged to sit on a commission of inquiry into child sexual abuse, facilitated by Barnardo’s. It became clear from the evidence that we heard that there was a lot of good practice, but a great deal more needs to be done. I support all the recommendations in our report, which would help the police and the justice system to support young witnesses and enable them to help to bring their torturers to justice. My noble kinsman Lord Thomas of Gresford and my noble friend Lord Paddick will deal with those issues in more detail.
Finally, as an honorary fellow of UNICEF, I must support its calls for improvements to the Modern Slavery Bill in relation to trafficked children, child pornography and child prostitution—although I abhor the use of the latter term and would like it removed from the legislation. There is no such thing as a child prostitute.
On this day of shocking revelations of how we have let victims down in the past, I look forward to hearing from my noble friend about how the Government plan to improve their protection of vulnerable people, young and old.
Baroness Northover (LD)
My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend for tabling this important topic for debate today. As other noble Lords have said, the fact that the reports on Jimmy Savile’s reign of abuse have been published today shows how extremely timely it is and how we must all be vigilant to ensure that everyone, however old, young or vulnerable, can live free from abuse and neglect. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, explained that that often happens in the home or in familiar places with familiar people.
In all respects, we must counter abuse, as my noble friend Lady Walmsley said, through culture change, or legislation, regulation and training. We need to support professionals in this difficult and complex work—I pay tribute to them, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth—but we also need to challenge them and agencies to do the right thing and act quickly when things go wrong. That also means holding people and organisations to account. We also need to be aware of the cultural shifts, such as those manifested and driven by the expansion of the internet, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and others mentioned.
There is a well established legislative framework for social care and support for children set out in the Children Act 1989, including the duties of local authorities in relation to children in need in their area, as well as their child protection duties, but we know that child protection does not always work as effectively as we would want. As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, noted, continued and repeated serious case reviews and other investigations provide stark reminders that there is much more to be done. He is right about ensuring that we learn from them.
The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham noted the long history of abuse in our institutions, whether schools, hospitals, the police or even churches. My honourable friend the Minister of State for Crime Prevention, Norman Baker, is leading a national group of experts urgently to address missed opportunities to protect children and vulnerable people. He is assisted by members of the NSPCC, Barnardo’s and Rape Crisis. The group is looking at lessons that could be learnt from recent and current inquiries to see what should be taken forward.
There were noble Lords on either side of the question of holding a public inquiry. I note what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, said, about following through on the reports that we already have, but I also noted what the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said. What it comes down to is that nobody is satisfied with where we have got to; we have to ensure that we do better.
The noble Lord, Lord Stevenson, mentioned Professor Eileen Munro’s review of the child protection system in England and her report in 2011, with all her recommendations. Most of them have been implemented. In the Working Together to Safeguard Children statutory guidance, we have focused more clearly on the core legal requirements that all professionals should follow so that children are kept safe. We have also sought to put the needs of individual children back at the heart of the assessment process by removing the requirement to have separate initial and core assessments.
As noble Lords are clearly well aware, changes to the overarching framework on their own are not sufficient to ensure real improvement on the ground. That is why improvements to social work practice are crucial. For the first time, a Chief Social Worker for Children and Families has been appointed in England to provide independent, expert advice to Ministers on social reform and act as a leader for the profession.
Following Sir Martin Narey’s review, we are taking forward a number of reforms to improve the calibre and confidence of the workforce by improving social work training and developing further the skills of existing social workers via programmes such as Step Up to Social Work and Frontline. The new Ofsted single inspection framework looks at the child’s experience from the point of needing help and protection right through the system. In addition, CQC has also introduced a new programme to inspect local health service arrangements for these groups, and we are planning further improvements, with multiagency inspections due in 2015. By ensuring that serious case reviews are published we are seeking to improve public accountability where there have been failures to keep children safe.
The new children’s social care innovation programme should help us to support the development, testing and sharing of new and effective ways of supporting children who need help from children’s social care services. My noble friend Lady Walmsley rightly emphasised the need for research and practice to be evidence-based, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, echoed. My noble friend Lady Walmsley commented on the Government’s consultation on the outsourcing of children’s social care functions. Following that consultation, as she noted, we announced last Friday that profit-making organisations would not be able to take on outsourced functions, including those relating to child protection, and draft regulations have been amended accordingly.
The issue of mandatory reporting was raised by my noble friend Lady Walmsley, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and others. This is one of a number of possible future approaches that the Government are considering. The Government are reviewing the specific case for mandatory reporting in regulated activity and the Home Office is looking across government at options to strengthen the system. I note the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard. I hope that the noble Lord will be reassured that we will continue to examine the evidence on this, both nationally and internationally.
My noble friend Lady Walmsley mentioned PSHE and how it could help to protect individuals. We believe that all schools should teach PSHE, drawing on good practice. My noble friend Lord Paddick spoke about victims and survivors and the need to believe them. The Crown Prosecution Service published final guidelines on prosecuting cases of child sex abuse in October 2013, setting out a new approach to dealing with the particular issues that differentiate these cases. Focusing on the credibility of the allegation rather than the credibility of the individual is a significant cultural shift which recognises and addresses the particular vulnerability of some of these potential victims. We published the new victims’ code in December 2013. I hope that my noble friend Lord Paddick has seen it and feels that it is a positive move.
On health services, the Government’s mandate to NHS England sets it an objective of continuing to improve safeguarding of both adults and children in the NHS. One issue that has come up here is making sure that information sharing is done early and systematically. This was emphasised by my noble friends Lady Walmsley and Lady Sharp, the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and others. We know that early information is the key to providing effective early help where there are emerging problems. No professional should assume that someone else will pass on information which they think may be critical to keeping someone safe. We have recently rolled out the first wave of sites on the child protection information sharing project. This aims to help health professionals to make clear, timely judgments on potential safeguarding concerns and enable more rapid contact with children’s social care. We have emphasised in statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children, that effective sharing of information between professionals and local agencies is essential.
For adults at risk of abuse and neglect there needs to be a keen focus on the quality as well as the length of life. I note what my noble friend Lady Browning said about the quality and valuing of staff and about training them so as to ensure that they are looking after people with empathy. We need radical reform of how health and social care are experienced and delivered. The Care Act 2014 starts this process by providing a legal framework placing the well-being principle, prevention and early intervention at its heart. However, we are under no illusion that legislation alone will eradicate the type of behaviour that leaves people feeling distressed, frightened and humiliated. This can be realised only through a change in culture that leaves no tolerance of abuse, supports individual and collective responsibility for detecting abuse and challenges corrosive practices.
With services, people must be held to account for the quality of care that they provide. We are taking measures to ensure that company directors who are complicit in, or turn a blind eye to, poor care will be liable to prosecution. In future, they and provider organisations could face unlimited fines if found guilty. This could provide additional incentives for the effective management and support of staff—and those staff must be properly valued, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, and others have argued.
Systems and processes are already in place to provide public assurance, including the Care Quality Commission registration requirements and the Disclosure and Barring Service. I note what my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, have said about the falling numbers of people barred from working with children. We note that, and the Government are currently reviewing the position. When we conclude, I am sure that noble Lords will be interested in what we have found. However, those processes alone do not go far enough. That is why, following the publication of the Francis report into the failings of Mid Staffordshire, we asked Camilla Cavendish to review how healthcare assistants and support workers in health and care settings were valued and supported. We are also considering the proposals in the Law Commission’s review very carefully.
My noble friend Lord Eden and others will be interested to know that the introduction of a certificate of fundamental care, the care certificate, will, we hope, give clear evidence to employers, patients and service users that the person in front of them has been trained to a specific set of standards and knows how to act with compassion and respect. Health Education England, working alongside key partners, has already begun piloting this across England. Subject to evaluation, there will soon be a standard national approach to training on the skills and values needed to be an effective healthcare assistant or social care support worker. It is planned to roll this out in March 2015.
As with children’s social care, we recognise that the system of regulation and inspection for adults needs to improve; I hear what my noble friend Lady Sharp said. The CQC is currently introducing a new system of inspection of social care providers, based on much tougher fundamental standards of care, which places the individual at its heart. It will be structured around five key questions that matter most to people: are services safe, caring, effective, well led and responsive to people’s needs?
New measures in the Care Act make clear the responsibilities of local authorities and key partners, such as clinical commissioning groups and local police, in safeguarding adults. This is vital in ensuring clear accountability, roles and responsibilities for helping and protecting adults who are experiencing, or at risk of, abuse and neglect. The Department of Health is working with the College of Social Work, the Social Care Institute for Excellence, the College of Policing, Health Education England, Skills for Care and others to ensure an integrated approach to adult safeguarding that is reflected in the training that different staff receive.
In response to my noble friend Lord Eden, who made an important point about the contribution that carers make, the Care Act 2014 gives carers parity with those using services. I also mention to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and my noble friend Lord Thomas that a review was recently conducted looking at ways in which to reduce the distress to victims of sexual violence in trials. The Crown Prosecution Service has set up a network of specialist prosecutors, and only advocates from that panel can be used to prosecute child sexual abuse cases. All judges receive training that includes the treatment of vulnerable witnesses, and no judge involved in a serious sexual offence case, whether the child is a victim or a witness, can do so without being specially authorised to do so by the senior judge. I listened with care to what my noble friend Lord Thomas said about sexual offences right across the age range.
Finally, on the point of child sexual exploitation, we have established a national group that seeks ways to prevent sexual abuse happening in the first place. In relation to the report from Barnardo’s, we remain committed to ensuring that all necessary legislation is in place to tackle child sexual abuse. We welcome the recent inquiry and we are reassured by the conclusion that there is no evidence to show that justice could not be served due to a lack of a specific child sexual exploitation offence. We are considering its findings and wider recommendations and deciding how they can inform the national group’s ongoing work.
There have been many important contributions in this very thoughtful debate and I will make sure that this debate is flagged to my colleagues both in the Department of Health and the Department for Education. I will also write to noble Lords on specific points that I have not covered here. These are very important and interlinked issues but, in essence, it is indeed, as was mentioned before, about how civilised we are. It is about how even the most vulnerable in our society should feel safe and cared for and, as my noble friend Lord Eden put it, we must be more aware of our common humanity.