Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Howarth of Breckland and Baroness Wilkins

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I want briefly to say what I have said several times. If you have a package for education and health, you cannot fail to include the social care element. What I am hoping is that the Minister will give the same answer that he has just given on my previous point—that such provision is contained in the Care Bill. Having looked at the progress made in the way that these services are delivered, that Bill will ensure that the social care element can be provided along with the health element. That is really important because the three are inseparable in the provision of services, particularly for very severely disabled young people. I therefore hope that the answer will be that such provision is already there in another piece of legislation.

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, I, too, add my support for the amendment. For this system to be truly joined up, all parts of the education, health and care plan need to be enforceable; otherwise, social care will be, as has been described, the poor cousin—the element within the EHC plan that will be considered to be of least importance. This is of concern to a wide range of children and young people with SEN and disabilities. We know that parents, too, are concerned about this; in fact, more than 1,000 people have written to the Minister on the issue and asked the Government to ensure that social care will be an equal partner in education, health and care plans. I am therefore encouraged to learn that the Government are looking into the issue in more detail. I very much welcome this and look forward to the Minister’s response.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Howarth of Breckland and Baroness Wilkins

Wednesday 30th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Wilkins (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 104, which returns to the issue of funding. The amendment would require local authorities to include information about funding for SEN provision within their local offers.

I set out at the last meeting of the Grand Committee the concerns of the National Deaf Children’s Society, RNIB, Sense and many other charities that local authority spending cuts will fatally undermine this Bill. In her reply the Minister undertook to propose to her “far more significant” noble friend that their department might discuss this matter with the organisations concerned. I look forward to hearing whether any progress has been made.

In her reply to me in Grand Committee, at column GC 545, the Minister assured me that the Government were not cutting services for deaf children and set out the funding situation. However, we know from the National Deaf Children’s Society Stolen Futures report that many local authorities are already cutting support services for children with SEN. The society found that 29% of local authorities will be cutting specialist support services for deaf children this year.

The Government have argued that the Bill will improve transparency and accountability and that it is this which will enable parents to ensure that their local authority provides the services that their children need. However, on looking at the Bill and at the draft regulations and guidance underpinning it, nothing that I can see would require local authorities to be more transparent about the funding. If the local offer is intended to bring together all the relevant information about SEN provision in one place, in a way that is easy to understand, accessible and improves accountability, surely it must include information about funding. Without that parents will be powerless.

The local offer must give parents clear information about how much funding has been allocated by the authority to support children and young people with SEN; it must allow and empower parents to compare local authority spending; and it must allow parents to identify if cuts have been made from year to year. There is a clear need for transparency. The National Deaf Children’s Society had great difficulties in extracting reliable information about funding of specialist support services for deaf children from the local authorities.

In 2012, 49 local authorities—nearly a third—did not respond to freedom of information requests on budgets for deaf children’s services within the legal deadline. One local authority did not respond until six months later, and only after the Information Commissioner’s Office intervened. Its response confirmed a cut to the education service for deaf children. However, as this was not disclosed until so long afterwards, parents were denied any opportunity to legally challenge this decision before it had been implemented.

This is the battle that the parents and charities must face. If the Government were to accept this amendment and require local authorities to publish information about funding in the local offer in an easy and accessible way, it would certainly give parents and charities real leverage to get the services that they need.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)]

My Lords, I support the noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins. At the end of the last debate that we had on this Bill, I asked the Minister to explain how the extra funding that would be made available actually would reach those who needed it. She said that she would write to me. I do not know if I have missed that letter or whether there has not yet been time to produce it; however, I look forward to it.

I think that it is quite complicated, but I want to ask for something in relation to the way that local authorities are struggling to meet their commitments at present. I think that I said then that it is far easier if parents understand what is and is not available and are not misled into thinking that they can have more than is possible, rather than having massive aspirations. Of course I wish that the local authorities had funding to meet every child’s needs, but if that is not possible I think that it needs to be clear.

I move on to my Amendment 107, which is grouped curiously with this amendment. It would be far simpler for the Government to accept and implement. It relates to personal budgets. On page 25, line 2, I would like to insert,

“arrangements to assist young people and parents in managing a personal budget should they choose one”.

Personal budgets have been a great liberator for many adults and families, but for others they have caused extraordinary difficulty. Those of us who work in both the adult and children’s fields have seen in the adult field how many people have found extraordinary problems in managing employment and the financial complexities of budgets. Families are making it clear that they require support to manage personal budgets, and parents with experience of direct payments have spoken of difficulties that they have had in finding, recruiting and CRB-checking good staff, managing money and transactions with the local authority, identifying quality services to purchase, and co-ordinating a package of care. Currently, only 25% of local authorities provide key workers to help manage payments. I find that extraordinary. This leaves families to manage the often burdensome responsibilities of direct payments alone. I hope that discussion around this amendment will help us to better understand the Government’s thinking about the support that they envisage local authorities will provide for those families who opt for personal budgets. Does the Minister accept that all families should have some access to support?

I have a quick case study. As you know, on the whole I do not go in for detailed anecdotes, but I think that this story really does illustrate the issue. Oscar lives in north London with his parents and two siblings. He is about to turn 18. He has autism and learning difficulties. His parents have been receiving direct payments to pay for respite care for the last eight years. His mother explains how difficult it can be to find the right support to buy with direct payments, and to “jump through hoops” to account for them:

“16 months ago our local council agreed to pay for one weekend’s respite care each month, but it has taken a considerable amount of time to agree how to provide this. It has only been in the last two months that we’ve actually been able to use the direct payments to get the support we need.

As Oscar was approaching adulthood, it seemed appropriate for us to try to find him a residential placement for his respite breaks. We hoped that this would help equip him with additional independence skills and that he would enjoy spending time in a new environment. However, when we visited local options it was clear that they were not able to meet Oscar’s complex needs. We decided that the weekend respite would have to take place in our home.

Oscar needs two-to-one support and in a house with two other children this is a challenge to accommodate.

Having two extra adults in our home for a whole weekend has a significant impact on all of us and is confusing for Oscar who wants to spend time with us. But it’s not only space that is the issue. Knowing where to find suitable staff who are equipped to support Oscar has always been difficult, and to cover a whole weekend at least four staff are needed.

I had asked the Council for a list of local carers which they said they would provide, but this never arrived. It is a huge and stressful burden for parents, who already have more than enough to cope with, to have to recruit, interview and train up staff themselves. We are always vulnerable to staff leaving after a few months for better paid work, leaving Oscar very unsettled and us totally unsupported.

For many years I didn’t know who to talk to at the Council about any aspect of this as Oscar didn’t have a named social worker and no one would return my calls. As Oscar is now approaching his 18th birthday, he has now been allocated a social worker and this has made a big difference. However, for many years we felt we were floundering on our own, receiving the occasional official letter threatening action because of some perceived fault on our part.

The Council have now agreed to employ Dimensions, a not-for-profit organisation who specialise in providing services for people with learning difficulties and autism. Together we are now trying to recruit and train a team of four so that we will always have support, even if staff are ill or on holiday”.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Eaton, is not alone in having some reservations about setting minimum standards as they may well stifle innovation and individual programmes. Perhaps more thought could be given between now and Report to how we ensure that local authorities provide a range of services. I know that the code says quite a lot about this. My great worry is that if you do not have something which can be inspected and monitored, and an expectation of a range of services, some local authorities might end up with very little indeed in their local offer—and it will be a postcode lottery. There is a real dilemma in how you maintain that flexibility yet ensure that families have something they can turn to which is monitored by either Ofsted or the Care Quality Commission. It would be quite useful to give some thought to this between now and Report so that we can come up with a better solution than a rigid framework, but with something ensuring that the services are there.

[Baroness Wilkins]

My Lords, belatedly, I will speak to Amendment 118 and in support of Amendments 112, 113 and 114. I will be brief because most of what I was to say has been said. The aim of Amendment 118 is to improve accountability around the local offer by requiring local authorities to meet basic expectations around provision for children with special educational needs. This issue is particularly acute, as we have heard, for children with low incidence special educational needs because local authorities are often ignorant of the support that these children need.

A number of organisations, including the National Deaf Children’s Society, the RNIB and Sense, are concerned that the Bill is extremely weak on overall accountability, particularly on the local offer, with a system that relies solely on the parents of children with sensory impairments—many of whom are, as we have heard, busy being parents. A system that relies on them policing it across all 152 local authorities is not likely to deliver the significant change that many of these children need here and now. Other noble Lords have also spoken on the need for increased accountability.