Children’s Social Care

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 19th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

First, I congratulate my noble friend on her new role, to which I know she will bring an enormous amount of experience. She is exactly right: this issue goes wider than children who come within the ambit of children’s social care; we need to ensure that we are supporting parenting, children and maternal health, and that we are intervening and providing preventive measures at the very earliest stages of children’s lives. As I suggested in my first response, that is some of the important work that family hubs are doing, but it is certainly very much part of the principles that this Government have set down. We need to continue that investment, as my noble friend says, in evidence-based practice at the very earliest stage for children and families.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, while I welcome the focus on trying to regulate private placements, that is also going to depend on the capacity within the given local authority. I was disappointed that there was not much focus on a strategy or solution, given that just under half of local authorities, when inspected by Ofsted, were rated not good; we need them all to be outstanding. I also welcome the focus across government and beyond, and, as the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, outlined, on 18 to 25 year-olds. Is the Minister speaking to the Deputy Prime Minister about this? If you are going to build social housing, how you design those houses can help create the support networks for vulnerable young people. As someone who skirted the children’s social care system and ended up in a privately financed, self-financed placement, I know that it is just happenstance —you happen to walk past someone’s window, you happen to be seen by people, who then may take an interest in you. You cannot compel them to, but how you build properties, how architects construct them, can make that more likely. Buildings shape people and can shape the support for some of our most vulnerable children.

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes an important point about the relationship between this work and the work of MHCLG. Just a week or so ago, my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Education and the MHCLG Secretary met with the Care Leavers’ Association. We are working with MHCLG on planning provision for additional children’s placements, in order to ensure that high-quality placements can be developed more quickly. I take her broader point about the way in which we literally build our communities in order to protect our children, and I am sure that good planners and good local authorities will be thinking about that.

Education: Early Years Attainment Gap

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 5th November 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, this is a workforce with a large number of 18 to 21 year-olds. Following my noble friend’s question, will the department consider whether those increased costs are going to be absorbed? If the department decides to do that, what will be the implications for, for instance, hospices, which are charities delivering NHS services? Once one moves to support one sector to absorb the national insurance and minimum wage increases, is there not an issue of principle that other sectors should be supported too?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

With respect to services delivering healthcare, my noble and honourable friends in the Department of Health and Social Care are considering the implications and will bring them forward. I point out to noble Lords opposite that there is no point demanding improved provision and arguing for, for example, a childcare entitlement that will involve considerable additional spending—which this Government have found in last week’s Budget—while being unwilling to find the money necessary to fill the £22 billion black hole that we inherited from them.

Government’s Childcare Expansion

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

Absolutely. The name of our recruitment campaign to encourage more people to come and work in this area is “Do Something Big”. Our argument is that there is little that you can do that is more important for changing somebody’s life than working with them in their very earliest years, whether through caring or through early years education and development. That is why the investment that this Government are putting in is so important and why we will celebrate the people who carry out that really important role.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, is it not also the case with the staffing of early years that there may be a staff surplus in some parts of the country? One has seen the statistical collapse in the number of young children in the inner London area, yet places such as Oxfordshire have apparently double the number of children than childcare places. Is part of the strategy to enable people already in this sector to relocate?

[Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)]

The noble Baroness makes a very important point. I am not sure that it is for the Government forcibly to relocate staff in this area, but let me take that back to those working on the childcare strategy as we think about how to reform this as a place to work and ensure that it is a positive place to work. We seek to meet demand where it is needed, because not only are there shortages of staff in some areas but there are shortages of provision. We will certainly make sure that we are focusing support on those areas that most need both the staff and the provision.

King’s Speech

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, before I offer congratulations, I am sure that I speak for all noble Lords in wishing Lady Knight a swift recovery from her treatment.

I wish to congratulate the noble Baronesses on their appointments to their ministerial roles and to recognise the amazing contribution of my noble friend Lady Barran —if you are going to get reshuffled, you should get reshuffled to a friend who does a wonderful job.

I am pleased to note that the noble Baroness, Lady Merron, has within her specific responsibilities mental health reform. As a member of the Joint Committee on the Draft Mental Health Bill in the last Parliament, I was pleased to see the Bill in the King’s Speech.

In 1983, the Act was probably envisaged to apply only to children within the criminal justice system, but it is needed more and more to detain children to treat them for mental health illnesses. Many families with children with eating disorders, mainly girls, are actually desperate to have them detained—it is a lifesaver. In 2022-23, according to NHS Digital, there were 997 detentions of children and young people.

As the report of the Joint Committee advised, it is vital that the interplay between any reformed mental health legislation and parental responsibility under the Children Act is fully understood. While I had the pleasure of working with excellent officials at the DfE, it seemed that the implications for the Children Act of immigration changes and mental health reform had not been grasped. I am not sure that we got to the bottom of who had parental responsibility for young people accommodated by the Home Office.

In addition to a report, being on a committee gives you a sense of the relative strengths and weaknesses of civil society groups regarding the issues before you. This reform was instituted by the former Prime Minister, the right honourable Theresa May, because of racial disproportionality in the use of the Mental Health Act. The bold recommendation of the committee to abolish community treatment orders—the right reverend Prelate related the statistics on those—hardly registered. I know that the noble Baroness is an experienced Minister, but I would be grateful if she would not only meet with the members of the Joint Committee but ensure that those whose resources do not match the wonderful work of the National Autistic Society are also heard. Realising who is not in the room is as important as those who are before you.

I also note the return of the register of children not in school. I hope that the doughty campaigner on this issue, the noble Lord, Lord Soley, who retired from your Lordships’ House last year, has seen this. I wonder whether it will be successful even with a thumping majority in the other place, as it has been a Private Member’s Bill in the Commons, a Private Member’s Bill more than once in your Lordships’ House and government legislation—but I do wish it well. With many parents of children with special educational needs and disabilities resorting to home education not out of choice, a light-touch approach to the requirements for such families will be essential. I hope that the Bill will mean there is a standard offering of tutoring hours, regardless of your postcode in England, to children who have fallen outside mainstream schooling—hopefully only for a period of time—due to their special educational needs and disabilities not being accommodated in the mainstream system.

I conclude—on time, according to the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy—with the excellent work that Ofsted does in ensuring that children are educated or accommodated in places such as children’s homes with proper safeguarding processes and cultures in place. The enormous number of institutions that Ofsted inspects for safeguarding purposes means that it is the expert. Yes, I am saying an unfashionable thing. Inappropriate people seeking to gain access to children is not historic. Evil is wily and hard to spot. People do not come to an interview in a Halloween costume. More than 80,000 adults are currently on the DBS barred from working with children list. While the unions, quite properly, in their role represent teachers, Ofsted is there for parents and children.

Last week saw a report issued—seven years late—by the Charity Commission into a prestigious public school, Ampleforth. Despite the Charity Commission taking over safeguarding functions, despite a lengthy report by the child sex abuse inquiry into the school, and despite numerous ISI inspections, they now have a safe school where the board of governors is acting appropriately. Ofsted inspectors’ safeguarding expertise, sent in on a no-notice basis by former Secretary of State for Education Gavin Williamson, means that it is now a safe school—I recognise that this is another unfashionable commendation.

I am not immune to Ofsted’s problems since the sad death of head teacher Ruth Perry and the training that has needed to take place, but we need to ensure that the professional accountability of Ofsted remains rigorous with regard to safeguarding. I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Smith, for her positive tone in relation to the expansion of its powers. I have no vested interest, save that when I was a Minister, knowing that we had in our pocket the ability to inspect a school at no notice was vital to keeping our children safe in school.

School Funding: Special Educational Needs

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 23rd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

The noble Earl may be right that we are timed out on an arts premium.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, will my noble friend the Minister join me in congratulating Thames Christian School in Battersea, which has recently won a prestigious RIBA award for the architecture of its building? In the head teacher’s response to that award, he outlined that, of the 400 students in that fee-paying school, 200 have special educational needs. What advice is being given to schools such as that about how they might approach supporting parents who are unsure about whether their children can continue if the school fees are increased?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am delighted to join my noble friend in celebrating that success. That matter will be for individual parents in independent schools to work through. Independent schools have focused very much on supporting children and their parents where bursaries are required, but that is up to the parents and those schools.

Covid-19 Pandemic: Educational Attainment

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Lord Robathan (Con)]

My Lords—

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords—

[Noble Lords]

Baroness Berridge!

[The Deputy Speaker (Baroness Williams of Trafford) (Con)]

My Lords, I think the House is calling for my noble friend Lady Berridge.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, thousands of young people will be taking their GCSE examinations this year who were also in year 7 when the pandemic began. Unfortunately, they have been doubly affected by being educated in schools which have been disrupted by the RAAC situation. Can my noble friend the Minister please outline what advice, assistance and best practice is being shared with those schools, so that they can make effective representations to the exam boards—which do listen to those representations—about the disruption that may have affected their education for a second time?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

We in the department have worked very closely with each of those individual schools. Of course, the disruption may have affected coursework rather more significantly than specific exams. We have therefore worked with every school that has wished to have our support, providing them with the funding to support their children in order to be able to catch up on any learning that was lost for those pupils in exam years, but also liaising with and supporting them in their engagement with the exam boards.

Relationships, Sex and Health Education: Statutory Guidance

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am delighted to reassure the noble Baroness that she is right.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, in relation to the point that the noble Baroness raised about resources and materials, it is the usual policy of this Government that you outline content and then allow teachers to choose how they teach that and what resources they use—except of course for phonics, on which there is little discretion. Oak National Academy is going to be producing resources, and I note that here these are called “compliant resources”. Could my noble friend the Minister outline the timeline for it to produce those resources so that, when the regulations change, teachers know they are using resources that are appropriate for children?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I thank my noble friend for her question. She is right that Oak National Academy is collaborating with Life Lessons Education to develop new relationships and health education in primary and relationships and sexual health curriculum in secondary. That will be made available in full from autumn 2025.

Faith Schools: Impact of Removing Admissions Cap

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

To be clear, and to avoid upsetting my noble friend Lord Baker one more time, the changes we are proposing in relation to special schools will not affect eligibility. Eligibility for a place in a special school will be dependent on a child’s education, health and care plan. The Government fund all the capital costs associated with developing a new free school. The funding is provided through the local authority for children with an education, health and care plan.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, should we not be proud that the new schools that we have opened since 2010 include Muslim, Hindu and Sikh faith-based schools, which were the first in the country, as well as additional Church of England schools? Can my noble friend the Minister confirm that, in line with previous suggestions for changing the admissions arrangements for new free schools, what is proposed is just that the admissions criteria that apply to existing Catholic schools will be the same for a new Catholic free school? There will be no change to the admissions policy for Catholic schools; it would just be the same policy across the board.

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

I am very happy to confirm that.

School Inspections: Funding

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

Wednesday 17th April 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

Again, I can only agree with the noble Lord. I was reflecting on the new verb that has entered the lexicon of being “Ofsteded”—we will leave that. This is important. The work that Ofsted is doing with the Big Listen, in talking to parents, teachers, school leaders and children, will, I hope, go a long way to ensure that trust and confidence is achieved—and that therefore, at the end of it, the institution and those who work for it are valued.

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, one of the key functions of an Ofsted inspection is to make sure that no one is employed who has a criminal record relating to harming children. Sadly, there are over 80,000 adults currently barred from working with children. When Ofsted discovers that a head teacher and senior leadership team are not doing proper employment checks, what resources are then available, either from Ofsted or elsewhere, to ensure that that senior leadership team is immediately retrained to ensure they do those vital employment checks?

[Baroness Barran (Con)]

It would be up to the trust, in relation to an academy, or the local authority to address those specific weaknesses. The department has led on the development of a framework of professional qualifications: leadership qualifications for heads, executive leaders and senior leaders. All those frameworks are clear about the role of leaders in complying with the law in relation to safeguarding and statutory guidance. As my noble friend knows very well, that statutory guidance, Keeping Children Safe in Education, is extremely clear on recruitment practices, DBS and wider appointment checks, but also on referrals back to the Disclosure and Barring Service if someone is dismissed or removed.

Schools (Mental Health Professionals) Bill [HL]

Baroness Berridge Excerpts

2nd reading
Friday 1st March 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Berridge (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for this Private Member’s Bill, which enables your Lordships’ House to focus once again on the mental health needs of young people. The figures of the increased prevalence in young people of mental health symptoms and illness are alarming and I dare say that there is no one in today’s debate or in your Lordships’ House generally who does not know of a young person struggling like this.

The underlying mischief that the Bill seeks to address is to get mental health support early through school counsellors to avoid those mild to moderate symptoms deteriorating and therefore to sustain access to education, which is vital. Whether through the mental health support team, designated senior lead, school nurse, educational psychologist or school counsellor, mental health services need to be accessible via schools. I suggest that the school counsellor could also be the person who co-ordinates the education provision when a child is so mentally unwell that they can no longer access education in school, a cohort that I think is even beyond that outlined by the noble Baroness.

Within the statistics on this issue, one of the most startling is the rise in the prevalence of eating disorders. Among 11 to 16 year-olds, the incidence rose from 0.5% in 2017 to 2.6% in 2023, while among 17 to 19 year-olds it rose from 0.8% to 12.5%.

When the Mental Health Act was passed in 1983, it was not envisaged that children would be detained, save possibly under the Part 3 criminal justice provisions of that Act, but many children are indeed detained under the Act. NHS Digital recorded 997 detentions under the Act of people aged 17 and under in 2022-23, although the true figure will be higher, as not all providers submitted data. The figure also did not include those children who consented to be admitted, or whose parents consented to them being admitted, to a secure institution. The Children’s Commissioner report in 2020 outlined not only racial disparities in admissions to secure facilities, but more girls being detained and consenting to admissions than boys, which may of course be due to the rise in eating disorders that I outlined, which are more prevalent among girls.

Continuing education for those in secure units is so important. Although education can be provided remotely, it may be more difficult if the child has been placed out of area—an issue that I know His Majesty’s Government have been grappling with for years. Can my noble friend the Minister outline whether out-of-area placements of children and young people have ended if they are detained under the Act? If you are so detained, do you then come out with an EHCP, or is it the obligations under Section 117 on aftercare that help you get additional resources to catch up on lost education?

In 2018 the Department for Education prepared a very helpful research paper into the education provided for children in secure mental health institutions, but only 58% of units providing education in the secure estate responded to the call for evidence. Encouragingly, in most units that did respond, discussions with home schools were reported to take place at all points during the pupil’s time in the unit—their admission, their stay and as part of reintegration to the home school. But units had mixed experiences when obtaining sufficient information on baseline levels and progress from pupils’ home schools, with only 60% indicating that this was provided for more than half their pupils. That is 60% of the 58% that replied, so less than half of those trying to teach children in these units have significant information.

We need to ensure that teachers whose careers are dedicated to teaching in the secure mental health estate—I pay tribute to them—have all the necessary information about the child’s previous education. The Bill’s suggestion of every school having access to a school counsellor would provide a person who could ensure that secure units have sufficient information about a child’s current education. It could reassure noble Lords that someone is informed or aware of what is happening in the 42% of institutions that did not respond to the research paper. That represents hundreds of young people whose education we do not know about while they are in the secure mental health estate. It is a gap that I believe needs to be filled.

While the need for mental health expertise in schools is obvious, I am not convinced that legislation is needed to achieve this. It could, in fact, be counterproductive. What if one school has a major event, such as the school next to Grenfell Tower? If that had been part of a multi-academy trust, which it was not, could not all the mental health professionals be reassigned to that school for a period of time? Sadly, that could not happen under the Bill as currently framed, for fear of acting unlawfully.

What is the sanction if a school does not provide access to such support? Sadly, recourse to the courts by way of judicial review looks like the only enforceability option. Do we really want to encourage that? Is a school leader not free to say, “I will spend my resources elsewhere, as my school is in one of the 75 local authority areas that has a family hub and students have access to mental health support and counsellors there”?

I also wonder why the requirement in the Bill is not proposed to extend to the independent sector, as to provide such services would match the requirement to provide PSHE in independent schools. While arguably, of course, some will have access to private mental health support, often late diagnosis there will put the same strain on resources in the NHS that the noble Baroness seeks to avoid, and it will have similar adverse effects on the student’s prospects. As 70% of secondary schools and 52% of primary schools in England already offer counselling services, this causes me to doubt the wisdom of needing to legislate.

It is so encouraging that 14,400 settings have claimed a grant to train a senior mental health support lead. Can my noble friend the Minister reassure me that she has used her well-known expertise with data to look at the settings that have not applied? Are they in areas of deprivation? Is there cross-referencing with NHS data for areas where young people are most at risk of poor mental health outcomes to check whether these are the settings that have not applied for the grant and to enable them somehow to do so?

I am grateful to the noble Baroness for giving your Lordships’ House the opportunity to focus on the mental health of children and young people. While the progress by His Majesty’s Government could perhaps be quicker in its rollout, I regret that I cannot support legislation as the appropriate means to fulfil this important aim.