Local Authorities: Child Protection

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2013 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they will take to ensure that local authorities have sufficient social workers employed to undertake child protection work in their areas.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, local authorities are responsible for judging what the level of need is locally and recruiting accordingly. Ofsted inspects children’s services and, if an authority is judged inadequate in its provision, we intervene. We should not judge the success of local authority children’s services solely by the size of their workforces. Management is also very important, as is the quality of social workers. However, since 2010, we have spent nearly £0.25 billion on social work training programmes and I am delighted to say that one of these, Frontline, has received more than 5,000 applications from top graduates in just a few weeks for its first 100 posts. The other, Step Up to Social Work, for career-changers with good first degrees, has already trained nearly 400 people and has a third cohort of 320 people in 76 local authorities beginning next year.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

I thank the Minister for his reply, but only last week the Association of Directors of Children’s Services said that child protection services in England were under greater pressure than ever. We also heard last week that, following the Francis report, the number of nurses in hospital wards is to be monitored. We have a ratio for the number of children to teachers in education, yet social workers up and down the country are left to deal with uncontrolled caseloads—when the next case comes in, someone has to take it.

With the number of children in care at the moment at a higher level than in the past 30 years and social workers suggesting that the level of need required to get support is greater, is it not time for the Government to do even more to intervene? The position is dangerous for children at risk and social workers alike, and responding simply by saying that social workers are committed and hard-working, and that more money is now being put in, is not good enough. Are the Government waiting for the next report of a child’s death, when no doubt it will not be the institution seen as responsible but some poor individual social worker? Is it not time that greater attention is paid at a national level to what is a crisis in our children’s services?

[Lord Nash]

The noble Baroness speaks with great experience in this area and anything she has to say on the subject we should all listen to very carefully. We all acknowledge that social workers have a very tough job and, of course, we hear only about the disasters—there are plenty of Daniel Pelkas or Hamzah Khans whom they save and whom we never hear about. It can be a question of volume of cases, but there is evidence that there is no direct correlation between failure and caseload; indeed, a number of local authorities have failed with relatively mild caseloads. It is a question of managing those caseloads and whether the more experienced social workers get the more difficult cases. The Troubled Families programme, for which we have just announced an investment of a further £200 million, is undoubtedly helping in this regard, as are innovative ways of working such as those seen in Hackney. It is also a question of local authorities recruiting better managers for these services.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I add my congratulations to the Government on producing their amendment, which is a significant milestone. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, spoke of a long journey. I pay tribute to all those who have been on that journey, including my colleagues at Loughborough University in the Young Carers Research Group who were there at the outset and I think coined the phrase “young carers”. They have done a lot of research which has helped lead to this conclusion. Therefore, it is very gratifying for me to thank them and all the others who have contributed to this outcome.

I pick up a point made by my noble friend Lady Jones of Whitchurch about parents caring for disabled children. Carers UK points out that: it is three times more costly to bring up a disabled child than a non-disabled child; parent carers are more likely to be reliant on income-based state support; 34% of sick or disabled children live in households where there is no adult in paid work, compared with 18% of children who are not sick or disabled; parent carers are more likely to suffer relationship breakdown and divorce, and three or more times more likely to suffer ill health and health breakdown than parents of non-disabled children; and more than half the families who responded to its survey felt that a lack of statutory services was the key factor contributing to their feelings of isolation. A recent study by the Office of the Children’s Commissioner carried out with disabled children found that for many disabled children and their families the impact of low income on basic needs was compounded by inadequate services, personal support and information. In some areas necessary housing adaptations were hard to obtain, long delays were experienced and appropriate provision was achieved only through persistent parental pressure.

Will the Minister explain why this group does not seem to come under the whole family approach that he rightly emphasised? Will he consider having another look at this as it is now a gaping hole? I hope that he might take another look at this hole and be willing to fill it on Report.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, no one can be anything but absolutely delighted at the government amendment. I, too, was at the joint meeting with the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and the noble Earl, Lord Howe, but wish to ask some further questions, following on from the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Tyler. I am concerned that, even if a local authority had a duty in this regard, there would be extreme difficulties in continuing this journey. We are on the first step of the journey. As a long-standing practitioner, I know that the problem arises with the actual implementation of these services.

When I asked a supplementary question about the parents of disabled children, I was told that it could be dealt with in this Committee. We do not get those services for disabled children, or a proper co-ordinated family approach in local authorities, because of the difficulties they have in meeting their commitments currently. I have said this before, but I sometimes think I am living in a parallel universe where our aspirations and our joy at achieving excellent legislation cannot be matched by reality. My own local authority is about to face further cuts of £145 million on top of previous ones. Every noble Lord in this Room should know what their own local authority faces and what the implications will be for services on the ground. I want to hear from the Minister how we can meet the young carers approach and about what we might do for disabled families, because they need the services, not more legislation.

There is an answer. If we had good, co-ordinated family assessment and family workers with no duplication—I speak as a trained family case-worker in the past—where one worker undertakes the assessment and knows which experts to call on when other expertise is needed, and much more focus in terms of the work, we might actually save resources. However, I do not know how that gets into regulations. I would be very interested to see whether or not we can do that because we could revolutionise some of these services by the approach we take in implementation. We have legislation that says that disabled children should receive X, Y and Z for particular conditions, but I fear that the services are simply not there to meet the need. I am sorry if that sounds a slightly sour note—it is not meant to, as I am utterly delighted that we have this in the Bill. What I hope we can do now is to start to revolutionise services so that it actually happens, day to day, in people’s lives.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I will briefly follow what my noble friend has said in terms of the practical implementation of this very welcome work that the Government have undertaken. I remind the Committee of the difficulty posed by having continually changing professionals. We debated earlier the issue of children making their transition to adult services. On several occasions, parents have raised with me the difficulties posed by the fact that they will have several changes of social worker just as the child comes to access adult services, such that the advocacy for that child as it goes into the adult services is lost. I am very familiar in children’s services, particularly those for looked-after children, with people complaining and saying, “Look, I have had five social workers in the past two years”. People have had multiple social workers, which is very disadvantaging. When we talk about working together to improve outcomes for children, as we are here, we need to keep a good eye on the practicalities and ensure that there is more continuity of professional care. We need to keep and retain our social workers and other professionals, and not keep moving them around all the time.

Here, I would just like to raise the concerns that I have heard in the past when speaking to psychiatrists working in the health service. They feel that the service is changing and being reformed so often—with the best of intentions—that, once they get to build relationships with partners in other disciplines, they or the partner are moved on. They do not know the other people and cannot work in the kind of way I think we are talking about at the moment. I make a plea that we avoid more large-scale reorganisations of, for instance, the health service in the near future. The same story comes from social workers in local authorities, who continually experience reorganisations of their local authority, which overburdens them and, again, breaks up the relationships necessary for them to be able to make effective partnerships work in the way that we want them to work in this part of the Bill. I hope that is helpful to your Lordships.

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[Baroness Perry of Southwark (Con)]

I am sure that we are all very happy to bring this fascinating discussion to a close, but I want to make one point. I was seized by what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said in discussion on the previous amendment. We can sit in this building and make laws, decide what should happen and sometimes even get it into legislation, but what matters is how it is delivered in reality. My only point is that all these splendid things—citizenship, relationship education, spiritual and moral development and so on—have to be delivered by teachers. Unless we have the right teachers who are properly trained, it simply will not happen. We can write it into the books, but we ought to spend far more time addressing what actually happens in the selection and training of teachers than simply on what we ask them to deliver.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

Since the noble Baroness has just mentioned my name, I will say one sentence. I absolutely agree with her; all I will ever talk about is implementation and application. However, in this context the revision of the guidance on sex education would be such a support to teachers that it would make a difference.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, following what has just been said, the strongest reason for making PSHE statutory has been the case put by teachers. This would be the way to ensure that teacher training bodies really put a priority on training for PSHE. Teacher training is skewed towards what is statutory in the curriculum. The noble Baroness is absolutely right. We need to empower teachers so that they have the confidence to hold these conversations with young people. Doing what is suggested in these amendments would make that more possible.

I warmly welcome the words of the vastly experienced noble Baroness, Lady Kidron. I vaguely remember that the previous Government commissioned an expert group to produce a report on this topic which was presented some time ago. I felt at the time that it was a little soft. I so admire my noble friend Lady Howe, who is absolutely right to bring forward, very late in the day, her Bill to regulate the availability of this material on the internet. Perhaps the Minister will be able to use his good offices to take back to those thinking about the Bill a little encouragement to move ahead with the Second Reading because it is so concerning. I hear from other sources concerns about gangs of boys and the way young women are treated, and how that has changed because of what young men are seeing on the internet. It is very troubling. I support all these amendments.

One particular point has always niggled at me. The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, referred to same-sex education in particular. I had an experience some years ago when visiting a children’s home. The manager was gay. There was a young man there who certainly dressed in quite an effeminate way and could have been called gay, and the manager was saying, “Well, this young man is gay”. My concern is that it is of course a common experience for children to be attracted to the same sex as they grow up, but many of them grow out of it. Those who take the most active role in this particular area are sometimes overly enthusiastic in promoting an attitude. In dealing with these sensitive same- sex issues, on which people get so polarised, there should be a recognition that young people experience attraction to other young people of the same sex, but most of them grow through it. There should not be a misunderstanding that if one seems to be attracted to other members of the same sex in one’s mid-teens, for instance, that that is one’s sexuality and how one is now set. I am sure that that is not the intention, but it is my sense of how this sometimes comes out. Some reassurance on this point, not necessarily in Committee, would be welcome.

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[Baroness Lister of Burtersett]

My Lords, I wish to speak briefly in support of the amendment, and I am very pleased that it has been tabled. The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, have both talked about destitution. I was a member of the Parliamentary Inquiry into Asylum Support for Children and Young People. That was a slightly wider group than that on which this amendment is focused, but the point is the same. We said that:

“Although the inquiry’s focus was on those in receipt of asylum support, the panel was shocked to hear of instances where children were left destitute and homeless, entirely without institutional support and forced to rely on food parcels or charitable donations. Evidence received by the inquiry cited counts where children made up between 13-20% of the local destitute population”.

I find it shameful that we have anyone in the population who is destitute in a society as rich as ours. It is particularly shaming that people who have come to this country to seek refuge should be destitute, and that children should be destitute.

Perhaps I may reinforce what the noble Earl said by referring to a case study which has been provided by the Refugee Children’s Consortium. It states:

“Case study: Matthew—a young person from Iran. Matthew is a torture survivor who came to the UK from Iran when he was aged 17. He was refused asylum and wanted to appeal but his solicitor did not want to support his appeal so he went to court unrepresented. His appeal was rejected and children’s services stopped his support. He was made homeless for one year. He was seeing a psychologist while being supported by children’s services but once the support was cut off, the counselling stopped as well. While homeless Matthew’s health deteriorated”—

is that surprising?

“He couldn’t sleep at night. His hair was falling out. He experienced a lot of violence when he was sleeping on the streets. Sometimes he was able to work for his friend in exchange for accommodation. He was desperate to stay in the UK because he feared for his life if he were to return to Iran. With help from The Children’s Society he was able to get a new solicitor and put in a fresh claim”.

This really should not happen.

I was also involved in the launch of a report from Freedom From Torture about the poverty experienced by torture survivors. One of the strong messages in that report was how poverty undermines the rehabilitation of torture survivors. This is dreadful. Torture survivors, who are psychologically scarred, then have to go through further ordeals when they get to this country. I hope very much that the Minister will be able to say something rather more positive in response to this amendment than perhaps was the response to the previous amendment by the noble Lord, Lord Nash.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support this amendment. Noble Lords will recall that I talked about a similar group of young people who were privately fostered. It was then subsequently discovered that those with whom they had been privately fostered were not in fact family, or if they were, they had not sorted out the children’s immigration status. When they reached the age of 18, or sometimes 16, and went to college, they found that they did not have the appropriate paperwork and they then became illegal immigrants.

As a country, we have totally failed to grasp a very straightforward issue, which is that if these children are in our country and are at school, they can be checked by the school, by the local social services or by the health services wherever they find themselves. Surely we have a responsibility to sort out their status before they reach the age of 18. Some of these young people clearly could go back to their country of origin, and there are voluntary organisations which work in that area. Others, however, clearly cannot do so. Recently I met a young man at a reception provided by the Children’s Society for the work it is doing on its Here to Listen? campaign. That young man was bright and intelligent, and wanted to get on with his life. I asked him about his immigration status, and the answer was, “I have not yet got a passport”. My heart sank because I knew that what might well happen, if this could not be sorted out, would be that he would possibly find himself being sent back to whatever he had escaped from.

We pride ourselves in this country on the work we do with children and child protection. Look at the lengths we go to in order to develop child protection procedures. We go to huge lengths to ensure that young people, including these young people, have a proper education. How can we be so neglectful as to not notice that when they reach later adolescence they will become destitute, be sent back to appalling circumstances or have a hugely strenuous set of interactions with the law to try to gain proper status so that their lives do not fall apart? I have been an advocate for some young people who have found themselves in this position at 18, trying to go through our complex system in order to get this sorted.

I do not think it is beyond our departments to find a system that looks at all of these groups of young people. I agree with the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, that young people who are trafficked are particularly vulnerable. All these young people could easily have their status sorted out earlier in the process. We would not then be faced with these kinds of difficulties.

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[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and other noble Lords for this amendment and for stimulating some important debate.

It might be helpful if I explain how the existing legislation works. Unaccompanied children who apply for asylum are supported by local authorities under the Children Act 1989 and under similar legislation in Scotland and Northern Ireland in the same way as any other child in need. As children their immigration status is, rightly, irrelevant to their entitlement to support, and remains so until they reach adulthood. The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, made an extremely cogent set of points, especially on picking up at an early stage the challenges for some of these children. Local authorities already have a duty under the Children Act to plan the transition to adulthood of care leavers. She made an implicit point about when that ought to be examined and not left until the young person is about to turn 18.

For unaccompanied asylum-seeking children in care, this planning should include the different steps required in response to different immigration outcomes. The guidance is clear that local authorities should work with dedicated case workers at the UK Border Agency. As we set out in our letter to noble Lords on 1 November, the Department for Education is currently developing an action plan to drive forward improvements—which I think is what the noble Baroness was flagging—in the way local authorities identify children in, for example, private fostering who are at risk and where there may be concern about a child’s identity and immigration status. The noble Baroness specifically mentioned schools. We are currently exploring options with interested agencies and partners and hope the noble Baroness and any other noble Lords who are interested will contribute to that process by sharing their expertise and discussing any outstanding concerns in more detail.

When young people reach the age of 18, the position may be different from the one I have just described for under-18s. If they have been refused asylum, have not been granted any other form of leave to remain in the UK and have had an opportunity to appeal against the decision to an independent judge, then automatic access to further support from the local authority ends. That is what we are addressing here. It is important to recognise that support may still continue where it is necessary to avoid a breach of a person’s human rights. Whether this is necessary will depend on an assessment of the individual circumstances, but should include any failed asylum seekers who are taking reasonable steps to return to their countries of origin but need time to make the necessary arrangements because they are awaiting the issue of a passport. Equally, those who face a temporary barrier to departing because, for example, they are too sick to travel, should continue to receive support.

I turn to trafficking, which was mentioned in this context. Noble Lords will remember that we had a very important debate on this subject earlier in Committee. We will have further discussions on it, both in the Chamber and outside it. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, highlighted this issue and other noble Lords picked it up. In the case of potentially trafficked children, the first step is to assess whether there are reasonable grounds to believe that the person is trafficked. If the answer is yes, in practice it is likely to be considered as a breach of the child’s rights to refuse leave to remain. I hope that somewhat reassures the noble and learned Baroness.

We believe that the existing arrangements already make provision for those who have a genuine need. I realise that this is a probing amendment which is trying to get to the bottom of this particular challenge. We are concerned that, if we were to accept it, it could create further incentives for young people to claim falsely to be under 18 when they apply for asylum. This is a problem that local authorities already struggle to deal with. It could even put more young people at risk by providing an incentive to make dangerous journeys to the UK to claim asylum in order to receive extended support. The dangers of these journeys are well evidenced in the courts, by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and by UNICEF.

The Government remain committed to ensuring that young care leavers whose immigration appeal rights are exhausted do not face an abrupt withdrawal of all support. It is important that their options are clearly explained, including the availability of generous reintegration assistance from the Home Office if they agree to return voluntarily to their countries. It is important that any genuine barriers to preventing return are identified. In response to the noble Baroness, Lady Lister, I emphasise that the local authority must assess each case individually, and if the authority considers that stopping support would breach a person’s human rights, it should continue. The Home Office provides funding to local authorities to cover the cost of extended support beyond the point at which a person turns 18. It already continues for three months after the person’s immigration appeal rights are exhausted, specifically to allow the local authority time to make the necessary assessments of individual cases. If an assessment shows that additional time is needed to complete the practical arrangements to leave, or where there are real obstacles to leaving the UK, further support should continue. However, we are aware that some local authorities are unsure of the practical steps they should take to assess individual cases properly. Young people in different areas may experience different levels of support. The Office of the Children’s Commissioner is currently examining local authority practice in this respect. We believe that it is right to wait for the findings of that study before considering whether further work with local authorities is required to ensure more consistency in case assessment. I hope that this information is useful to noble Lords.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I apologise for interrupting the noble Baroness. Can she give us the timing of the study in relation to the progress of the Bill?

[Baroness Northover]

The report should come through in February. It will inform what the Government might or might not need to do to address this issue. I hope that noble Lords will feed in any experiences which they feel need to be looked at so that the study can be as effective and far-reaching as possible.

I hope that I have reassured noble Lords that the Government take seriously their responsibility to provide appropriate support where care leavers no longer have leave to remain in the United Kingdom. As I have mentioned, there are a number of different categories where it would not be expected that people would be required to leave—for example, trafficked children. On that basis, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw the amendment.

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I accept that many, although not all, foster parents are currently found by agencies. However, fostering is a very different situation. Foster parents are inspected by the local authority and have a close relationship with it. In the case of childminders and agencies, they would no longer have that, which causes me a lot of concern.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I want to ask the Minister how the vision and the application of this proposal will work together. The Government have a laudable wish to increase the level of childcare that is available to families—mostly women who find themselves unable to work because they do not have good childcare arrangements. The Government want to provide good quality childcare and ensure that the costs are manageable. They want to reduce bureaucracy and provide a focus for childminders so that they can share some of their understanding together. I appreciate the last point in relation to agencies, but the others I find very difficult. I cannot see how the solution fits the vision.

On transparency, I share the views of other noble Lords, which is that anyone who has been involved in inspections—noble Lords know that I have been a regulator in at least three different agencies—knows that asking a regulator to inspect its own is fraught with danger. That is my major concern with regard to ensuring that child protection issues are picked up. We know how easy it is, as they say, to consume your own smoke within an organisation. Transparency and protection issues in all this would be difficult.

It has been demonstrated that the increased costs would, in the end, increase the cost of childcare for families. Some childminders are already extraordinarily expensive. The childminder employed by my niece—who I brought up as my daughter and who has the equivalent of my grandson—is extremely expensive. That is because she is confident that the care is of high quality and meets the right timeframes for her. I would like the Government to find a solution to some of the issues they have identified that matches the vision which I believe they have for the care of children when mothers need to return to work in order to increase their own opportunities.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I welcome the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Ely, to the Grand Committee. It is very helpful to have a parent who is bringing up her children taking part in the Bill and it was good to listen to her tribute to her childminder, Margaret. I am also grateful to the Minister for hosting a meeting on this matter. The discussion was useful, and it was particularly helpful to be reminded that childminder agencies will be one way to help childminders feel less isolated. I have visited childminders in the past. They were part of childminder networks which they found very useful. They would meet regularly and take on training together. That is the positive side of this.

I want to encourage the Government to be open-minded in terms of how they develop childcare in this country. Perhaps I may highlight the value of nursery schools and other things that the Government are involved in, but I should voice my concern that an over-emphasis on private provision may not be helpful. After all, the cost of this provision is in the pay and training of the women—and it is women—who do this work. Historically, it has been very difficult for these businesses to make a profit. These nurseries have found that they just do not get enough bums on seats and therefore it is costly to run the whole business which means that they have to drive down price by cutting training or pay. We know that pay in nursery care has historically been very low indeed. The risk is that by having too much provision in the private sector we will move towards something which may not be much cheaper but may be inferior in quality. From memory, the turnover of staff in nursery schools is about 4% whereas in some of the large private providers the figure can be 14% or 15%. I recall that the latter offer quite a different setting. It is so important that our young children have continuity of care and that their professionals stay around for them for long periods. There can be stagnation but in general we want that long-term relationship with the carer.

I conclude with a quotation from Childcare Markets: Can They Deliver an Equitable Service?, edited by Eva Lloyd and Helen Penn. Professor Penn states in her summary:

“The key question is whether the childcare market is a reliable and equitable way of delivering childcare. For neoliberal countries, the risks and complications involved in allowing entrepreneurs to provide childcare are either unrecognised or deemed acceptable—or a combination of both”.

I think this was what the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, was referring to—the possible extra costs of placing more emphasis on the private sector. Professor Penn continues:

“In other countries where there is a childcare market, it is carefully controlled and generously funded, and although there may be many kinds of provider, the type of funding and the regulatory framework means that for-profit companies have limited room to manoeuvre. In yet other countries the childcare market is altogether unacceptable, and the government takes on the responsibility for providing childcare”.

Given that we are having a clause stand part debate, I remind the Government that a range of options are available and they can benefit from taking a very active role in this regard. Professor Penn concludes that there are,

“limitations and tensions in relying on the childcare market. Viewing childcare as a commodity to be bought and sold undermines equity and quality, and regulation has to be comprehensive and wide-reaching in order to try and compensate for these failings”.

This also speaks to the concern that has been expressed about relaxing inspection in these new arrangements. I do not consider that I understand the area sufficiently to be particularly critical or to be either for or against what the Government are proposing but I encourage us all to be as open-minded as possible in this area.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Storey]

I thank my noble friend for that.

I now turn to the graduated approach. We have come a long way in special educational needs, have we not? Schools must have SENCOs and a written policy. That is all to be applauded. The code of conduct clearly says that there has to be a qualified teacher working at the school, and that a newly appointed SENCO must be a qualified teacher and have the appropriate qualifications. Of course, we have SENCOs in schools who do not have those qualifications and we may need at some stage to visit that issue. The SENCO is important. You can have all the policies in the world but the SENCO makes them happen.

When we were talking about this—and I have experience of school action, school action plus and IEPs—I was quite alarmed. I said, “Man the barricades”. But the code of practice is a realistic response. It is clear in all sorts of ways. It states, on initial identification:

“As part of a graduated approach to tackling need … reviews of progress should be held once a term”.

Maybe that “should” should be “must”. It continues by stating that,

“there should be a plan that focuses on what outcomes are expected and the support that the school, college and any relevant agencies will provide”.

I applaud the document and I am more relaxed about the issue.

I say to the noble Lord, Lord Low, that I thought that IEPs were a real step forward, but my experience of them is that in many cases, sadly, they have become paper-writing exercises and increase the bureaucracy. What is needed is a much more focused and realistic approach, which is why I like the fact that the code states that the teacher has to meet the parents once a term and discuss the progress that has been made, presumably outside the normal parents’ evening.

I am slightly relaxed about the concern about school action and school action plus. What is in a name? It is not about a name. It is about an approach, an ethos, a culture and a doing mentality. I am sure that the progress we are making on that will help towards it.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

We could talk about both these amendments all night. I just want to say two sentences. First, I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey. It is not about the name but about what will happen in the process on the ground in relation to that amendment. Returning to the noble Lord, Lord Addington, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. We need to focus on the very narrow issue of ensuring that this process can be taken forward. Quite frankly, the Labour Government should have got this into their apprenticeship legislation when they brought it forward in the previous Parliament. If the Minister cannot do what the noble Lord suggests, I hope he will take this away, look at it and come back on Report. That is the simplest way, and it is achievable.

[Lord Low of Dalston]

I entirely agree with the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, about the name. It is not the name that is important. What is important is that we have a graduated approach and that we have some way of institutionalising that so that there can be no doubt that that is the system being operated.

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In addition, this year, 2013-14, reading pens—scanners which read text aloud to pupils and students via earphones—have been cleared for use in exams for the first time. The use of such technology may be appropriate for only a relatively small number of candidates, but Ofqual’s figures for the use of access arrangements show an almost fourfold increase in the number of candidates using computer readers, to 785 candidates in 2013 from 207 in 2012, when the BDA highlighted this issue. This is an encouraging start. Ofqual, the JCQ and the specialist bodies continue to work together to try to standardise the formats of exam papers to ensure that they are compatible with a wide range of computer readers and so that they become more widely available for those candidates who need to use them. The door is clearly open for schools, colleges and others to get the support that pupils and students need. As such technologies become more common in the classroom and on courses, they will become more widely used in exams.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

The Minister lost me for a moment. I am trying to follow him carefully but if we have such good practice as the noble Earl is describing, and all this is now possible, why can we not simply accept the amendment and move on?

[Baroness Walmsley]

I may have misheard my noble friend but when he gave a list of all the different kinds of exams for which these assisted technologies are available, I do not recall hearing him mention apprenticeships.

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The noble Lord was encouraged to withdraw this amendment, but he wants it in Hansard because he wants the Minister to address it when he sums up. If it helps, I will pass on his letter. I have probably made a right mess of it because it is a letter written to me, as opposed to a speech, so I will hand it to my noble friend Lord Nash and he can perhaps reply to it directly, rather than doing it now.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 214. My name is attached to it and I particularly wanted to speak to it because it is the continuation of an old story of detained young people missing out on all the privileges that other young people have. In particular, when they have been in care and then find themselves detained, the local authority no longer continues to look after them in the new institution in which they find themselves. In the past, we tried very hard to ensure that that care continued, but as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has pointed out, that has not really been carried forward and certainly is not working at present.

We should remind ourselves that children who are detained are the most vulnerable in our society, particularly if they have a range of special needs resulting in an EHC plan. We all know the statistics for children who have been in care, so I will not repeat them, and those for the most troubled families and young people with mental health problems who find themselves in some kind of detention. Because there is a plan in place, and because of the difficulties faced by these young people, they are probably known to their local authority, and are likely to have a social worker and an existing programme to meet their needs. It is therefore absolutely essential that the plan is maintained and for the child or young person with special needs to have the services in that plan continued.

Anyone who has been to any of these institutions, or talked to any young people from care who have found themselves dropping out of the care system and into the offender system, will know that they lack that continuity and their education ceases. How much more difficult it is for children with special needs whose families have often struggled anyway to get them the services that they need so far. It seems perverse, therefore, that they are deprived of this continuity. Often they are detained due to behaviour that has stemmed from their learning difficulties: the fact they do not always comprehend what is going on around them; the fact that they cannot read instructions; or the fact that they are sometimes easily led because they do not have the same intellectual grasp of what is going on as others. Those young people who are seen as the offenders and the difficult young people in our society are not seen as “the deserving”.

I contend that the opposite should be true. Having already been failed by their family, often by their education and usually by social care, what these young people need most at the time of crisis is stability and continuity. They need a programme to take them through their detention and re-establish them in their community. If their programme is continued—and their education and health plans, as they often have complex health needs—then it is clear to me that they would have a much better chance of a new start.

I know that there are young people—I have run large institutions—who are detained for their own safety, so I am not suggesting that all young people are in this category. However, many—especially those with these learning needs and dyslexia and often undiagnosed conditions—may well have found themselves in trouble because of their lack of understanding. If the plan is to have any meaning, it should identify the areas of concern wherever the child is; it should have portability, particularly into custodial facilities. I am very pleased to support this amendment.

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 212. I will just make a couple of short points. I, too, am familiar with the work of Jackie Hewitt-Main and have read her very inspiring book. I am a great admirer of the work that she has done in prisons. One story that she told really struck me: some young people in custody were not getting the help they needed with their dyslexia for the following reason. When they went in, they were given a form to fill in to say what sort of educational provision they wanted. They could not read it—it is a simple thing, is it not?—so they did not get any help at all. They did not get any courses because they had not ticked any of the boxes because they could not read what it said next to them. It has to be said that some prisons are very good, but the majority fall by the wayside in a very bad way.

I absolutely agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, that very often the reason why those young people are there in the first place is because they cannot read. They could not get a job and they could not get a driving licence because they could not read the Highway Code. They were at a great disadvantage. In the current economic situation, we have to ensure that money is spent as wisely as possible. I can think of no more effective way of avoiding reoffending and the great expense that it puts on the public purse than spending money on addressing the special educational needs of young people in custody. There really is a very good investment to be made there and we ought to be making more of it.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, I also say what an absolutely splendid debate we have had so far, particularly the input from the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, with which I agree entirely. Also, the noble Baroness, Lady Cumberlege, has given quite a new dimension to our thinking.

I have tabled a small and modest amendment in the group, Amendment 172. It is based on the fact that Clause 45 allows a local authority to cease an education, health and care plan if the outcomes set within it have been achieved. The amendment would require a local authority to continue the plan if ongoing support were needed to maintain those outcomes, so it is pretty similar to others. In effect, my amendment seeks to prevent the Bill from giving local authorities a green light to end plans prematurely, when children may still need specialist support. That issue greatly concerns the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB and Sense.

We must recognise that sensory impairment in itself is not a learning disability. There is no reason why most children with a sensory impairment cannot achieve as well as other children, providing that they receive the right support. What concerns me is that, without this amendment, the Bill seems to allow local authorities to remove that support just as a child is starting to make progress. It would also seemingly allow local authorities to remove that support, even if ongoing support is needed to maintain and consolidate the progress that the child has already made.

Parents have told the National Deaf Children’s Society of their frustration that their child often had to fall behind before they could get the support they needed. One parent told the NDCS that:

“Although our son made extremely good progress in his first year in his new school, this seemed to be a trigger to reduce the levels of assistance from all other departments. His speech and language therapy stopped, everything stopped. It was as if he no longer needed it and he just dropped, his development went completely backwards”.

It is that kind of scenario that the amendment is intended to prevent. Although it echoes much of what has been said already, I hope that the Minister, when he replies, can give the assurance needed for all those children.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I shall briefly support the noble Baronesses, Lady Cumberlege and Lady Sharp, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig. I will not repeat the excellent arguments they made. I have already declared the interest which takes me into this: that I am president of Livability. We have two colleges, Nash College and Hinwick Hall College, where we have young people with very profound needs indeed, and where the education, health and care plan will really make a difference if it is seen in the round. I know that we are going to come to that on another set of amendments, so I just flag that up.

I wanted to ask the Minister very directly if he would tell us why the age issue was in the legislation at all at that level. I have worked for many years in local authorities; I have been a chief officer and linked to local authorities in other ways, and I know that when you are short of money you scour through legislation to find exactly where you can draw the line. That is a proper thing for local authorities to do. I am a vice-president of the Local Government Association and I understand that there may well have been representations in relation to the funding for this Bill. However, that is a pity because there is so much that is excellent.

I shall refer by way of example to Clause 44 on “Reviews and Re-assessments”, where all the things we are asking for in terms of parental involvement and that of young people themselves, and making sure that the authority takes that forward appropriately, are in place. Even so, there is still a strange phrase in the middle on having regard to age. We are all worried about the long-term plans in the three areas that we hope, through other amendments, to try to bring together. I know that the Government are keen to amalgamate some of this thinking and they have done well for young carers; we have heard about what good work is going to be done in that area. I am keen to understand from the Minister what the thinking is behind the phrase.

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It does not say “must”, which is a word used throughout the code of practice elsewhere; it says “should”. That, along with the wording of Clause 42, means that the social care element will be a weak link in the arrangements for children and families. There ought to be parity of accountability and enforceability.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I understand exactly what the Minister means about Section 17, but I cannot understand how that relates to this piece of the Bill. When we were discussing education with the previous Government, I remember being very forceful in saying to them, “You’re saying, ‘education, education, education’, but without ‘welfare, welfare, welfare’, children will not learn”. Unless we attend to the social care needs of children, particularly those children with disabilities, we know that they will not have the facility to learn. We know that unless there is help from specialists or social workers, if you have a child with serious behavioural problems at home, they will never get into ordinary school or even be able to survive properly in remedial school, and will end up in specialist residential care. That whole range of services will be needed as part of the social care package for those children.

As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, said, we are encouraging the Government to look at the whole, to get the thing together, to look at welfare alongside education and to look at how the two things interrelate. Those children will all have healthcare needs as well; very few children with those sorts of disabilities will not have healthcare needs. I thought that the Government wanted to pool all those services together in the interests of those young people.

Under Section 17, one would certainly not want children needing protection or suffering from neglect falling into a different priority; the local authority must look at them across the piece. I think that the word “must” helps them to do that, but having something in the Bill for those young people at least encourages local authorities to look at the whole.

[Baroness Sharp of Guildford]

My Lords, I have added my name to Amendment 164 and I endorse what has been said on this issue by the noble Baronesses, Lady Hollins, Lady Hughes and Lady Howarth. The aim of the Bill is to create not just a special educational needs statement but something that embraces health and social care as well. It is absolutely right that we should put social care on a par with health. Clause 42(3) states:

“If a plan specifies health care provision, the responsible commissioning body must arrange the specified health care provision for the child or young person”.

The other place insisted that this subsection should be included, so it seems right that social care should be put on a par with healthcare and education in the Bill.

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[Lord Nash]

The duty under Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 to meet the needs of all children in need is a general duty in recognition of the fact that social care needs are potentially limitless and that local authorities have to be free to decide how to prioritise spending on them, depending on resources. There is individually a duty under Section 2 of the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act 1970, but that too is subject to resources.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I apologise for intervening. Having been a director of social services and having had to set those priorities, I understand completely what the Minister has said, but what I do not understand here is that if all these things are already set out in statute and are “may” duties, not “must” duties, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, pointed out, why can we not pull them all together in this Bill? It would make it a fine Bill rather than a good Bill. Nothing is being added if the Minister is saying that the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act and the children legislation already have these things. Are the local authorities not going to have to set their priorities anyway?

The other point I want to make is that we will have education and health but not social care; social care will again be relegated as the poor relation. I have not seen how the pathfinders have looked at this, but if they have considered them all as one, that would be a good indicator of the way forward.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford]

Before the Minister responds, perhaps I may also give him the opportunity to deal with a point. He seems to be making a distinction between social care, special educational needs and healthcare. He said that there is a general duty in the Chronically Sick and Disabled Persons Act because social care needs, and therefore duties, are essentially limitless. That is why local authorities must be protected so that they can decide their priorities in the context of their resources. However, surely the same argument could be made about healthcare. Health needs and their care are essentially limitless, so the health service has to decide on its priorities in relation to its resources. Yet here the health service “must” provide the services set out in the plan while the same does not apply to social care. I do not see the distinction, certainly not between social care and healthcare in regard to the point about being essentially limitless.

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[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, we have Amendments 180, 271 and 273 in this group, which I shall address. We have touched on personal budgets in a previous debate. At that time, the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, spoke movingly about some of the problems experienced by those in adult social care in managing employment challenges when they had to employ staff and the financial complexities of the budgets that they were expected to manage. We understand the concerns that have been expressed and share a number of those that were raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp. We have taken a slightly different approach to the issue. In principle, we support the concept of personal budgets and direct payments, which give parents more flexibility and say over the support that their children get. It is a principle that we have supported for other forms of care in the past.

This is a new area of social policy. We feel strongly that these reforms are based on evidence and are not rushed through. As we know, the pathfinder pilots have been extended and now will not finish before the autumn of 2014. We very much appreciated the chance to meet with some of the pathfinder champions a couple of weeks ago when there were some very good examples of the improved quality of life that personal budgets could bring, as well as some of the difficulties and challenges that they presented.

It seems that the rollout of personal budgets is the least well researched and analysed, not only the impact on the individuals concerned but also on the institutions from which the services will be procured. Our Amendment 180 would build in essential time to reflect and learn from the pilots by requiring regulations to be made by affirmative resolution and a report to be published after the pathfinders have concluded, setting out the evidence and guaranteeing proper scrutiny by Parliament.

It very much feels as though we are legislating on this issue prematurely. Given that we are considering the Bill now, it is not clear how the Government plan to take account of the findings of the pathfinders. There are many things on which we remain unclear—for example, how devolving budgets will work on a practical level; how they will impact on the quality of provision and on costs; and how we can ensure that providers are reliable and accountable. It is also unclear how institutions with devolved budgets—for example, academies—can be required to make a contribution to personal budgets from their own funds. These are some of the issues that we feel need to be debated further.

As we know, interim findings from the pathfinders were published in June. In a subsequent letter, the Minister stated that they show,

“a clear appetite for parents to be involved in the decision making process and to have choice and control”.

However, he also referred to the challenges that the pathfinders faced in implementing personal budgets, particularly direct payments. He stated that the department has established an “accelerated testing group” to make progress in this area. I would be very grateful if he could update us on that work and explain how the conclusions from this group will impact on the provisions in the Bill.

The findings also made clear that there were complexities about resources being calculated and allocated. Such concerns are exactly why we think that these reforms should not be rushed through. We should take time properly to consider the evidence, and we believe that our amendment provides the mechanism to do that.

Our Amendments 271 and 273 reflect some of the concerns flagged up by the Delegated Powers Committee. It stated:

“We take the view that, because these are novel proposals and the whole system of personal budgets will be set out in the regulations, the regulations should be subject to the affirmative procedure at least in relation to their first exercise”.

We agree that these changes are too big and too significant to be dealt with by negative resolution. Our amendments would guarantee a positive decision of both Houses as these regulations go forward.

We are grateful that, belatedly, the Government have agreed with this view and have gone some way to meeting our concerns. However, we feel that our amendments are more comprehensive than those tabled by the Government. I hope that I have persuaded noble Lords that we should delay a decision on the regulations on personal budgets until the pathfinders have concluded and that noble Lords will agree to support our amendments.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I spoke at more length than is usual for me on this when I raised it, under Clause 30, in relation to the arrangements to assist young people and parents managing a personal budget, should they choose one. I therefore wish to support the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, on Amendment 180. It is clear that some families find that personal budgets bring them freedom, and freedom of choice, but only if they have help in understanding how to manage that budget. I agree with the noble Baronesses that this is little researched, yet we have more information from the adult services which could be looked at. Some of the problems for these young people and for the families of these children will be the same as those experienced by adults who have disabilities. There is no reason why we should not be able to gather that information together and extrapolate from it into some of these areas.

I certainly have grave anxieties about this moving forward quickly, and not only on behalf of the parents and young people. If it is not thought through, in terms of funding, there is a grave danger that educational institutions that depend on payments could find themselves unable to plan; if families have personal budgets with which to pay for the educational element, it could cause serious difficulties. I therefore support the amendment, which moves forward on personal budgets to give families freedom—where there is proper research—but takes it steady so that we do not cause even more difficulties than we already have in the adult field.

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I would like to speak to this group of amendments concerning personal budgets and the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee on personal budgets and Clauses 54 and 55, on appeals and claims by children.

I first turn to Amendments 180, 271 and 273 and government Amendment 269, which respond to recommendations from the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

I hope that the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, will be pleased to note that government Amendment 269 to Clause 107 takes forward the advice of the DPRRC, as sought by Amendments 271 and 273. Amendment 269 will require affirmative resolution by both Houses of Parliament for the first order to be made under Clause 49(3) and for affirmative resolution in both Houses, in relation to Clause 54(2), on pilot schemes for appeals by children.

With Amendment 180, the noble Baronesses, Lady Jones and Lady Hughes, also seek assurance that the pilot scheme for direct payments for special educational provision will be evaluated. I am pleased to be able to reassure noble Lords that we are meeting the commitments, given when the pilot scheme was established, to evaluate the scheme. For example, the Process and Implementation Research Report on the pathfinder programme, published by the department in June, includes a standalone chapter on the testing up to March this year.

However, we recognise that there is more to learn. That is why, as the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, mentioned, we established our accelerated testing group of pathfinders, whose work has been fundamental in developing the draft regulations made under Clause 49 and section 7.13 of the draft code. It is also why we have asked the evaluators of the pathfinder programme to deliver a standalone thematic report on this subject in 2014.

The specification for the report has yet to be finalised, but it will involve in-depth work with a small cohort of pathfinders and include further research on how direct payments for special educational provision have operated. In addition to the thematic research, I should stress that this is not the only source of evidence to support this policy. A quick comparison of the indicative code, published to aid consideration of this Bill in the other place, against the consultation draft, shows how far our knowledge and understanding have developed this year. This knowledge continues to grow. Pathfinders are increasingly offering personal budgets to all new EHC plan-holders with a resultant increase in numbers. We have also recently supported the development and publication of an implementation framework, for personal budgets for children and young people, by In Control and SQW, the pathfinder evaluators that are widely acknowledged to be the experts in this field.

We are therefore confident that we will have the knowledge and understanding to make the regulations ahead of the initial implementation of our reforms in September 2014, while accepting through my Amendment 271 that the House must have the opportunity to debate this issue further before we do so.

I turn to Amendments 176, 177 and 179. I completely agree with my noble friend Lady Sharp that schools, colleges and other institutions need to retain control where provision is delivered on their premises. I hope that Regulation 11 in the draft regulations to be made under Clause 49 reassures my noble friend, as it states:

“A local authority may not make a direct payment in respect of agreed provision which will be used or provided in a school or post-16 institution unless the head teacher, principal or the person occupying an equivalent position at the school or that institution agrees”.

Amendment 179 brings the issue of transparency to our attention. I agree that this is extremely important and is a key point of learning from the pathfinder programme, in relation to personal budgets. I hope that I can reassure my noble friend that we have made comprehensive provision in draft regulations and the draft code of practice.

Regulations to be made under Clause 30 will require that the local offer provides information about how to request an assessment for an EHC plan. The draft code of practice builds on this requirement and explains in section 5.2, on page 34, that this should include information about eligibility for personal budgets.

Draft regulations relating to Clause 49 set out the right of parents to request a review and require the local authority to provide in writing the reason for any decision to decline a request for a direct payment. Again, the draft code builds on this requirement. Section 7.12 states:

“The decision making process to establish and agree a budget should be clear and must be open to challenge, with parents able to request a review of decisions in relation to direct payments”.

With these reassurances, I hope that the noble Baroness will feel able to withdraw her amendment.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Butler-Sloss]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness in this amendment. At his request, I will also speak to the amendment of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern. Is that separate? It is separate, so I will speak entirely to this amendment.

At the adoption stage, Part 1 of the Bill, a number of us spoke about the importance of sibling contact. I made the point—I make no apology for making it again to a different Minister—that the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation took informal evidence from a considerable number of children. One of the points made both by the group who were adopted and the group in care concerned the enormous sorrow they felt at losing contact with the siblings they knew. Very sensibly, one girl said, “I am not concerned about the siblings born after I left the family but I am very worried about my brothers and sisters”. Another child was almost in tears as he was so worried about his younger brother, not knowing what was happening to him and nobody being able to tell him. He said he woke up at night worrying about his brother. That is not acceptable. Therefore, it is important at each stage that those in charge of children or in charge of making arrangements and connections with children have the siblings in mind. The judge may well say that the social workers have given him all sorts of good reasons why they are not going to meet, but it is important that the judge asks. There is no requirement on the judge, or indeed the magistrates in the family proceedings court, to ask that question unless it is in legislation.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I know that David Norgrove was very concerned that judges spent quite a considerable time reviewing care plans and that might well delay looking at the future of children. However, I cannot see why this aspect should not be looked at. When the judge is looking at the placement of the child before him, he must look at the whole family, the parental position and what is going to happen to the siblings. Although I understand absolutely why David Norgrove felt that the local authority should be the one looking sensibly at the care plans, I do not at all see why the court should not look at the sibling placement.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Lord McNally) (LD)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to all noble Lords who have contributed to this debate. The noble Baroness, in introducing the amendment, referred to the strength of feeling expressed when Part 1 of the Bill was discussed and how important it is that the court is able, where appropriate, to consider the arrangements that the local authority might make for a child to live with his or her siblings. My noble friend and I will consider the points made both today and earlier in the Bill.

As was discussed in the other place, the purpose of Clause 15 is to focus the court, in its consideration of the local authority care plan, on those provisions which set out the long-term planning for the upbringing of the child; for example, whether the child is to live with a parent or other family member, to be placed in foster care or to be adopted—the permanence provisions. The court is not required to consider the remainder of the plan. The clause is based on the findings in the family justice review that, driven partly by concerns over the quality of local authority social work, courts can spend a long time scrutinising the details of local authority care plans for children before making care orders. In many cases, court scrutiny goes beyond what is needed to determine whether a care order is in the best interests of a child. This can lead to unnecessary delays and contribute to the lengthy duration of care cases.

As was also highlighted in the other place, details of care plans are not set in stone and often change over time in response to a child’s changing needs and circumstances. In 62% of cases in a recent study, the care plan scrutinised by the court was not carried out, due to changing circumstances. Given this likelihood of change, the local authority, rather than the court, is better placed to consider the detail of the care plan.

I appreciate the concerns expressed by noble Lords about sibling placement, following the debate in the other place. I want to clarify that if the permanence provisions of a particular plan deal with arrangements relating to a child’s sibling—for example, if the plan is for the child to be adopted along with his sibling—the court will be required to consider those arrangements as part of the permanence provision. I will look at the statistics cited by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, about loss of contact and, in addition, I make the point that she anticipated: there is nothing in the clause that prevents the court looking at any other aspect of the plan it considers necessary to make the order.

I understand the point made by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, with her vast experience and from the evidence heard by her committee, about the grief and stress that can be caused to siblings by being parted. It is a matter that needs to be looked at. I re-emphasise that nothing in the clause affects the duty of the local authority, when deciding the most appropriate placement for the child, to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable in each case, that the placement enables the child to live with any sibling who is also being looked after by the local authority.

As has been pointed out, concern has been expressed and some statistics have been advanced for us to ponder. We will look at this again in those terms and in the context in which David Norgrove made these recommendations. There is a danger that if we have too many belts and braces in the process, we will lose the very advantages of speed that we are trying to bring in and which are also in the best interests of the child. I hear what the Committee has said and my colleague and I will consider that between now and Report. In those circumstances, I would be grateful if the noble Lady would withdraw her amendment.

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[Lord Kennedy of Southwark (Lab)]

My Lords, earlier in this debate, I referred the Grand Committee to my declaration in respect of Diabetes UK. I shall speak to my Amendment 223—I am very grateful to the noble Lords who have supported it—and Amendment 241A, which was tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Nash. I am very grateful to him for tabling his amendment. He has clearly listened to representations made to him. The amendment goes a long way to address the issues raised in my amendment.

I reinforce the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe. The Health Conditions in Schools Alliance supports this amendment. The alliance is made up of 30 organisations representing more than 1 million children. It called for a duty to be placed on schools to support children with health conditions. Children with conditions such as asthma or diabetes are often left on their own or unsupervised and are vulnerable to an attack or a hypo. Some children are prevented from treating their condition as soon as they recognise the symptoms, often meaning that the situation ends up worse than it should be.

A lack of understanding from teachers and staff can make the situation worse by making a child anxious and stressed about their condition, which can make it worse than ever. A lack of understanding and training sometimes means that teachers and staff are not able to recognise that certain conditions or medications can affect learning and behaviour. Poor management of conditions often means that children miss lessons. Sometimes schools do not even have policies for absence and for whether a lesson has been learnt or not.

Good management of conditions means that children are better able to concentrate and get the most out of their time in school. Exclusion from school, whether from a trip, a lesson or for months at a time, is one of the most common problems for children who face long-term health conditions. In the past few days alone, Diabetes UK has had a number of calls to explain the problems of children. I shall not mention the children by name, but one 10 year-old girl who uses a pump has been told that she cannot go on a residential trip unless her mother attends as well. The dad was not considered appropriate. It is an activity holiday, so the girl would exercise far more than usual. A staff member would not be able to look after the child unless the mother attended, so she cannot take part in activities. This is quite common. Unless parents attend residential trips and deal with the medication, children are excluded from them.

The Anaphylaxis Campaign is aware of a 12 year-old girl in year 8 who has not been able to attend school for a single day this term because the school and the local authority have not properly prepared for her arrival.

Cases where parents are left to provide care in school are known. Some parents have to give up their jobs or reduce their working hours to make sure their child attends school.

The GMB, my union, and Unison support this amendment. Their members are often left to deliver the care, such as injecting insulin for children with diabetes or giving children with epilepsy their medication. This is a major issue for trade union members. They often feel they are not properly trained or that the training is never refreshed. They are anxious about responsibility for supporting children with health conditions and are not helped to fulfil that properly. This is deeply worrying for children with health conditions and their families, and is also grossly unfair on members of staff who are required to look after children but are not given the proper training or support to do the job properly.

My amendment places a duty on schools to work with local health services to offer training and refresher training to staff. It would require schools to have a proper policy in place to support children with health conditions. That would mean that schools are prepared for things such as staff leaving or being absent for school trips, and would know what training their staff can expect. All children with a health condition should have individual healthcare plans agreed between the school, the child, the parents and specialist nurses, tailored to meet the needs in various situations. Looking after children with health conditions is not impossible, and many schools do it incredibly well. A combination of good leadership, planning, communication and training shows how it can be done. It is not burdensome. Schools that achieve that in the end spend far less time looking after those children, who manage successfully themselves. Along with healthier children, well managed conditions mean fewer missed lessons, fewer incidents in classes, fewer meetings with worried parents, happier children and more confident staff.

We know that the Department for Education wants to reduce bureaucracy in schools, but at the moment, the only option that parents have if their complaints are ignored is the costly and time-consuming process of going to tribunals. One local authority was found to have discriminated against a boy with diabetes. It is now appealing the decision. It has already cost tens of thousands of pounds. In addition to financial costs, it takes at least six months before a tribunal meets to make a decision. That is six months of meetings, compiling evidence, filling in forms and anxiety and stress for all parties concerned.

A clear duty on schools will mean that staff are given the support and training they need to offer, with confidence, the care that children need and make the lives of parents, children and schools much easier. A duty will end the current outrageous situation whereby some children’s health is made worse or put at risk simply by attending school. All children should be given the best possible opportunity to reach their full potential at school. At the moment, far too many children with health conditions are denied the right. A duty will help them to reach their potential and allow them to play a full part in school life.

As I said at the start of my remarks, I am grateful to the Government and the noble Lord, Lord Nash, but I will probably push a little further on Report. I think that the amendment does not go quite far enough. I hope we can address the whole issue of relevant NHS bodies being fully engaged in the care plans of individual children. The amendment does not quite address that.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I will be brief—I am sure that the Minister will be grateful for that—but I want to say two things at the beginning. First, the Minister needs to know that many organisations think that a great deal in the Bill is extremely welcome. The tone of the debate seems critical. I think that we have the number of amendments that we have simply because people care about the issue and have discussed it at length. I have met several organisations which have said how valuable a great deal of what is in the Bill is taking forward work with disabled children. I thought that we needed to have that on record while we are all complaining bitterly about the things that the Government have not done.

I shall speak to Amendment 220. Most of the points have been made, and I will not make a long, heartfelt tirade about the group that I care about. I just say that I work closely with children with congenital heart disease, children born with half a heart, many of them with hypoplastic left heart syndrome. They usually look like perfectly ordinary children but they are in serious difficulty when they get to school. I am therefore immensely grateful to see the Minister’s amendment but I ask that we see the regulations, because the devil will be in the detail as to whether it really meets the requirements. If we can see the regulations early, it might relieve the pain on Report, when people will otherwise want to speak at length again.

My other question is: once we have the regulation and the detail, how will families be able to complain without taking themselves through massive tribunal cases, as we know has happened? It might be worth the Government looking at how parents raise issues under the regulations when they feel that their needs have not been met, because that would save everybody pain. It is no use saying to ourselves that Ofsted will deal with that, because we know that it visits only every four years. Some children have been right through school and never seen an Ofsted inspection. If we could have some clarity on that, it would certainly speed things up.

[Lord Patel (CB)]

My Lords, I speak in support of Amendment 223, to which my name is attached. I will be brief, because most of what I would have said has already been said well by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark.

I particularly support the emphasis that he put on the need for teachers to have the right training to deal with children with medical conditions. Without that training, it is likely that any guidance issued will be completely defunct. The NHS, local authorities and schools need to work co-operatively to ensure that training is provided and accessible to teachers.

I welcome the government amendment most sincerely. I am glad that the Minister has tabled it at this stage. My only problem is that, without seeing the draft guidance, we have no way to comment on whether its breadth and depth will be adequate to meet the needs of children with medical conditions. I therefore hope that the Minister can make a commitment to bring forward the draft guidance before Report, so that we can improve it—not criticise it, but help to improve it.

I also want to ensure the inclusion of medical conditions not already mentioned—the list is exhaustive— such as diabetes, epilepsy, asthma and allergies, but also cancers. It is often thought that children with cancers have short lives. Some, unfortunately, do, but most childhood cancers are now long-term conditions and should be treated more as chronic diseases, not short-term ones. I hope that the Minister will include dealing with cancers in the guidance.

The guidance must recognise both the social and emotional needs of young people with long-term medical conditions, and the fact that a health condition can impact on a child or young person’s ability to learn. Another important point made by the noble Lord, Lord Kennedy of Southwark, was the need to involve the parents and children to ensure that the school understands their condition and its emergency needs. A child having a hypoglycaemic attack requires immediate treatment. A child having an allergic attack requires immediate treatment. A child with a migraine needs to be treated with compassion, because they may lose their vision and hearing. Putting them in a corner or a quiet room does not solve the problem. Those are some of the things that children with a medical condition suffer on a daily basis in schools. If we cannot get things right for children in the Bill, we fail them.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and those who have spoken to these amendments about the inclusion of children. I simply hope that it is a mistake, a slip of the pen, and that “children and young people” was intended and can be put in. We now have a great deal of experience of engaging young people. Certainly, CAFCASS has done a huge amount of work in working with very young children and understanding their wishes and feelings. The Children’s Rights Director spent a long time talking to young people and young children about how decisions were made about them. It is amazing how very young children feel very deprived of having a part to play in their own lives when they have not been included.

A lot of research shows that not including children in decisions has harmful effects. We know from similar research into divorce that young children who are taken along and understand what is happening have less trauma later than those who suddenly find out that it is happening. There is similar research into the effect of understanding on children. I hope that this is a slip of the pen and that we will find that both are included.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

I will not keep the Committee for long. As my name is attached to a number of amendments in this group, I want to emphasise what the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, has said so ably. It is crucial that from the moment at which a child can speak, their views are sought. To an extent, that may depend on how much value can be given to what they say and on their age. Nevertheless, it is important to hear what they have to say. As you get older and have great-grandchildren as well as grandchildren, the more you are aware of exactly what you are learning from their experiences, which can change your views quite considerably. I very much support the noble Baroness, Lady Massey.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, my name is attached to this amendment. Clause 32, “Advice and information for parents and young people”, says that we should give advice and information, but how can we give advice and information if we do not know how many people we are going to give it to, what the needs of the children are and what range we will have to plan for in terms of strategy?

Sometimes I mourn the chronically sick and disabled persons legislation, which may be from before the Minister’s time. As a director of social services, I found myself trying to implement that. We were to collect information about the needs of the disabled and sick in our areas in order to create a strategic plan. That was in the 1960s, but here we are now and during all that time we have never got this together.

I know that we do not want to add a huge bureaucratic layer to anyone’s workload. Collecting statistics is always difficult if you are going to get some commonality between the criteria. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has pointed out, they vary at the moment across the country. I did a report a few years ago to try to prepare a strategic plan for a voluntary organisation—John Grooms Association for Disabled People—so that it could plan its services. When we tried to get data from across the country, they simply did not exist; hospitals, local authorities and schools all seem to collect them differently.

I hope that the Government will look at this extremely carefully. It is a crucial issue. You cannot have a strategy without data, and data are not that difficult to collect, particularly as the Government are hoping to ensure that all the parents and children in an area will get advice, so they need to know where they are.

[Lord Lucas]

My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, whether he has addressed Amendment 76, or is it postponed to a later group?

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I shall speak only briefly to the amendment because I presume that the Minister’s response will be that this should not be necessary because it should be provided by local authorities through good practice. I support the amendment simply because the postcode lottery in local authorities means that some will get good services, good information and steady support but a large number will not. The Government, in setting a framework, have a responsibility to ensure that there are consistent services right across the piece.

Many years ago, when I was dealing with children in care, I had to deal with what we called yo-yo children—those children who came in and out of care. When you identified a child who was not consistently either in care or at home, you settled down and set a proper assessment and programme for that child and made sure that there was a good way forward. I hope the Minister will have an answer to the kind of practice that is happening, otherwise, at a later stage, I will need to support the amendment.

As to special guardianship, when we were sitting in the adoption committee it became clear that there was very little difference between some children who were adopted and many children who were in special guardianship placements. The one difference was that those in special guardianships were struggling even more than those in adoption placements because, although the support is poor for post-adoption, it is even less for post-guardianship. Any services that are extended to adoptive parents must be looked at in relation to special guardianships, because these very often are the same children but have the benefit of being placed with those who know them and who loved them even before they were placed with them. I believe that is what the Government have been trying to do.

[Baroness Hamwee (LD)]

My Lords, I support what the noble Baroness has just said about special guardianship. It is a paradox that there were obstacles to special guardianship when it was a desirable outcome in particular cases.

I thank the noble Earl for arranging the meeting with the group of young people 10 days or so ago. I found it encouraging and disturbing at the same time. They were a remarkable group of young people. I do not think I could have been nearly as resilient as most of them seem to have been in the conditions they described. In support of the amendment, I shall read from a few of my notes: “There was no checking on the conditions I’d be going back to”, and the noble Earl has referred to the capacity of the mother and the physical conditions; “it depends on the child to tell or to ask for help”, which is a very salutary thing to have heard; “I went home once a month but no one checked up or even asked how the weekend went”, and the picture that I got was of variable circumstances and variable support depending, frankly, on where the child was. One—I hesitate to call him a child—young person said, “I should not have been allowed to go home”.

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[Baroness Northover (LD)]

My Lords, noble Lords have highlighted some key areas on support of children, particularly those who may be returning from care. I assure the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, and others, that we take these issues seriously. I hope, too, that I can be heard.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

There are some difficulties on this side.

[Lord Northbourne (CB)]

I confess to being one of those who finds it difficult.

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[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I very much agree. As we have talked about the last three groups of amendments, it has occurred to me that we appear to be living in a parallel universe. Ministers stand up and, quite correctly, read out the situation as it should, theoretically, be. Although Ministers tell us in good faith what the situation is in theory, it is not happening.

The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, made a point which struck me as a little odd. She said that 60% of those siblings who are both in care and who are not together or seeing each other are in children’s homes. I understand that it might be quite difficult to get foster carers to take pairs of siblings because they might be prepared to take only one child, but it should not be that difficult to put sets of children together in children’s homes where there are multiple places. Might the Government consider doing some research to find out why that is? I would have thought that was the very place where you could keep groups of siblings. Could that be looked into?

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I support this very strongly. We should not have reached the position we have, but I have some understanding of how we have reached it.

I have talked to many young people over the years, and particularly remember two groups I saw, with the Children’s Rights Director, who talked about the way conflict in their families was relieved by the fact that they had siblings to share their sojourn and be a comfort when things were really grim. They were the people who were their in-group when all this was going on, so were even more important to them than their parents, who were often the enemy and doing the destructive things, while siblings were their protection. That is not always so: there are siblings who are damaging to each other. Professional decisions to separate siblings may be quite right, but they must be made properly, not by accident. I fear we have reached the position where it is by accident because of the way we arrange placements and the shortage of good ones. We have young people in adolescent groups because they are easier to manage with staff who can manage them and small units with small children, but many fewer family group homes than there were, so you do not have the mix of youngsters together. Managing a unit of very difficult young people is about training, and confidence.

I sincerely regret this, because I have heard heartfelt pleas, similar to the ones outlined by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, from young people—particularly in court—saying, “Whatever happens do not separate me from my siblings”. It is the siblings, not the parents, who mean everything to them.

It is a serious practice issue. I am not sure how legislation would make it right, but this amendment might be a step towards it. I hope the Minister will assure us that Ofsted might look at this when they look at the organisation of residential care in various authorities and how families are planned for. I am a social worker so I know how easy it is, under pressure, to delude yourself that it is the best answer for the child when it is actually the best solution for you.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

Perhaps I may briefly put on record my support for the amendments, in particular for that of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. It struck me, listening to those who spoke in support of it, that we are talking about not casual interest but real need on the part of the children and young people concerned. It is important to understand that.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

Perhaps I may say something briefly, going back to the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Hornsey. What has happened to good recording? In the distant past when the Data Protection Act came into being, I was involved in writing some of the guidance—it is such a long time ago that I do not think I have a copy of it or any reference to it—about how data should be made available and where we should redact the information that should be kept separate. Good recording demanded that there were separate parts to the record which were absolutely clear and identified, so that if there was an appeal, someone could look at the separate parts of the record.

What has happened, I ask the Minister and local authorities, to personal story books? What has happened to the need to keep packs of photographs, which used to happen when I was in children’s departments and, early on, in social services? What has happened to those good social workers who shared their recording? I shared my recording with those people I was working with, so they had a copy—unless there was a child protection issue which could not be shared. Therefore you asked other people involved for their permission at the time to share information.

Some of those principles of recording have been lost over time. Perhaps Ofsted could look at the principles of recording these days. I am not saying that it is a simple issue. It is not; I understand how complex it is; but I think that some of the basic principles have been lost. If we returned to some of those, the issue would not be a forward issue. Clearly we have an issue going back for those people who find themselves unable to access records. I have seen records which are so redacted that they are unintelligible. I have had to go through them as an information officer. I felt so strongly about the professional issue that I wanted to intervene briefly.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Young, on her brilliant exposition of her amendment and the reasons behind it. Others have said better than I can how impressed they were with it.

However, I also want to congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman-Scott, because her amendments are all very important. I hope, too, that if they are put to the vote they will receive the support that the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, obviously will get. I hope very much that they are supported.

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[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, I strongly support this amendment. I have heard the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, talk about this halfway house before. It is not a bad idea, but I hope that we can go the full way, for two reasons. First, there is the cost-effectiveness, which one or two people have mentioned. We sometimes forget that early intervention can actually save money in the long run; we should not forget that. Early intervention is not just about babies or children but older people. This example applies and it can be effective in this case. Cost-effectiveness was the first thing that I wanted to mention.

The second thing is the incredible importance of education, which has also been mentioned. Young people in education tend not to get pregnant when they are 15 or 16, they tend not to misuse drugs or alcohol, and they tend to do better if they are encouraged in that education. Like the noble Lord, Lord Storey, I was very impressed by the young woman at the meeting we had last week, who talked about the importance of education to her. As we know, education is such a key thing for all children, but particularly for these children. Therefore for me, cost effects on education swing this towards the Minister accepting this amendment.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I will not repeat all the arguments that have been made, but of course, I want to support this. However, I will take it from a slightly different angle. I am quite sure that the Government do not want to take away from the determination that the local authority has to do its work. I know that devolution is important, and that the independence of the local authorities, such as it is, is valuable. Therefore I can understand that that might well be a government point of view. I can understand that the Local Government Association may have some concerns about additional responsibilities being added in statute, and I can understand some of the arguments, such as that if we have older young people in placements, they may block placements when we are short of foster-parents.

I have looked at those issues. It is quite clear that unless there is something absolutely straightforward, either legislation or regulation, in this area, local authorities will not be consistent in their care of over-18s. I have numerous case studies, which I will not read out now, but they have made me think that I need to speak about this in this way, rather than supporting the independence of local authorities, as I usually do as a vice-president of the LGA. Time and again, we read of young people—and I have met them alone, and with the noble Earl, Lord Listowel—who tell heartbreaking stories of their education and of how their success in other areas is being stymied because they have to leave their family in which they have all their relationships. We are failing significantly to understand that emotional context.

Noble Lords have talked on numerous occasions about their own children. Sometimes you do not get rid of them until they are 30. They do a lot of things in between, and you still take them back. I have not had children of my own but I have brought up more than most, and I know about that trauma. Secondly, I understand that fostering, and numbers, are now improving, and that we have to look at that in a different way. It was explained to me—and this is not an area in which I have recent expertise—that foster parents who take adolescents often retire, as has been said, but also tend not to take small children when they need a placement. You need a different set of skills and you are looking for different foster parents. The idea that these young people are blocking a foster place is not a real one.

I can understand that the voluntary way forward is preferred by the Government. It will not work in present circumstances in local authorities, pressed as they are, unless there is some very strong legislation or statutory guidance.

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[The Earl of Listowel]

I hope it will be helpful to the Committee—

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords—

[The Earl of Listowel]

My noble friend may want to do the same thing.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

I am asking that Amendment 43 be decoupled from this amendment because it deals with a quite different issue. I wish to speak briefly to the amendment moved by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, if the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, will allow me. It is extraordinary that there are children in this country, from wherever they have come, for whom the local authority fails to take some sort of action. I do not often say this but, in my day, children would be seen as having no parental cover whatever and there would be no doubt that the local authority would have had a care order. There is no doubt that that would have happened in the past. The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, agrees.

I understand why we want fewer court proceedings. Having been the chair of CAFCASS, I absolutely understand that. They are expensive and are often not helpful to the child’s experience, never mind that of the local authority. Under the 1948 Act we had a way of ensuring that children were placed under the equivalent of a care order by a process in the local authority. In the days of Sections 1 and 2 of the Children Act 1948, one lot of children went to court and the others went through a process in the local authority. We should ask the officials to look at this. Without a doubt we have a national responsibility to protect this small cohort of children. I have come into contact with them because I deal with serious sexual abuse issues. The girls who are trafficked are seriously sexually abused. It is not just prostitution; it is abhorrent prostitution. Unless we find ways of protecting these youngsters they will just slip away and disappear, not of their own choice. I support the noble and learned Baroness in her attempt to find a way that is not expensive but which secures these children’s futures.

[Baroness Massey of Darwen]

My Lords, an issue that is not directly relevant to this amendment, but which is akin to it, is that of parental responsibility and the accommodation that these children go into. I know that these highly vulnerable children are put into shocking accommodation. They are followed by traffickers, drug dealers and criminal gangs. They are abducted and disappear or something even more terrible might happen to them. I want to emphasise that parental responsibility must include decent accommodation for these children.

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Wednesday 9th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)]

My Lords, I have two brief points. First, like the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, I am concerned about the issue of consideration, and I would like to know at what stage this consideration kicks in.

Secondly, I have the greatest respect and admiration for family and friends carers, who do such a remarkable job, sometimes in very difficult conditions, and I take on board the issue that the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, raised about timing. I am curious about the dropping of the preference for looking first at family and friends carers as appropriate to a child. I am surprised that that is not being strongly supported by the Government. I believe that something like 86% of kinship care proceedings are initiated by the prospective kinship carers themselves, not by social workers, and surely that is quite the wrong way round.

I am also surprised that the Government do not seem to consider the costs of kinship care and care by friends. I believe that a foster care placement costs something like £40,000, while the average cost of care proceedings is more than £25,000. I hope that the Government will look again at the whole issue of placing family and friends care at the head of the proposals. I am aware that it is not always appropriate and I accept that, but to have dropped the idea of preference, if appropriate, is a mistake.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I have three points. I begin by saying that I believe that legislation should enhance and underpin practice. I declare an interest as being a member of the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, along with my colleagues who have already declared that interest. It was quite clear to us that, were we able to improve practice in a number of areas, the legislation would simply not be necessary.

The Government should return to thinking about that issue, particularly in relation to the practice of social workers and the difficulties they face at the moment, and the pressures of local government. I am sure the Minister will want to concentrate on what he has before him but unless the Government take a more strategic and broader view of children’s needs, we will simply add to the legislation and the difficulties that local authority social workers are experiencing rather than meet the needs of the children.

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[Baroness Hamwee]

I too have my name to Amendment 11. It seems that these issues of religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background have been the subject of a pendulum that has swung considerably backwards and forwards over the years. It may be that these issues are not everything but they are certainly not nothing. As other noble Lords have said, the Government have recognised that these issues should be considered along with all other relevant factors.

I thought what the noble Baroness, Lady Young, had to say about identity was so powerful that I do not want to pursue the issue myself because I could not say it as well. I just wrote down the word “identity” with big marks against it when I was making my notes for this debate. We must not suppress these issues. Our society comprises a huge variety of combinations of these different matters, and an increasing variety as people from different ethnic backgrounds marry one another and different mixes appear. There should not be excessive emphasis.

The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, used the phrase, which I think the Minister also used, “ramming the message home”. It is not for legislation to ram a message home; legislation should get the measure right rather more calmly. There is a danger that the message that will be taken is that these issues should now be ignored, when what really matters, as other noble Lords have said, is a placement with adopters who understand the issues and can support the child. You might come from exactly the same ethnic origin or religious background but not be able to support the child; they are not the same thing. The indicative guidance that we have received recognises this. I think that it talks—and if it does not, it should—about the need to recruit adopters from a range of backgrounds.

I do not think that there is a difference of view between what we are all saying and what the Government are thinking; it is not about the “what” but more about the “how”. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, said that she was at a loss. I do not think that I am at a loss. There has been an oversensitivity, if I can put it that way, to what some parts of the media regard as “political correctness”, and there are better ripostes to that attitude in the media than the change in legislation that is proposed. I strongly support the amendment.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I would like to say something about where I think this all came from. We should remind ourselves that in the 1980s racism was rife. When I was working at that time in local authorities, we had people called “race advisers”, some of whom were not the most helpful people. Some changed the whole attitude to racism; some made social workers take a particular view of race. I know that because I was the head of a social work department and was battling to get something rational, while the irrational was being pressed on the workers.

I make this point because I think that this Bill has so much of value and would hate to see one dogma replaced by another, but that is what is happening here. As the pendulum has swung, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, said, so the Government are feeling that we can stop all this and get placements moved on. However, we need to think about the issues—those points have been made eloquently and I shall not repeat them—and I hope that the Government take a rational rather than a dogmatic view of this issue because it is important for the children. I, too, have talked to young people whose ethnicity is extraordinarily important to them, even though they were placed, and have grown up, in white homes. They need to understand their ethnicity and their links. I hope that the Minister will accept that the welfare checklist is a very straightforward document and that this could be included without any difficulty.

[Baroness Perry of Southwark]

My Lords, the UN convention quoted by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asks for respect for a child’s ethnicity and cultural, linguistic and religious background. If I were putting down an amendment to the Bill, which I am not doing, I would want something that emphasised that. That does not mean that adoptive parents have to be of the same ethnicity or religious conviction as that of the child being adopted, but they have to be the kind of people who genuinely respect that. If I may be allowed an anecdote, although we have just been told not to rely on anecdotes, I can tell the Committee that I lived through such a thing in my own family. When I was a very little girl, my parents “adopted” a child of the Kindertransport. Her parents had sent her away from Hitler’s Germany just before the outbreak of the Second World War and my parents, as Christians—my father was a minister—decided that they would open our home and our family to this little girl, Marrianna, who became my sister to all intents and purposes for several years until her own family was able to take her towards the end of the war. I remember well my parents straining every muscle to allow that little girl to keep her religious identity—we learnt in our family to respect all the Jewish customs and festivals—and they were determined, although Christians themselves and very powerfully so, that they would do that. What we are surely asking for is that kind of genuine respect for the child’s religious, cultural or ethnic background, and not for someone who has to be the same. The rationale of the noble and learned Baroness’s amendment reaches towards that, but I would like something that emphasised the wording of the UN convention, which is “respect for” rather than “the same as”.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I think that most of the points have been made, but I want to go back to the days when some of us were engaged in the 2002 legislation. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, will remember that when we were trying to get some of these provisions through, this cohort of people were among those who had not been prepared in the same way as those who have been prepared thereafter. However, the world has changed significantly since 2002, particularly in relation to health information, as both my colleagues have pointed out. It is a human right for an individual to know about their genealogy and therefore to be able to trace issues relating to health. This will be particularly true of girls and breast cancer, when different kinds of medical intervention will be available. Although I understand the sensitivities, we are not asking for access for absolutely everybody, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pointed out; we are asking for an intermediary. When that route is not taken, individuals attempt to find out by other ways. I have a story of a man turning up at the gate of his birth father—a very eminent man—and saying, “I am your son”, having found out by other ways, and being told, “You may be, but I don’t want to know you”. One can see how an intermediary could have made a real difference to that relationship and the hurt that can come from that kind of situation.

This anomaly needs to be put right. It is absurd that everyone else can find out except the descendants—so you can go and get someone else to do it for you. It just needs ironing out, and the arguments that I have heard so far have passed.

[Lord Nash]

I thank my noble friend Lady Hamwee, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for bringing this important matter to the Government’s attention, both earlier this year through the report of the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation and through this proposed clause.

I entirely understand why the descendants of adopted people may want to find out more about their biological heritage, particularly where there may be a hereditary medical condition. The Government are open to the possibility of reform in this area, but we believe that more detailed thought is needed about the implications and practicalities of any legislative change. For example, we must think carefully about how more information might be provided to descendants, and we need to balance this against the rights and wishes of the adopted adults themselves and their birth families.

This is a complex and sensitive area which needs careful consideration before any change to legislation is considered. That is why the Government are exploring with the Law Commission whether this issue might be included within a possible project as part of the commission’s 12th programme of law reform.

The amendment would enable descendants of an adopted person to find out about the adopted person’s background. It applies to those adopted before commencement of the 2002 Act. Such adoptions were carried out privately and secretly, with very little information shared with the adopted child or his or her birth parents. If a mother, who may never have told anyone about an adoption, was approached out of the blue by her son asking about his adoption, that could have a devastating effect on the individual and the whole family.

We fully appreciate the wishes of descendents and there will be examples—

Children and Families Bill

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I say to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that I hope that this is not the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to debate the progress of childcare issues for the future. I have been in the House for 13 years and have lived through a series of different Bills. Each Bill has brought progress and movement forward, just as this Bill will. However, it leaves huge gaps which, I hope, will be looked at in the future. Rather like the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, I think it is great but it is not Utopia.

The Bill has a very good heart that has three major heartbeats. Placing decision-making for children at the centre of policy is something that the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children has asked Ministers to do for a long time. We shall continue to press Ministers to do that. Listening to children is also central. However, it is only for some children because there are circumstances outlined in the Bill under which young children, if they are particularly disabled, are excluded from being heard in relation to some of the wishes they may have about services. I know from working with children that you can hear quite clearly what they have to say from a very young age. The most important heartbeat is about working together. It was very heartening to see the logos of three different departments at the top of a letter from Ministers. I only hope that that indication of working together will continue throughout what we are trying to do here, because there is so much to be done.

I begin by asking the Minister about the strategic thinking for the whole context of children’s planning. I have a dreadful cold, so if I suddenly stop it is because my voice has gone. I am very concerned about the issues facing those who are in the front line, working with troubled families. By troubled families I do not mean the technicality that people seem to mean, but all families with troubles. This work requires real maturity, knowledge and skill. It requires an understanding of child development and family dynamics, and how they interact with culture as a whole and with a child’s environment. For social workers, independent reviewing officers, under-fives workers and many others, including teachers who are engaged in this work, there is a very high personal cost. There is sometimes a very high cost indeed in terms of the possibility of career difficulties.

We all know that local authorities are coping well in tough times. They have exciting new methods of delivery, but it is clear for all to see that with the next round of cuts, authorities will be on the verge of not coping. I wonder what the Government will do to ensure that children’s services are protected. It takes only one mistake to end a child’s life or a worker’s career. As someone who has lived through three childcare inquiries—which I am sure is not a confession I should make too easily—I know the impact this can have on an individual. I heard about high case loads when I sat on the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, which was chaired by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I know about people with workloads that led to mistakes and then to their being blamed. As a community, at some point we must do something to ensure that those services are safe.

The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, mentioned the splitting of funding for the 16-25 age group between education and social care. I declare an interest as a trustee of Livability, a charity which among other services provides colleges for severely disabled young people. The split in funding between education and social care, which occurred a couple of years ago, is already having a real and perverse effect. When those funding packages were joined together they made sure of provision for young people who are severely disabled. These are not the kind of children whom the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, talked about, those with the capacity to integrate into schools, but those who need personal care and nursing care as well as education.

That split means that any organisation working in this field must now go through extraordinary negotiations regarding both education and care. For many charities delivery is now becoming far too complex and expensive, with a significant loss in placements. Even if the Government try to develop a plan that integrates healthcare and education for this group of young people, I fear that the services will no longer be there. I know that there are charities other than my own which are thinking of closing these establishments, because it is just too difficult to continue the planning.

I do not want to spend too much of my time discussing links between healthcare and education, because the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and the noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, already mentioned the amendment put forward by the Health Conditions in Schools Alliance. The alliance represents the needs of a million children with special conditions. The noble Baroness, Lady Gibson, very eloquently described her own experiences in that area. I am a trustee of Little Hearts Matter, a charity which looks after children who have half a heart. I know from personal experience how very difficult it often is for parents to have their children’s needs heard when they are in school.

The Bill includes a duty for local authorities to appoint an officer who will promote the,

“educational achievement of children looked after by local authorities”.

Why can we not somehow add some requirement that they also care for children with special needs? We must ensure that they are not overburdened, but a little lateral thinking is not beyond the bounds of possibility.

I am not going to spend a lot of time on Part 1 of the Bill, although I shall take part of it in detail. As I mentioned, I sat on the Select Committee on Adoption Legislation, and I want quickly to make one point about this. The political emphasis on adoption has led to a missed opportunity to provide services across the care system, as adoption will not be suitable for a variety of children. Guardianship and long-term fostering have been shown to provide equally successful outcomes. As we said in our report,

“all routes to permanence merit equal attention and investment.”

That is also true when a child has a good enough family of their own, which simply needs support.

Time has run out, so in conclusion I want to say a word about parental involvement. The Government have specifically said that ensuring the involvement of both parents in the upbringing of their children does not mean 50:50 splits. The reference to shared parenting in the Bill has been removed, for which I personally am grateful. When considering certain private law applications the court is required to presume that the child’s welfare will be furthered by the involvement of both parents in the child’s life, unless it can be demonstrated otherwise. The devil is in the detail of that sentence,

“unless it can be demonstrated otherwise”.

I have spent eight years as chair and deputy chair of CAFCASS, and I know what dangerous parents look like. They are not always easily identifiable. We must have great care about anything that undermines the paramount importance of the welfare of the child.

Adoption: Adoption Legislation Committee Reports

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Thursday 16th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I, too, had the honour of being a member of the committee, although for a large part of the time I was being looked after by the National Health Service, so I can thank the chair for her excellent work more objectively than the other members of the committee and, indeed, I can thank my colleagues. Between them, they have made a superb contribution to the thinking around the needs of vulnerable children in our communities. I want to concentrate today on that wider aspect.

Noble Lords who take part in debates such as this will know the sinking feeling that you get as you listen to the speeches that have gone before—I am sure that those who are to speak after me are having the same thought—and you realise that most of the points that you want to make have already been made, but I would say to the Minister that in this instance I think that that is important, because it reinforces the central message. I felt that the noble and learned Baroness and my computer had been in collusion, but I can assure him that they were not. I have known the noble and learned Baroness down the years because she was president of the Family Division when I had the somewhat mixed experience of being the deputy chair and then chair, like the noble Baroness, Lady Pitkeathley, of the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Services. That experience of children is something else that I bring, apart from being a social worker.

The Government are right to concentrate hard on this aspect of children’s needs because, as the Minister must know, there really is a crisis at the moment in childcare. Care applications in April 2013 were 20% higher than in the previous year. We really cannot continue on that sort of trajectory. To quote the chief executive of CAFCASS, the number of children legally freed for adoption but without an adopter available is increasing relentlessly. As has been said, the figure is just below the 5,000 mark. Not only do we need to ensure speedy but appropriate planning for these children, but we must stem the flow by questioning what it is in our society, our services and our systems that brings so many children into care. What can we do better in order to support children at home?

Apart from the possibility of safe reunification with one or both parents—sometimes it is with one parent if the other parent can be distanced; I will return to that later—children can find secure, loving relationships through kinship care, permanent fostering, special guardianship and good residential care. We have seen that, as special guardianship has increased, sometimes adoption has gone down. That has been seen as a reduction in adoption but what we should be looking for is permanence, not a particular answer. Children often need combinations of care at different stages of their childhood and the development of their family. By overemphasising one—adoption—we may demean the others. Different pathways also require a variety of support services. We acknowledge gratefully what the Government have proposed through the adoption passport, recognising the wide need of adopted children, but we regret that the provision of the services identified is not to be a statutory duty. We hope that the Government will look again at this through the Children and Families Bill.

It has been said several times this afternoon that the committee endorsed the importance accorded to the right of a child to be raised within their birth family wherever possible. If I could say that in bold and underlined, I would do so. I have spent enough of my working life, as many of my colleagues know, developing safeguarding programmes, dealing with the worst of neglect or harm and indeed the murder of children by their parents, to have a more than realistic picture of what life can be like for some children left in unsafe situations. Indeed, we know from consultation directly with children that top of the list of things that they look for is to be safe.

However, I also spent enough years as a social worker involved with families with complex problems to know that, with clear assessment, proper planning and support services such as Sure Start and Home-Start, parents can make changes. We have heard about the NSPCC programme, which has had very good outcomes. All this will lead to positive family life, but it takes skill, time and, especially, good social work intervention, and that is where there is a key difficulty for local authorities at the moment. In this regard, where parents have the capacity to change, the committee was clear that evidence in favour of that early, intensive intervention to address family problems is compelling.

As I said, local authorities, particularly their social workers, are under severe pressure. It was therefore with deep concern that we learnt that adoption reform is to be funded by taking money from the early intervention grant. I ask the Minister directly: how can good early decision-making based on these clear assessments be achieved, with permanency planning being prioritised one month after entry into care, without the financing of a skilled workforce to carry this out? Social workers continue to have a bad press and remain undervalued in terms of pay and conditions of service, and I wonder sometimes why any person joins the service. But we need teams who can approach every new situation with a broad understanding of children and their families, where adoption is fully integrated into child protection and family support. We need a more rounded approach, which we had at some point in the past.

The Government’s response to our recommendation that,

“the Government need to give further consideration to the practical effect of the proposed change … on social work culture and practice”,

was simply to say that further information to support the Bill’s provisions would be provided. Is the Minister in a position to provide the information or will that come at a later stage? What will be done to support and develop social workers in their practice? As our chair has done, I draw attention to the position of independent reviewing officers and ask what is to be done to ensure that their decisions are independent of their employing authorities and their workloads are manageable. We heard during the inquiry of one case where a reviewing officer really took the brunt of a serious mistake and then discovered that his workload was totally impossible. Anyone carrying that workload was likely to make a mistake.

The committee came to the conclusion that concurrent planning is essential and I am delighted that CAFCASS and the Association of Directors of Children’s Services are undertaking work on early permanence analysis. This approach reflects the concern and commitment of those working for children—people who know that a week in a child’s life is a long time. I welcome the Government’s response to make it a duty of the local authority to place a child with carers who may go on to be their permanent carers at a very early stage. However, I hope that care will also be taken in ensuring the human rights of families, which means having the right length of time for social workers to engage and make their decisions. In saying that, I again acknowledge that there are times when immediate intervention must take place.

It has been said previously that we have no evidence, except anecdotal evidence, of the broad success or failure of adoption. I found this astounding having been involved in childcare statistics for many years. We urge the Government to undertake research that, by gathering statistics of adoption breakdown, would give some basis for planning. While everyone in the children’s social care field welcomes any plans to reduce the time taken by care proceedings, I repeat that there must be enough time to make appropriate plans. Nothing that I have said in support of social work with birth families indicates a lack of value for adoption; it simply indicates a need for a balance. I have direct personal and professional experience of the security that a good adoptive family can achieve, but we must assess each child’s situation on its merits.

To meet the expectation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, we must wherever possible ensure that the child is an active participant in their future. We have heard how often children felt that things were being done to them rather than with them. The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea has recently introduced an advocacy service to ensure that children can be properly heard and their views incorporated into decisions at the child protection conference stage. That is a good deal earlier than family conferences. When the child is old enough, it is essential that their views are known. The NCB only yesterday published a report, Time to Listen, showing how advocacy can enhance children’s involvement. If we are to get the placements right, including adoption, we must know what the children think and feel. It does not necessarily mean that that will the right plan, but how can you make a good professional assessment without listening to the children? Recent events in Oxford surely illustrate what happens when they are not heard. I wonder what else the Government are doing to encourage child participation and advocacy.

I repeat: a week in the life of a child can be a lifetime. Whatever path we take to ensure that each child has a happy and secure permanent placement must be found with skill and application. I look forward to the Children and Families Bill and to the Minister’s response to the issues raised today, but I ask him and his colleagues to remember that, while leaving a child in an unsafe situation and without adequate support can be a death sentence, removing a child from parents is for them a life sentence. Those difficult decisions, keeping the child always at the centre of consideration, require professionals who can deliver what the Government in partnership with local authorities need to do. It is practice rather than legislation that will make the difference. I hope to hear what the Government are going to do to ensure that that practice is adequate.

Childcare Ratios

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Thursday 9th May 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

They will drop if nurseries are able to employ staff on ratios which enable them to operate more efficiently. There are providers in France who provide higher-quality childcare at more affordable rates because they are able to offer these flexible staffing ratios. More efficient providers may well be able to produce cheaper prices.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I was a social worker of some years, having begun my career in children’s departments. At that time, more children were cared for by minders than are now—the ratios were different. Certainly, the ratios have swung back and forth. Will the Minister look carefully at the evidence which shows that children need a certain ratio of carers of good-quality training in order to gain the stimulation they need to go on into the education establishment where they will benefit from their learning? If the Minister is looking at other jurisdictions, I ask him to look particularly at the different training and pay of carers. Although our care is expensive, there are other reasons for that expense. I agree entirely with the view that if we have a different ratio all that will happen is that child carers will charge the same and have more children, and we will have poorer childcare with less finance.

[Lord Nash]

We will look more carefully at the issues that the noble Baroness raises. I undertake to do that.