Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Benjamin and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Wednesday 29th June 2016 Grand Committee

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I visited my GP last week and she expressed her concerns about the number of care leavers coming to her surgery with mental health issues—anxiety, depression, self-harming, suicidal emotions and erratic behaviour. She said: “Floella, if only we could do something about this when the child is entering care. If only we could identify that they are suffering from mental problems it would save the NHS resources and save them suffering and long-term unhappiness.” That is what many Peers have said this evening, while charities such as the NSPCC have said it for a long time. I, like others, strongly believe that we need to adequately identify the issue and that children should receive assessment for their mental and emotional well-being by professionals with specialist training in the mental health of looked-after children. This is necessary because the children are suffering long-term. We spoke earlier about corporate parenting. I believe that the principles should include the responsibility to ensure that children are offered the support they need to recover from psychological harm caused prior to their entry to the care system. That should be paramount when we have to look after those children.

There must be provisions made to guarantee that the children in care will never be denied access to, or disadvantaged when trying to access, mental health services. They are finding that this is a problem. They must never be told that they cannot get professional help because they are not in a stable placement, or disadvantaged because they have moved out of an authority placement. We know that a high percentage of children in care end up in prison or are homeless, and that many suffer from mental problems while in prison. During my prison visits, I often speak to young people who say. “If only things had been different for me when I was a child”—a phrase repeated over and over again. Children who have been abused or neglected could face serious long-term mental problems throughout adulthood because of the lack of support, so it is essential that we are able to deal with difficulties early and offer the right support to children.

Children need that support but the NSPCC has found that there are not enough therapeutic services for those who have been abused or neglected. This has to stop. There is cause for concern because more and more children are reporting sexual abuse, which is occurring every hour of the day, and because we have almost 70,000 children living in care in England. This has to stop and we have to help these children. We must not let them down. That is why I am supporting and have put my name to Amendment 87.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, nothing has been said during this debate that one could reasonably disagree with. My only question is: would it help if we had it all in the Bill? I would draw attention to the Local Government Association’s concern, which is that if all these things are in a Bill they restrict the capacity to think through the targeting of where there is greatest need. In some communities, the greatest need may not be for the in-care community.

We know, as I said this afternoon during Questions, although I was rather interrupted, that the children who are on the list of those in greatest need are likely to have a greater need for intervention than some of the children in care. We should not do anything that inhibits local authorities and their partners from making proper assessments and being able to direct those services. I know, having talked at length to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and to other people who have been in poor authorities, that there is some despair about whether some local authorities will ever reach that point of being able to make good assessments. I also know from work that I am doing with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children that some remarkable work and turnaround is happening in other local authorities. We should try to work with the best towards the best and enable a local authority to do that.

I am interested that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is so sanguine about the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. I can see a million difficulties in having his suggestion on the statute book. Again, much as the bit of me that was a director of social services would have liked to have had that, the other bit would know how impossible it is to get one person. What is the role now of the independent reviewing officer, for example? We know that IROs have not been particularly successful, yet those are the people who we have identified as the ones to focus on the children. There must be alternative ways.

This is where the two parts of the Bill come together. If we are able to get the social work bit of it right and develop really good social work, it seems that the other issues will not be so pressing—apart from the ones raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. The mental health issues of children in care are of particular concern and I would support her. This is because CAMHS is in such disarray, probably in greater disarray than some other areas in local authorities, and although I think that the Government have good intentions to put money into the service, we know how hard it is to get that funding properly directed. However, we could make a real difference to young people’s progress if we ensure that their therapeutic needs are met early on, not when they are developing serious mental disorders and personality conditions. We know that behavioural work with children at an early stage works very well. While I am finding it difficult to support a wide range of the amendments, again because I want to keep the Bill as simple and implementable as possible, we should look seriously at these mental health issues.

Education and Adoption Bill

Debate between Baroness Benjamin and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Tuesday 1st December 2015 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise that I was unable to speak in Committee on this issue; I had to attend another committee at the same time. I just want to ask for clarity on a very narrow point—which is actually a wide point.

The amendment adds mental health services for children in the adoption process. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, made a very clear statement about the large number of other children in care who face the same needs—children in kinship care, long-term fostering, or hostels for children with special difficulties. Is the thinking clearly about basing the provision of services on the actual needs of the children as they are seen, rather than the bit of the system they are in? My concern is that we see adoption as a better placement than many others when often it is not; kinship care can be a much better solution for a child. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, permanency is what actually matters. I hope that mental health services can be clearly focused on children to ensure permanency, whatever that permanency looks like.

It makes very good economic sense to ensure that money is clearly targeted to children in care—and, sometimes, children in their own families who are showing special needs. Economically, if you can get to those children early, you will improve their life chances. If they are targeted, that can be measured. Those are the things that the Government want to do at the moment: target services to see what works and makes good economic sense, because people will be able to make better sense of their own lives. Will the Minister ensure that there are adequate mental health services—we know that there is a great difficulty at the moment—and that they are targeted at need rather than at category?

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to support Amendment 4. As I have said at all stages of this Bill, with the support of the NSPCC, every single child entering care should receive an automatic mental health assessment in addition to the physical assessment they currently receive. Children in care should then immediately receive the subsequent necessary support to help them to deal with the issues of mental health identified in the assessment. There should be regular monitoring of children’s mental health while in care to inform what support that child receives and ensure that it contributes to their improved well-being. These provisions are essential to strengthen the Bill because they will help towards making significant savings for the NHS, the prison services and society in general.

The NSPCC, myself and many others welcome the Government’s announcement of an additional £600 million for mental health and see it as a great opportunity to make sure that more of the most vulnerable children get access to the mental health support that they need to overcome the trauma they have experienced. As I have said time and again, childhood lasts a lifetime, so let us give all children the best start in life, including children in care and children in the adoption system. They need to be cared for and looked after in every way possible. We owe it to them, so I hope that the Minister will include these provisions in this important Bill.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Benjamin and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Wednesday 5th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I rise to speak in support of the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. As we have heard, the amendment is supported by the NSPCC, with which I have had several discussions. The NSPCC believes that the amendment is wholly necessary because it specifically proposes that a new offence be brought in so that it is always illegal for an adult intentionally to send a sexual message to a child because this is another form of child sex abuse. This proposed new clause seeks to protect children from sexual communications.

I spoke in support of the amendment on Report and I remain committed to making it—I repeat—always illegal for an adult to send a sexual message to a child. We have to understand that the current law, a stand-alone offence as part of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, is inadequate in protecting children from online abuse. What is needed is to ensure that the law is absolutely clear that intentionally sending a sexual communication to a child is illegal. This will help prevent abuse escalating and keep children safe online in this new and dangerous world in which they are being brought up. We have to put all the necessary protections in place for every eventuality. We must make absolutely sure that there will be no place for perpetrators to hide.

The Minister’s response on Report perhaps focused too much on adults possessing indecent images of children. That is not what this proposed new clause is concerned with. My noble friend the Minister was correct to assert that if an adult incites and comes to possess an indecent image of a child, legislation such as Section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act would cover the possession of those images. However, this misses the purpose of this proposed new clause. Section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act makes it an offence only to possess indecent photographs of a child. For instance, it would not be illegal for a 40 year-old adult to send a message to an 11 year-old child saying, “I’d like to see a photo of you in your underwear”.

With regard to other legislation, under the Communications Act, whether a message would be deemed indecent or not is a subjective judgment. If an adult sent a message to a child describing in sexually explicit language what they fantasised about doing together, this would clearly be considered indecent and therefore illegal. However, if an adult sent messages such as, “Send me a photo of yourself, honey”, it is not clear that this could be deemed,

“grossly offensive or of an indecent, obscene or menacing character”,

as described in Section 127 of the Communications Act, but, in context, this clearly has a sexual intent. This is the gap that the proposed new clause attempts to fill. Its purpose is to catch offenders before the child has shared an indecent image because when, and if, a child is persuaded to send an indecent image of themselves, it could have devastating consequences for that child. They can become suicidal, start to self-harm and have low self-esteem, and be made to feel ashamed and dirty. This is what the NSPCC has found. I am sure that my noble friend and noble Lords across the House will agree with me about the risks a child faces once an image has been shared online, for it can be spread ever more widely at great speed without the child’s knowledge. We should do everything that we can to stop this behaviour before it happens.

The noble Lord, Lord Harris, has dealt with how the offence is not captured by various other legislation. Rather than restating his points, I will address the Minister’s belief that the Crown Prosecution Service does not currently feel that there is a gap in the law. In 2012, Phillip Pirrie was convicted for arranging to meet and sexually abuse a 13 year-old girl whom he had first contacted online. During the trial, it was revealed that he had previously contacted a 14 year-old girl through an online game. He sent that girl sexual messages. Luckily, these were found by the girl’s father, who took his concerns to the police. Sadly, no further action was taken as a meeting had not taken place between Pirrie and the girl. Under this proposed new clause, Pirrie could have been prosecuted and convicted in respect of the first victim, the 14 year-old. As a result he could have been placed on the sex offenders register and had a civil prevention order put in place. More importantly, this could have prevented him offending against the second victim, the 13 year-old. Think of the pain and suffering that this could have saved.

As I previously stated, last year ChildLine saw a 168% increase in contacts relating to online sexual abuse. This confirms that online sexual abuse is a new blight on our children’s well-being. Clearly we must do more in this area to enable action to be taken against offenders earlier and keep children safe online. What will we do to safeguard and protect our children in this modern world? I look forward to the Minister’s response on that point.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Harris. I will not go through all the arguments that have been made already. The Minister can easily read the NSPCC submissions, which are extremely pertinent. I will make three very different points.

I know that the Minister is extremely concerned about child abuse generally, and child sexual abuse and its prevention in particular. We are about to embark on a huge inquiry. We have discussed whether an inquiry looking at past abuse might obscure what is happening today. What we must do—I am repeating this and will continue to do so—is spend our time preventing abuse now. The lessons that we can learn from the past will help us, but it is crucial that we prevent abuse now.

I declare an interest as the vice-chair of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, where grooming was first defined and understood. In relation to grooming, any of the experts will tell you that the perpetrator clears a number of hurdles to reach the full stature, if you like, of a paedophile. The first thing that they do is test whether they can gain the confidence of a child just through kindness, relationship and involvement. As I understand it, none of the current statutes would intervene at the point where a perpetrator sent a message saying, “I am really fond of you, I would like to see you topless or in your underwear”, or “I would like you to talk about sexual things”, or, as in one recent case, “I would like you to do something to your sister in front of me, so that I can see and understand how your relationship is going”. It gets worse as time goes on. As the perpetrator finds that they can cross one hurdle, they then discover that they are enabled to cross the next one, and the next one, until they are meeting children, and until they are fully abusing larger numbers of children. That is the history of grooming; it is how grooming works.

If we are serious about prevention, we need to prevent at that very first point. What the Minister will hear from the police—I am quite sure that he is in discussions—is that they find it quite difficult to sort out how they move forward among the enormously confusing entanglement of present legislation. I simply hope that the Government will have a look at this. I am not a lawyer; I only know what I experience in my day-to-day contact with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, the NSPCC and other children’s organisations. They feel that not enough is being done, that one single law is needed to make it absolutely clear that we are serious about protecting our children, and that we should have an amendment—if not this one, something like it—to be able to act at the very first point.

Serious Crime Bill [HL]

Debate between Baroness Benjamin and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Tuesday 28th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lady Walmsley on highlighting and pursuing this issue. I also welcome the Government’s common-sense approach as we move forward, as my noble friend said. It will make a difference to children’s futures, and their future mental and physical well-being.

I know that it will make a difference because just last week I gave one of my many talks to more than 200 schoolchildren. I spoke to them about people who may be causing them to suffer physical, mental, emotional or sexual abuse. I told them that it was not their fault and, rather, that bad people were taking advantage of their innocence and vulnerability. They must feel worthy and should tell someone, even though they may be threatened by the abuser if they do so. Children need to hear the message and to be empowered in this way.

As so often happens, at the end of that session the organiser of the event, who was aged around 40, came and sat next to me and said that he was that little boy I had spoken about when I talked to the children. He said that he had lived in a children’s home and had been abused, and that he is still living with those experiences. That is because when he did tell someone, he was told to shut up and keep quiet, and that he was ungrateful. His abuser was considered to be a good and kind person in society. The organiser was made to feel that he was the victim on all counts.

This is how abusers operate: they put on a good face for the community, but to their victims they are monsters. Everywhere you go in society and every corner you turn, there will be an adult who is reliving the horrors of child abuse. As I have said time and again in this House, childhood lasts a lifetime, so we have to put measures in place to ensure that for abusers there will be no place to hide. Some people might be wrongly accused and costs may be incurred, but I believe that that is a small price to pay to protect our children from being damaged for life. I therefore support the amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s response, which I hope will be a good one.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I fear that I may be a lone voice in that I take a slightly different view from that of my colleagues—all of whom I deeply respect. I understand their position. I should also say that I look forward to a full debate on this, and I hope that the Minister will meet with those of us who take a different view as well as with those who are pressing for mandatory reporting. That is because there is another argument, part of which I will cover today. However, meeting some of those in the various fields where this proposal would make their work difficult would be worthwhile.

Of course, when a professional or indeed an ordinary person hears about a child or an adult of any kind—I will not use the word “vulnerable” because it means all sorts of things—who is being abused, they have a responsibility to ensure that they go to some authority. I would say to my noble friend, with deep respect, that, as a doctor, my view is that if she had a suspicion, it should have been forcefully conveyed to the authorities. I think that the problem is that some time ago the atmosphere around child abuse, and particularly child sexual abuse, was very different from the one we know now. I shall come to Rotherham in a moment because it is a different issue. We are in a different era in relation to child abuse and people are now very highly motivated to get it right.

As I said in the last debate, it is important that systems are in place to ensure that there is a clear pathway for reporting. Most organisations are working towards that, if they have not already got it. Most local authorities and statutory authorities have it; here I declare an interest because I am working with the church at the moment to try to ensure that it has that clear pathway to take people through to the reporting place. I do not think that they would knowingly fail to carry out that duty because the consequences are huge. I do not know how many noble Lords watched the programme last night about Baby P and saw the total destruction of people’s careers and indeed lives based on extraordinarily flimsy evidence, which some of us knew about previously. We have to be absolutely sure that, when reporting takes place, it takes place in a structure that can pick things up quickly and get the information right from the beginning.

I will speak about the issue of exemptions. I do not agree that psychotherapists should be exempted. If someone knows that abuse is taking place, they have a duty to report it, whoever they are and wherever they are. The difficulty comes when we are not quite sure. This is where the psychotherapists are anxious, and this is where I am anxious about a whole range of professionals who are working in the field of perpetrators —and I declare an interest as vice-chair of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which works directly in this field—including of course ChildLine and the NSPCC. They have children ringing up about issues that they are not quite prepared to talk about.

If there are going to be exemptions, they have to be absolutely clear. The procedure has got to be right. It is not about whether you are a particular kind of professional. It is about the situation, the circumstance and where you are in terms of the abuse. That is why I value the debate, because ChildLine, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and all similar organisations have very clear guidelines on when confidentiality must be broken in the interests of the child.

I know things can go seriously wrong. I was as appalled, shocked and amazed at what happened in Rotherham as anyone who has been involved in safeguarding for far less time than me—and I have probably been involved in it for more years than anybody in this House. I think, though, that we have to look at the circumstances of those kinds of situations and what is happening in that particular institution and how we put it right, because what really counts are not structures and procedures but culture. It is about whether the people in the particular organisation understand the values that they must have in relation to those for whom they are responsible and whether there is a culture right through that organisation that takes them forward.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, asked a detailed question about the statutory inquiry into child abuse. The last issue concerns me particularly. The National Crime Agency is telling us that it cannot deal with some 50,000 referrals that it has at the moment. The Lucy Faithfull Foundation cannot take all the telephone calls, despite the government help that we are getting—and we are working on behalf of the Government to try to take more calls from people who are anxious about their thoughts and behaviour.

As soon as we open the Pandora’s box on historical abuse for the inquiry, the Government will have an avalanche of people coming forward. The example given by the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, is one I could repeat time and time again. I have been year after year in situations where people come to me and say, “This happened to me when I was 10, when I was 11”. The historical abuse issue, because we did not have procedures in place then, is going to hit the Government and the inquiry like nothing we have seen.

The reason I am so concerned is that we have put all that into a position of trust. It is about getting people to divulge things that they may not have talked about for 40 years. Do we have the resources in place to meet their needs once they have divulged this? At the moment children’s services are totally overwhelmed, CAMHS cannot meet the mental health needs of children in the communities and victim support groups have only just enough money to last until next year. That is the environment in which we are thinking about mandatory reporting. I will be interested in the Government looking at evidence from other countries because my evidence from Australia is that the authorities were overwhelmed at the beginning. They were totally overwhelmed by mandatory reporting.

It ensures that you cannot prioritise work. You have to do something about things that as a professional you might decide are probably not the highest on the agenda. Doctors have to make those difficult decisions, social workers have to make them and the police have to make them. Sometimes they will get them wrong, even if they have mandatory reporting, but at least we should give the services a chance to be able to meet the demand that we have at the moment. If we are going to increase that demand, the Government have to think beforehand about the resources that are going to be needed to meet that promise and the trust that is placed in those resources by the victims who have suffered so much.

As a former director of ChildLine, as a director of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation and as someone who has worked in this field for a long time, I certainly value the noble Baroness bringing this debate forward. I just come to a different conclusion.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Benjamin and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Tuesday 28th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Benjamin (LD)]

My Lords, I, too, support the amendment in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. Whenever I go into schools to speak to young people under the PSHE banner, I am amazed at how many are affected by being told that they are worthy and at how their confidence is boosted. Some are never told that they are loved unconditionally and that they can achieve. They have no parental guidance. PSHE helps them to cope with the materialistic, commercially led world they are living in. It helps them to learn how to deal with morality, honesty and integrity, and to understand that they can grow up in our society and be someone in whom people can put their trust. That is very important in today’s society, and children need guidance in that direction. Every child in the country, no matter what their background, needs to be exposed to good PSHE. We owe it to our future generation, so I support the amendment wholeheartedly.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I also support the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, in her campaign and I believe that the Minister supports her too, whether or not it is through this amendment. Having been to the recent round-table discussion and knowing of the progress that the Minister has made, I simply ask my question again. Although the timescale may be shorter than he would like, with what speed does he think he can bring about a culture change in schools whereby PSHE is central to and a core part of all schools in all sectors? Many of us believe—and it has been enunciated very clearly in the debate—that this would make a real difference to the lives of our young people, who are trying to grow up in this very difficult, changing world.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I deeply respect the tenacity with which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, has followed through this issue. I found some of her arguments rather convoluted and difficult to follow today, but that could just be that the hour is late and by now my brain is rather addled. However, I still contend that the current child protection framework, which identifies physical, sexual and emotional abuse and neglect, provides an effective framework for assessing situations where children have been accused of witchcraft and spirit possession.

Abuse can occur in these situations as a consequence of parental behaviour towards the child and through the response by church leaders in performing acts of deliverance that inflict harm on the child. As I have said before, and I declare an interest as someone who chaired a working party for Trust for London, I have met these children and engaged with some of the pastors, so I understand the issue. However, we also know, and the noble Baroness herself pointed this out, that belief in spirit possession and witchcraft is widespread among many African communities, and current knowledge indicates that the incidence of abuse linked to these beliefs is low. These beliefs occupy a broad spectrum and range, from the harmless to the seriously harmful. When it is the latter, the child protection framework should be applied through recognition, assessment and intervention.

Where the noble Baroness and I might well share a platform is in tackling the real issue here: the lack of training across this area, which is extremely complex. We have to remember that Christians believe some pretty strange things; in my community in the north of England, “He’s got the devil in him” was something that was said quite often. That is quite different from a child being accused of being a witch, ostracised from the family, made to behave in a particular way, taken before a congregation and pointed out and scapegoated. Those are quite clearly issues of abuse but they are not always understood by those working in the field.

As part of the group that worked with the then Trust for London, we explored these issues and the range of abusive behaviour, and that was paralleled by a government group that was set up to look at the issue at the same time. I do not know if the noble Baroness knows what has happened to that group, or whether it has simply disappeared and is no longer continuing.

It is clear to all involved that promoting child safeguarding and well-being is far more effective for engaging communities and churches than a narrow focus on witchcraft and spirit possession. My experience, working with a number of these community groups, has led to improvements in wider child protection, including through changed practice and disclosures. I hope that the noble Baroness will continue to press the cause of awareness and training, but I cannot stand with her in having legislation that identifies witchcraft in this way; it is a far more complex issue.

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support this amendment. It has the best interest of the child at its heart and is targeted to raise awareness among those in our communities who may not realise the psychological, mental and traumatic long-term damage that they are inflicting upon the child. This issue was brought to my attention many years ago and sadly it continues today. I dearly hope that the Government will accept this amendment, as it is necessary to protect our children. If not, I hope that the Government agree at least to work with communities to make it clear that these acts are child abuse and will not be tolerated. The sooner that this takes place the better.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Benjamin and Baroness Howarth of Breckland

Monday 21st October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Benjamin]

My Lords, I support this amendment. There is something close to my heart that the noble Lord also supports. Twenty years ago my production company tried to get a schools programme on parenting commissioned. I was told that could not happen because it was not part of the national curriculum. Thankfully it now is. Some schools are attempting to address this important issue. Parenting is not about sex education, but about teaching young people about life skills, relationships, respect for one another, responsibilities, basic money matters, social policies and solving domestic problems. That applies to everybody’s family life, no matter what their background is. All schools should promote parental responsibility and make it an essential part of delivering holistic education to all our children. That is why I support this amendment.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I rise very briefly to support this amendment, and to ask for it to be looked at in a broader context of social policy. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, talked of young men in prison. I want to give one example—something I heard last week—which relates to how young people can learn. I was told of a hostel for young women with their babies that was closed, probably for financial reasons. The young women and their babies were dispersed. Six of them were at university, and no consideration was given to this fact, to the support they received at the hostel or to what would happen to them in future. If we are thinking about how we can ensure that each generation gets the support they need, that story is a good example of how broader policy could make a difference.