Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Cash Excerpts(1 day, 18 hours ago)
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Baroness Cash
Member’s explanatory statement
This amendment seeks to enable a general discussion of inserted section 16LB.
Baroness Cash (Con)
My Lords, in moving Amendment 50, tabled by my noble friends Lord Lucas, Lord Farmer and Lady Barran, I will speak also to the other amendments in this group: Amendments 54 to 60 and 62 to 63A. I list them at the outset because some of the same points apply in respect of several amendments. These amendments were tabled in the same spirit of probing and collaboration that has seen this House at its very best this afternoon. I pay tribute to the extremely experienced and knowledgeable voices we have heard, including from the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and others across the House who unfortunately have departed but who shared their expertise of working in this area and with this challenge.
It is reassuring to us all that we are united in support of data sharing—there appears to be no dispute on that—and the questions are about how we do it and how we make sure that it is easily accessible and safe. It was in that spirit that these amendments were tabled in respect of the consistent identifier. We would be very grateful to the Minister for her assistance in answering some of the questions they give rise to.
It is 52 years since the country first woke up to the dangers of not sharing information, in the case of Maria Colwell. Her school, neighbours and social worker all had concerns, but they were not pieced together. Fifty-two years later, we are here in this House, in spite of the efforts of all parties in the other place to do their very best to find a way to data share at different times since. Thirty years later, the Victoria Climbié case highlighted the same, and we know that, recently, too, no common identifier and shared case file was the issue in the terrible case of Sara Sharif.
However, there are problems with data sharing. In fact, the last time that noble Lords on the opposite Benches were in government, in 2004, the introduction of ContactPoint under the Children Act 2004 had to be abandoned for privacy reasons, to the great regret of all of us who are concerned with these matters and work in this area in some capacity or other. In this sense, I declare my interest as the co-founder of Parent Gym and the owner of Mind Gym.
I turn to the individual amendments, some of which are quite self-explanatory. As the Minister will have seen, Amendment 50 is a general probing amendment to facilitate a discussion looking at the use of a single consistent identifier and the data issues.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thought I was doing quite well, but I am afraid that I do not have the answer to that. If it is possible to find it out, I will let the noble Baroness know.
Baroness Cash (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister profusely for the detailed response and thank all noble Lords for their contributions to this debate. It has been a very helpful, probing debate and an opportunity for expression by so many experts of their concerns in this respect.
I am grateful to the Minister for explaining in such detail the consideration already given to these matters, particularly by reference to the conversations that have been taking place with medical professionals and the Information Commissioner. That is extremely reassuring to know, and we hope that that will continue and will be helpful.
The Government have an unenviable but laudable task ahead to implement this. I am sure I share the view of many of my noble friends in wishing them extremely strong success in achieving it, in the interests of all children and to safeguard against all future possible tragedies. The Minister will be grateful to know that I have nothing further to add, and I beg leave to withdraw Amendment 50.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Baroness Cash Excerpts(3 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Cash (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interests as the founder of Parent Gym and the part owner of Mind Gym. Parent Gym is a programme supporting families who have the most need across our country, and I have been advocating for parenting interventions and training for families for over a decade. I am also a commissioner at the Equality and Human Rights Commission, something I omitted to record last week when I spoke at Questions.
We welcome a lot in the section of the Bill on care, particularly the encouragement of kinship care. That really has my support, as I hope to see an increase in the number of children who are kept with family when there is no provision available from their own parents. But I am sorry to say that the Bill seems to be entirely silent on three really important areas, which I hope can be rectified in Committee: breaking intergenerational cycles of dysfunction; meeting the national crisis of the shortage of foster carers; and providing real accountability in residential care, which is essential.
We all need two things to ensure that we go into adulthood in a functional way: a minimal amount of trauma, and secure attachment. We can now measure the level of trauma that individual children experience using the adverse childhood experience scoring system. The children we are talking about today are some of the most damaged and vulnerable in the country, with very high adverse childhood experience scores.
But this is not just about measuring: we know now that these scores—this level of trauma—is directly correlated with their health and socioeconomic outcomes. Children with a score of more than four in their adverse childhood experiences are three times more likely to develop heart disease, respiratory issues and type 2 diabetes. They are 15 times more likely to commit acts of violence and 20 times more likely to end up in prison. Trauma has an enormous cost to the child for their future as well as a huge cost to society.
No one speaking today does not care about these children—all children—and want what is best for them, so it is a glaring omission in the Bill that we have not sought to look at where we could break these cycles of dysfunctionality. For a start, we could look at how we can introduce parenting training and mentoring for families. Many of these children are raised by people who had no parenting role model themselves, and that is why the cycle continues. In addition, we could have community partnerships; one of my noble friends referred earlier to the possibility of looking at guardianship. Finally, there is an increased role for health visitors to play with these families; we should increase their number and the number of visits they make. Let us be honest—health visitors are sometimes perceived to be less malign than social services by the family in receipt of those visits.
The second subject I will address is the crisis of foster carers. I hope that increasing kinship care will reduce the need, but it will not solve the gaps. We need secure attachment to primary caregivers as a fundamental for these children’s well-being; we need to stop them being bumped around. The Bill is silent on this, ignoring Josh MacAlister’s 2022 review, the Fostering Network’s 2024 review and the Government’s own strategy Stable Homes, Built on Love, all of which set out recommendations to address this shortage, none of which is in the Bill.
Finally—I will be very brief as I am conscious of time—we have not addressed accountability in residential care homes. I hope that we can look at this in Committee.
“For Women Scotland” Supreme Court Ruling
Baroness Cash Excerpts(4 weeks, 1 day ago)
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Baroness Cash (Con)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her statement of acceptance of the Supreme Court’s judgment and thank the Supreme Court for its courage. This issue has always been about the safety of women and girls in their single-sex spaces for which women, including the Minister, have fought long and hard for. Many of us have been involved in those campaigns over the years. Of course, compassion for all must be at the heart of it, but a significant level of violence has been displayed towards women and girls in the last few days, including violent statements sent to the noble Baroness, Lady Falkner of Margravine, in her capacity as chair of the EHRC. I invite the Minister now to join with me in condemning all gestures and statements of violence that we have seen against women and girls and to have the government support to stand against this.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The violence and abuse received by those women who took forward this action and by others who have taken this position is wholly unacceptable, as is the vandalism of statues that we saw over the weekend. We have already condemned that in the strongest possible terms, and we support action being taken by the Metropolitan Police on that. This is a debate that has not always been carried out in the spirit of respect, recognising the enormously sensitive and difficult issues, and I hope that from now on we will be able to do that.