Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Farmer(2 weeks, 6 days ago)
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Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I added my name to this amendment in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran because I am also deeply concerned that children benefit from the right level of expertise in the family group decision-making process. I have already mentioned Eileen Munro’s commentary on the Government’s reforms in the Times yesterday, where she warns against the shifting
“of child protection responsibilities to less-qualified family help workers. Although they offer support, many are not trained to detect hidden abuse such as psychological harm or coercive control. Supervision by overstretched social workers is no substitute for expertise, especially with workforce shortages and rising caseloads”.
These comments, although focused on a different part of the child safeguarding system, also seem highly relevant here. Bringing together family members and others who are important in the life of a child means engaging with a family system that can be highly complex.
Many here will remember the case of Shannon Matthews from West Yorkshire, a few months after the huge publicity following the tragic disappearance of Madeleine McCann. In February 2008, nine year-old Shannon was reported missing. She was eventually found in a house belonging to an uncle of the boyfriend of the kidnapped girl’s mother. The kidnapping was planned by Shannon’s mother and her boyfriend to generate money from the publicity and the sizeable reward, which her mother planned to split with the uncle when he “found” Shannon and took her to a police station.
Perhaps noble Lords are already very confused about these family arrangements, and there is no doubt that the protagonists at the centre of this case were highly unusual. I am not sure whether Shannon’s mother would have been offered a family group conference, not least because of the involvement of other family members in the crime.
When the police initially investigated Shannon’s disappearance, they had to look first at the extended family. What they found was such a complex web of interrelationships, such as children of different fathers in the same family and the same fathers in different families, that they described Shannon’s extended family tree as a bramble genealogy.
To reiterate, this was a highly unusual case, but it illustrates that kin altruism cannot be assumed. Those with a biological relationship to a child may not be committed to a child or be best placed to discuss the sensitive issues inherent in family group decision-making. The Bill already and quite rightly gives the local authority discretion not to offer family group decision-making in extreme cases, but even in dark family situations, very often there will be responsible, kind, dedicated family members who want to act in the child’s best interests. However, there will also surely be many times when it is not clear where family dysfunction begins and ends.
Those involved as family group decision-making co-ordinators must, as my noble friend’s amendment says, be independent, trained and experienced. They need to be able to spot signs of potential psychological harm or coercive control. They are a key last line of defence against future harm coming to vulnerable and traumatised children.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, I support Amendment 5 in the names of my noble friends Lady Barran and Lord Farmer. I hope the Minister will agree that this is a sensible amendment aimed at ensuring that all families who need it have access to a family group decision-making meeting that is underpinned by strong evidence that it works, without being overly prescriptive.
Family group decision-making is a broad, generic term without clear principles and standards about what families can expect, and there is concern among charities and organisations supporting vulnerable children on the ground that approaches unsupported by evidence may proliferate at a local level as a result of the current drafting of the Bill.
In its briefing on the Bill, the Family Rights Group says that it is
“already seeing evidence of local authorities claiming to use such approaches, including reference to ‘family-led decision making’ to describe meetings which are led by professionals and where family involvement is minimal”.
It also points to the experience of Scotland, where a failure to be more specific and clearer in legislation about what FGDM should be offered has resulted, 10 years after it was enacted, in a third of local authorities still having no actual offer. Obviously, none of us wants to see that, and it is clearly not the intention of the Government in bringing forward this new duty on local authorities.
Covid-19: Road Map
Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Farmer(4 years, 3 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I can certainly say to my noble friend that we will continue to work with the Places of Worship Taskforce to ensure that advice is available for religious communities and faith leaders so we can enable the safe opening of places of worship as we move forward through the steps in the road map.
Lord Farmer (Con) [V]
My Lords, our internationally harsh lockdown is driving mental ill health and unravelling our social fabric. Accordingly, should not parity of esteem between physical and mental health dictate that more than two SAGE advisers are mental health experts? Also, will the Government persist with the dispiriting law of the Medes and Persians, which permits the goalposts to be moved only in a more restrictive direction, even if the four indicators drop off a metaphorical cliff?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
I am afraid I do not agree with my noble friend on his last point, but I certainly I agree with him on the importance of support for mental health, and he will know that expert participation in SAGE changes for each meeting. What I hope will reassure him is that in March, we will be publishing our cross-government action plan to prevent, mitigate and respond to the impact of Covid on mental health and well-being. We have already announced that the NHS will receive an extra £500 million to address waiting times and enhance support for mental health services. During the pandemic, we rolled out 24/7, all-age urgent mental care helplines across the country, provided more than £100 million to the voluntary sector and, recently, appointed a youth mental health ambassador to build on our support for young people. I hope this range of investment and initiatives shows the noble Lord how important we consider this issue.
Covid 19: Winter Plan
Debate between Baroness Evans of Bowes Park and Lord Farmer(4 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
What I can say is that this is one of the areas in which the mass testing programme rollout can be used. For instance, local authority directors of public health may wish to roll out one of their programmes to higher-risk industries, for instance. Those are exactly the kinds of situations where local authorities may wish to use this programme to deal with the very issues that the noble Baroness set out.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, at great personal cost, as well as social and financial cost to the country, millions have now had Covid and therefore have antibodies. I am indeed one of them. Significant savings can be made by excluding anyone who has contracted the disease in, say, the last six months, from needlessly being traced, tested or required to isolate, including after returning from abroad. So what has been decided about such people and where they should come in the pecking order for vaccination?
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
In relation to the pecking order, as my noble friend said, for the vaccination, it will be for the independent Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation to advise the Government on which vaccine should be used and what the priority groups are—and the committee has indeed issued some interim advice on this already.
Another initiative that we are launching which will, to a degree, help to address my noble friend’s points going forward, is the plan to introduce frequent testing as an alternative to the need to self-isolate for people who have had close contact with someone who has had Covid. The contacts would have regular tests during an isolation period and would have to self-isolate only if they tested positive.