Schools: Curriculum
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Massey of Darwen
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether free schools and faith schools will be required to deliver a broad and balanced curriculum which addresses the needs of all pupils.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question in the name of my noble friend Lady Massey at her request. She has had an accident and sends her apologies today.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, perhaps the noble Baroness could send a message to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, that we wish her a speedy recovery.
All mainstream academies and free schools, whether they be faith schools or non-faith schools, must deliver a broad and balanced curriculum. That is a non-negotiable element of their funding agreements. Other state-funded schools, including faith schools, must also deliver the national curriculum and a broad and balanced education for their pupils, as specified in Section 78 of the Education Act 2002.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I thank the Minister for that reply and will pass on the good wishes that he has expressed in the House to my noble friend Lady Massey.
Is the Minister aware that, in the light of concerns over many months about the extent of new risks to young people from social media, the internet and grooming, Members across the House and in the other place, schools, children’s organisations and now even Nick Clegg and the Daily Telegraph are calling on the Government to update the guidance to schools on the sex and relationship education curriculum, which was first issued in 2000? Would that not be eminently sensible, and can the Minister tell the House why the Secretary of State has refused to do so?
Lord Nash
My Lords, we looked at that recently during the PSHE review and concluded that the SOE curriculum provides a good foundation on which teachers can build. We trust teachers to deliver the education that pupils need and adjust it for the modern world. Technology is moving very fast, and we do not think that constant changes to the regulations and top-down diktats are the way to deal with this.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(10 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, I will not dwell on this because it rehearses a theme that we spent a great length of time on in discussing Part 1 of the Bill—that is, the importance for children, when their families break up or they are taken into care, of keeping in contact with their birth family as appropriate, particularly with their siblings. The Minister was not the Minister discussing the Bill with us when we talked about Part 1. Therefore, he did not hear the strength of feeling across the Committee on this issue, which was such that the Minister—the noble Lord, Lord Nash—acknowledged it and agreed to take the issue of sibling contact back and look at it. So I hope, when the Minister sums up, that I will not need to rehearse the arguments; I hope he will take that on trust and, similarly, look at it with his colleague, the Minister in the Department for Education, and come back on Report.
The amendment is, however, different from the amendment that we talked about in relation to Part 1. It would require the court, at the stage of considering permanence for a child, to pay particular attention to any siblings and where they are, and to continued contact between siblings when making or approving the permanence plan for a child through a care order. Amendment 65 would therefore insert “and sibling placement arrangements” after “provisions”. It is very important that this issue is considered not only by social workers and professionals, as we discussed when we looked at the amendment to Part 1, but particularly at the court stage. Clause 15, as it is worded, does not include arrangements for siblings to be placed together where possible. It does not include anything that requires the court specifically to consider the arrangements for brothers and sisters.
It is essential that this is considered at the court stage because after that, while there are a number of possible opportunities for detailed arrangements in permanence plans to be considered, there are none really to go back and address this issue. Independent reviewing officers, for example, do not have the same authority as the courts to scrutinise care plans and they cannot take the matter back to court directly if they consider that the care plan is deficient in one way or another. They can only refer the matter to a CAFCASS officer who can then maybe bring a claim on behalf of the child if they consider that there are grounds for judicial review or a free-standing claim under the Human Rights Act. In practice, as I am sure Members can appreciate, that power is rarely used. Therefore, it is very important to get these issues about continued sibling contact right in at the front end when the courts are asked to scrutinise the arrangements for permanence when thinking about a care plan.
I will not rehearse all the arguments as to why that is important. I suspect the Minister may appreciate them. I will, though, rehearse one statistic that we used in the previous debate. I hope that the Minister will not say that the courts will do this anyway. The figures that we looked at then suggested that some 63% of children who go into care and have siblings who go into care lose contact with those siblings. Clearly, at various points in the process—in court, through social workers, through the placements—contact is being broken for the vast majority of children who go into care as part of a sibling group. I hope that the Minister will be prepared to look at this and respond positively to it. I beg to move.
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 Hughes of Stretford
I thank the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for their important contributions. I thank the Minister for that response; I am grateful that he will look at this issue again. However, I have a couple of comments that I hope he will take with him.
The Minister said that Clause 15 is about the court looking at the permanence provisions. Many people would argue that such is the importance to young people of continued contact between siblings—not necessarily joint placements, which may not be possible, but particularly if they are not possible, then arrangements for them to keep in contact with each other—that when it comes to permanence provisions it has a unique relevance to the stability of the placement, the well-being of the child and the security that the child feels. It means that the child in that placement, as the noble and learned Baroness graphically conveyed from her conversations with young people, does not have that placement clouded by anxiety and concern about where brothers and sisters are. This is a unique detail in the whole panoply of details that have to be considered in permanence placements.
I say this with great respect for the Minister but, frankly, I do not accept the argument that to include the provision to require judges to ask the question—that is all that is being asked here—would delay proceedings. That sounds like a very official argument, and it is a weak one. In the amendment we simply suggest, as the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, said, that the judge should ask, “Does this child have any siblings? If so, where are they, what are the plans, are they going to be placed together and, if not, what contact is being arranged for them?”. If the judge started the consideration with those simple questions, I do not think that that would precipitate any delay at all but it would elevate the issue to an importance that would require the professionals dealing with the detail then to have to consider the detail and, if necessary, reply to the court about what arrangements they had made for sibling conduct. With that clarification of what we are seeking here, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Nash (Con)
My Lords, this is our first debate on Part 3, and it has been excellent and extensive. I should particularly like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, for her opening remarks. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed and shared their great experience and expertise. I am also grateful to those who have taken time over the summer to help me, as the new boy, to understand the issues and the history in this area, particularly the noble Lords, Lord Low, Lord Rix and Lord Ramsbotham, the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and my noble friends Lady Cumberlege, Lady Eaton and Lord Storey.
Before moving my Amendments 241A and 274 and respond to specific points in the debate, I hope that the Committee will find it helpful if I set out the context of our reform programme. Part 3 will deliver the biggest change to the system since the reforms that flowed from the report of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, in 1978. Her work transformed the lives of many children and young people, allowing them to enjoy the benefits that a high quality education can bring. We have seen other changes in law and society that have shaped this country’s view of disabled children, including such important legislation as the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 and the Equality Act 2010 and, of course, the great success of the Paralympics last year.
The changes we have seen for this group of children in our lifetimes and the challenges ahead were brought home strongly to me when I visited Chailey Heritage School with my noble friend Lady Cumberlege at the start of the school year. There I saw an institution that was founded out of charity to provide training in crafts to children born “crippled”, as it was termed then in the East End of London. Now it offers outstanding education, care and support to children and young people with the most profound and complex needs who, with excellent teaching, care and the aid of modern technology, are being supported to learn and to fulfil their great potential. Disabled children and children with special educational needs must all be treated first as individuals. They all have different needs. It is the Government’s concern, as I know it is of everyone in this room, to ensure that our services are supporting each of them and their families in the best way they possibly can.
I pay tribute to the work and legacy of the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, and to the tireless work of many of your Lordships in championing the rights of children with SEN and disabled children. I also know that I do not need to tell you that, despite all the successes of the past 30 years, the current system is not working as it should. Fundamentally, successful reform will be about a change of culture. As we all know, it is tempting to think that by legislating a word here and a new duty there we can solve complex issues. However, what matters is how professionals work with children and families. Many noble Lords here have direct experience of the struggles that families can face. All of us know people who have had to fight to get the support that their child needs, grappling a faceless and apparently endless bureaucracy in a system that seems set up not to help but to frustrate.
This reform aims to change that. Its simple but ambitious aim is to unite services around the needs of the family, putting children, young people and parents at its heart. Legislation cannot do that alone but the Bill sets the framework to support the right ways of working. The detail is in the code of practice, which I hope noble Lords have now had the opportunity to read. It has been informed by the experience of the pathfinders. They are showing how services can come together and how families can help share the available support. I hope that those noble Lords who were able to hear from some of the pathfinders last week found their experiences both helpful and encouraging. I was struck then, and on my visits to pathfinders in Greenwich and Hertfordshire, how they were working with families to develop support that meets their needs and the impact that that support and the new ways of working were having in a much more co-operative environment.
Turning to the definition of SEN, this group of amendments reflects concerns that some children and young people might miss out on the benefits of the new system. A great many noble Lords have spoken about this and I apologise if I do not mention them all by name. It is not the Government’s intention to prevent any group of disabled children from receiving the support they need. We must ensure that all children who need support to access education because of disability or a special educational need can do so. The definition of SEN is deliberately broad:
“A child or young person has special educational needs if he or she has a learning difficulty or disability which calls for special educational provision to be made for him or her”.
The Bill defines a learning difficulty or disability as,
“a significantly greater difficulty in learning than the majority of others of the same age, or … a disability which prevents or hinders”—
a child or young person—
“from making use of facilities”.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
On that point, I wonder if the Minister will accept—as we talked about when we met him this week, and based on the contributions from others today—that there is a degree of circularity in language and in practice around this definition. As we heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and others, very often the access to education and learning implications of a disability are not recognised by schools or local authorities as a special educational need and, under the definition of this Bill, if they are not recognised as a special educational need then they will not fall into the scope of the Bill. This is a big problem that everyone has been trying to clarify. I realise that it is very complex but we need to get to the hub of this. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain, outside the circularity of this language, why the Government are excluding the kind of young people that the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, and others were referring to.
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is right that the definition has not substantially changed. Our position is that most disabled children—75%, according to one study—have a special educational need, and the others are covered by other legislation, particularly after the amendment that we tabled today. I would be grateful for guidance on those categories of children that we may have missed and how we could help them further.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
On that point, I think that it would be helpful, if we are to help the Minister, if he could first tell us which other legislation he thinks covers the other 25%, and then we can think about which other groups might not be covered. Is it not anyway the case that what the Government are attempting to introduce here is a new integrated system with a local offer attached? That would still mean that 25% of children could not be avail themselves of the integrated provision in the new integrated system proposed under the Bill.
Lord Nash
The Equality Act, the Children Act and the NHS Act are the relevant legislation, but I will provide further details and more granularity on that. I repeat that the Bill is about educational needs—but we will go away to consider this further.
On categories of children who are not covered by existing legislation, the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, made the point about physiotherapy and missing school, among others. I would like to understand more about whether, in the modern day, children to which she referred would be covered by the Bill or existing legislation. In response to the concerns expressed by my noble friend Lord Storey about whether special educational provision includes provision to enable children to access education, the answer is yes. I will write to him with more details.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked whether the code of practice is intended to marry up with the Equality Act. The answer is that it does. We believe that it does—and we are clear that we must make appropriate links between SEN and the Equality Act duties in the code of practice, and are happy to look again at the scope for improving the draft code of practice on this.
Baroness Massey of Darwen (Lab)
My Lords, I support the amendments of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, in this group. They follow the original theme of the noble Lord, Lord Low. The amendment is intended simply to ensure that children are consulted about issues that affect them—in other words, the importance of listening to the voice of the child. I cannot help feeling that the amendments should be unnecessary, given the Government's stated position on the rights of the child. The coalition Government stated in December 2010 that they would give due consideration to the Convention on the Rights of the Child when developing new legislation and policy, while the Government's policy for youth supports the importance of involving children and young people, including those under 16, in decision-making processes. As the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities states that disabled children should be provided with assistance to help them participate in decision-making.
I turn briefly to an interesting global strategy on children’s commissioners published recently by UNICEF. I should declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF. There are two pithy quotations. The first is:
“Children’s participation in decisions that affect them is beneficial to both children and society. It helps strengthen children’s self-esteem and builds their capacity to contribute”.
The second quotation is:
“Participation is also a critical channel for accountability of decision makers at the local and national level”.
How much does that apply to children with special needs?
Successive Governments have become much better at seeking to involve children and young people in decisions that affect them. I am concerned about clauses, mentioned a moment ago by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that seem to exclude younger children from participating in decisions about special educational needs. We cannot make legislation involving children unless it is child-proofed. I shall not go through all the clauses where younger children are excluded from consultation—the noble Lord, Lord Storey, has already done that—but I want to make a few supplementary points. In a recent inquiry by the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Children, which I chair, children were very vocal about their wish to be consulted, whether in education, social care, medical care or the legal system.
Professionals involved in that inquiry who worked with children recognised the value of contributions from children and young people, including those with special educational needs. I have heard people say that children under 16, because of a lack of maturity or disability, cannot be capable of having a say in decisions. I cannot agree. As parents, grandparents or relatives of children, we have probably all experienced insights from children that have enabled us to make better decisions about their well-being. Children do not have to talk or write to contribute their views. I know of several initiatives that, in order to gain the views of children, have involved drawing, role-play or other non-verbal methods. Again, I think that the Government have not applied their commitment to listening to children in some clauses of the Bill. I hope that they will think again and remedy that.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I, too, support the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and supported by my noble friend Lady Massey. I shall also speak to our Amendments 120 to 122. Amendments 120 and 122 are similar to the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Storey: they insert the word “child” or “children” into Clause 32 but, as noble Lords have said, there are other clauses where children seem to be expressly excluded. Amendment 121 would extend the scope of the clause to ensure that information was provided to young people and their parents in a wide variety of ways, as listed in the amendment.
The Minister in the other place said that there was no need specifically to refer to children because the term “young people” includes children. The main issue here, which the Minister has to address in his or her reply, is that the Bill is completely inconsistent on this point. Clauses 32, 36 and 38 refer only to parents and young people. Clause 33 talks about children and young people in its title and throughout. The Minister may say, “Ah yes, but that’s not intentional and the code of practice makes it clear”. Unfortunately, the code of practice does not make it clear because the code is also inconsistent. It is a bit more consistent than the Bill because it talks more often about children and young people than the Bill, which chops and changes. Still, though, certain sections, which are not specifically related to people over the age of 16, talk about the engagement of young people, not children and young people.
So there is complete inconsistency throughout the wording of the Bill and the code of practice. If that is not intended, it should be corrected. If the Bill is enacted as it is, a local authority provider reading that legislation could reasonably assume that it was an intended distinction—a distinction that we have all said we would not support.
A number of people, including my noble friend Lady Massey and myself, have had a lot of experience in engaging quite young children and in producing child-friendly material that young children, including those with a learning disability, can engage with. You can get views and experiences from them that are very meaningful to service providers, and they should be captured. The Bill and the code of practice should be very clear that throughout its provisions it is children, young people and parents whose engagement we want to seek in the provisions, the review of the provisions, the experience of the provisions, the monitoring and so on.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I want to intervene briefly. We know that many children want to maintain contact with their natural family, even if they know that that family is chaotic. I absolutely support the amendments but my concern is that they do not push hard enough for support when the child initially goes into care. This builds on something that I was trying to say last week. Our responsibility ought to be to ensure that, while the child is in care, work none the less goes on with the natural parents so that an assessment can be made of whether they are capable of change and willing for change to take place. Our problem is that too often children who themselves have improved are then sent back home and no work is done with the parents before that happens. That is often why the placement breaks down again, and that is expensive—not just in monetary terms in trying to deal with that when the child comes back into care, but precisely because it adds to the damage that has already been done.
I chair an organisation in the north-east which does quite a lot of work with people who have addictions. We have a programme where we take mothers who are addicted into residential accommodation with their children. It is largely paid for by the National Health Service but we put a bit of our own money into it and we try to get some money from local authorities too. During the residential period, intensive parenting takes place and what happens to the children in that situation is also monitored extremely carefully. In that way, you really can make an assessment as to whether it is going to be feasible for the mother and her children to make it outside the care system.
One problem that was re-emphasised to us while we were on the adoption Select Committee is that very often parents who are encouraged or are made to put their children up for adoption because they are not capable of looking after them simply go and have other children. Our intervention with the Cyrenians in Newcastle is really trying to stop that by saying, “If you’re going to have another child then you’ve got to take the steps necessary to make sure that that child actually stands a chance”, so that there is not a wheel continually going round where they are saying, “If I can’t have that child then I’m going to have another child”, without any exit.
The Government really need to look at how we work with natural parents once the child has gone into care. If we can get better at that work, we may indeed be able to return children much more successfully and the support package being talked about in the amendments will then really bear fruit.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, briefly, I particularly support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in relation to Amendments 26 and 27. These amendments are important because, as she said, the statistics show us that the system is not working well for children who return home. While going home is the most common outcome for children in care, around half of them have to go back into care—sometimes more than once in this revolving-door pattern that can emerge—simply because there is not the good social work practice in relation to children returning home that we associate with other forms of childcare.
As the amendments address, there is not good assessment, good identification of need or provision of the necessary support services. There is also, very often, no continued monitoring of how that child is faring when they go home. That is the first point which the Government need to address: the statistics show us that it is not working when half the children who go home have to come back into care. That obviously not only damages them; as the research has shown, the costs of the consequence of coming back into care escalate because as children return from successive attempted reunifications, they are more damaged. The cost of caring for them in other placements then becomes that much greater. As the University of Loughborough has shown, as well as the social and moral imperative to try to reduce these failed reunifications there is, potentially, a financial benefit. If you can prevent the escalating cost of failed reunification, it makes financial sense as well and may in fact reduce costs to the local authority.
These amendments are about preventing further breakdown and damage to children. They are really about the good social work practice that should be going on but which we actually know is not, because reunification practice varies so widely across local authorities. The amendments would at least set a standard as to what should be required.
Viscount Eccles (Con)
I wonder whether the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, will tackle the question that she has just referred to. Is there anything in existing legislation—I do not know how many Acts there are but there are those of 1989, 2002 and 2004, and probably quite a few more—which prevents the favourable outcomes described so well by herself and by other Members of the Committee?
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, no doubt the Minister will enlighten us but what I am saying is that where local authorities have discretion around the quality of the social work practice that they will deliver to different groups of children, as they do, it means that some of those groups lose out. Demonstrably, by the statistics, it appears that children who are sent home from care are sometimes sent too early or without thorough assessment, do not necessarily get the ongoing support and are not monitored sufficiently. Those kinds of things happen with other cases—with child abuse cases, perhaps. However, it seems as if in many local authorities a decision is made that the child can go home but the focus of attention does not continue on to that child, which is more likely to result in breakdown.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
I shall comment briefly on what the noble Viscount said. One of the main issues is that the children and parents have no right in law to support—support is discretionary.
“(2A) In subsection (1), after paragraph (d) insert—
“(e) his siblings (whether of the whole or half blood).””
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I am sure that Members of the Committee will recall that last week we debated the importance of kinship care and, unless there are reasons why this should not happen, the importance of children in care keeping in touch with members of their biological family one way or another. This amendment rehearses some of those arguments. Indeed, the importance of family contact and strengthening the potential for family contact for children in care will be a theme that I will return to a number of times as we go through the Bill.
The effect of Clause 7 is to clarify the existing law that any decision by a local authority about allowing a child in care—under a care or emergency protection order—contact with the parents or some other family member is subject to the local authority considering whether such contact would place the child at risk of harm. Obviously that is essential and, although the law probably currently provides for that, we have no objection to it being clarified here in Clause 7.
However, we think that if the Government are serious about the importance of continued family contact, they should go further and require local authorities to give specific consideration to enabling children in care to remain in contact with their siblings. That is the purpose of Amendment 32. We know that sibling contact has not always been a priority for agencies—certainly not the priority that it seems to be for the children themselves. We think that there is a need for the Government to enshrine sibling contact as a priority in the legislation.
There are two main reasons why we think that. First, 63% of children in care whose siblings are also in the care system are separated from them, so the vast majority of children in care who have siblings in care as well are not together. Those living in children’s homes are much more likely to be separated from their siblings than those in foster care, yet the sibling relationship is often the longest relationship in a child’s life, potentially offering the stability that is often absent from other aspects of the life of a child in care. The second reason is understandable: it is that young people in care themselves feel strongly that they generally have too little contact with their siblings. Some 85% of children in care thought it important to keep siblings together, and over three-quarters thought that councils should help children and young people to keep in touch with their brothers and sisters.
This amendment would make that sibling contact a priority in social work practice. I think we can all understand why continued contact with your brothers and sisters when you are in care is fundamental, yet it seems now that in many cases—the majority—siblings are separated and risk losing that contact, stability and link to their biological heritage. I hope that the Minister will accept the amendment. I beg to move.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support the amendment. As I think I said at our previous sitting, when I chaired the adoption committee we had two meetings with children, one with looked-after children and the other with children who were or were about to be adopted. Each group made it absolutely clear, particularly younger children—the seven, eight, 10 or 12 year-old children—how important their siblings were. They said to us that siblings were more important to them than parents. Some of them would have liked to have seen their parents; they all wanted to see their siblings. It was so sad; one little boy said, “I’m so worried about my brother. I don’t know what’s happening to him. Nobody will tell me and I’m not allowed to see him. I wake up at night wondering how he’s getting on”. That is not acceptable for children. The amendment would alert everybody to the importance of siblings, which is why I support it.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, for raising this extremely important issue. The amendment gives me the opportunity to say that I have published draft regulations for your Lordships’ consideration. I completely agree that contact between siblings can be of great importance and extremely beneficial—this is not in dispute. However, I hear what the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, my noble friends Lady Hamwee, Lady Walmsley and Lady Benjamin, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, and the noble Lord, Lord May, have said. I am afraid that we do not agree that amending Section 34 is the right thing to do. The Family Justice Review recommended that the Government should consult on whether Section 34 should be amended, along the same lines as proposed in this amendment. We did just that. Drawing on the experience and knowledge of a number of experts, we agreed that amending the law was not the right thing to do, and that more work needed to be done to improve practice and facilitate positive contact between siblings.
When the child’s local authority is considering what contact there should be—whether with the child’s parents or siblings—the authority must ensure that it is consistent with safeguarding and promoting the child’s welfare. In doing so, the draft regulations require local authorities to have regard to the child’s care plan. We consider that that is the right approach. Current regulations already require local authorities to consider and review contact arrangements with siblings. Local authorities are under a duty to include in a child’s care plan details of how they will meet the child’s needs in relation to all family relationships. This includes arrangements for promoting and maintaining contact with siblings.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I wonder whether the Minister could develop his argument and try to convince us. First, what was the reason given by the respondents in that consultation as to why changing the law was not the best course of action? Secondly, picking up on the point made earlier by the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, why does the Minister think the current requirements on local authorities in the regulations, to which he is referring, are patently not working, as so many children in care are losing contact or are not placed with their siblings?
Lord Nash
I am grateful for the noble Baroness’s further question. We consulted a number of experts, including Dr Beth Neil, Fran Fonseca, Jack Smith, Linda Jones, Roger Morgan, Julie Selwyn and Alan Rushton. They felt that this was a matter of practice and that more work needed to be done to improve practice. I agree, and I share the noble Baroness’s concern about this. In the light of the feelings expressed today, it is a matter that we need to look at again, but our current thinking is that it is a matter of practice and not a question of changing the law.
When siblings are looked after but are not placed together, their individual care plan must set out the arrangements made to promote contact between them. The care plan must be reviewed regularly, which allows for the arrangements to be revised as the child’s circumstances change. Sibling contact is already provided for in the Children Act 1989, and the court must consider contact arrangements before making a care order. The looked-after siblings can apply to court for contact. We have specifically ensured that the court continues to consider contact arrangements through Clause 15.
As for the question about children in care homes, which was raised by my noble friend Lady Walmsley and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, I can give the commitment that we currently have a programme of work to look at how to improve the quality and support of practice in children’s homes. I shall ask my officials to look specifically at the issue of siblings being placed together as part of this work. It is true that Ofsted should look at how siblings are placed in children’s homes.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
First, I thank all colleagues who have contributed to this debate, because their contributions added considerable weight to my introduction. There was obvious support across the Committee for this amendment and the issue. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, were able to give us some direct testimony of children, and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, as ever, gave us her insight into what is going wrong with the system and why things are as they are.
I am pleased that the Minister said that he has heard the strength of feeling on this issue. He made two points in response. The first was that a number of experts had said that because this was a matter of practice, changing the law was not the right way to try to improve contact between siblings in those care cases. There is a dynamic relationship between the law and practice, is there not? We frequently set out what professionals ought to do in legislation. Yes, we may flesh it out further in regulation, but practice is often defined in legislation. His second point was that we already have regulations that require that. Clearly, they are not working when so many children in care—by accident, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, said; it is not intended—are by default losing contact with their brothers and sisters.
Baroness Morgan of Drefelin (CB)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, made a point about the age of 21. Noble Lords are sharing their experiences of parenting today, and the thought that my 21 year-old could be launched out into the world now fills me with anxiety. I feel that she is on a bit of elastic, will be coming back every so often and we will be there for her as things go on. I understand the evidence put very eloquently by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for this proposition, which I support. However, this is such an unusual opportunity that I wonder whether we should be saying 21 or 25. It might be pushing it slightly to say 25, but 21 seems so young. This is about making evidence-based policy, so I would be interested to know what the evidence is for the age of 21.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I do not want to delay the Committee but I want to make a few quick comments in support of this amendment. It is very dear to my heart, as I was Minister of State for Children when we instituted the pilots to which several noble Lords have referred. One reason we did that was because, in the White Paper we wrote at that time, I felt strongly that one of our guiding principles in going forward and trying to improve the situation for children in care—a view shared by members of the Committee—was that we should provide them, as far as possible, with the same opportunities that we would want for our own children. As so many noble Lords have said, we have seen a social change over the last 20 years in that our young adult children do not leave home at 16, 17 or 18. Even if they go to university, their bedroom is still there and they come back. They often come back after they have done their studies and they now do not leave home until, on average, their mid-twenties. When the state is the parent, we have to aspire to the same opportunity for those children for whom we are collectively responsible. This is one of the most compelling reasons why we should extend these pilots and make them national.
The benefits to the young people in the pilots have already been well expressed and I will not rehearse them. There is, of course, a cost. The Department for Education has estimated, on the basis of the pilots, that the cost of instituting Staying Put nationally would be £2.7 million. I know that it does not work out as an average because some local authorities have more children in care than others, but, on average, that is £18,000 per annum, per local authority—not per child or per placement: per local authority. So the costs, relative to the benefits, are very small and, as we have heard, there are additional savings to the state from some of the state-funded benefits and support that would have been reduced in the pilots.
The Minister in reply to the previous debate said that helping care leavers to stay in education and training was vital. He also said that when the legislation is being changed, we need evidence of impact. I put it to the Minister that this particular proposal satisfies both of those criteria. If we were in government, and if we are in government again, this is something we would definitely be looking at to see if we could fund because the costs relative to the benefits are also small. I hope the Minister will consider this favourably.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity to debate the important subject of how local authorities support care leavers. I fully understand concerns raised by noble Lords, including the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, the noble Baronesses, Lady Young, Lady Massey, Lady Morgan and Lady Howarth, the noble Lord, Lord Ponsonby, and my noble friends Lord Storey, Lady Howe and Lady Walmsley, and many external parties about the ongoing support for care leavers. As the noble Earl has said, we have had the opportunity of discussing this matter privately on a couple of occasions recently. I look forward to further discussions with him on this matter as he knows I also feel strongly on this subject.
We have emphasised the importance of staying put in revised statutory guidance, because we recognise that for many young people the ability to stay on with their former foster carers, particularly when they are in further and higher education, is the right decision. The Minister for Children and Families wrote to all directors of children’s services last October, encouraging them to prioritise their staying put arrangements, so that all young people who wanted to could benefit from this provision. I accept there is more to do. Naturally we are disappointed that the 2013 statistical returns from local authorities show only a marginal increase in young people in staying put provision. However, we should recognise that these figures collected by local authorities are a snapshot at 19 and they run only until March 2013, so there is not much time to see the impact of the actions we have taken since 2012. Moreover, they do not tell us about the number of young people who might be benefiting from this provision from the age of 18, and who will leave this arrangement before they turn 19. From next year the department will be collecting data at age 18, 20 and 21, and will be able to see from 2014 how many young people are benefiting from this provision before and after the age of 19.
Our approach is and has been to improve practice. We are continuing to look for ways to promote and encourage this. We have already worked with Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs and the Department for Work and Pensions to issue practical guidance on staying put to help carers and local authorities around tax and benefit issues. As I have already said, the revised Ofsted inspection framework that comes into practice in November has a specific focus on the quality of leaving care services. A focus on the care leaver assessment will be on accommodation, and inspectors will consider staying put opportunities. Being able to stay in placements beyond 18 is mentioned within one of the grade descriptors of the care leavers’ judgement. We will monitor closely the reports on these inspections and feedback from care leavers, and expect to see significant improvements in 2014 and 2015 in the number of young people staying put. In addition, through our work with the National Care Advisory Service, my department will encourage local authorities to share effective practice where they are making good progress in this respect. While doing everything that we can to promote staying put, we must recognise that this sort of provision will not be appropriate for all young people. Care leavers, like their peers, have different needs, and attitudes regarding their transition to adulthood. The crucial point is that young people should be offered a range of placements that are safe and suitable, and meet their individual needs. I want to reassure noble Lords that the Government want to encourage all looked-after children to stay in care until they are 18 and beyond, where this is the right choice for them. We want to do everything we can for all care leavers.
I recognise the strength of feeling expressed today, and wish to take the issue away to consider further what more we can do to increase the numbers of young people in staying-put arrangements. I understand that noble Lords feel there is a case that all we are doing is not enough. I have asked my officials to work further with the Fostering Network and others on this issue. The noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, mentioned a figure of £2.5 million, which is no longer our view of the figure, although it is a figure that the Fostering Network has recently come up with. We believe the figure is considerably higher, but we will be working with the Fostering Network to see if we can pin this figure down further. I would be pleased to discuss this issue further with the noble Earl over the coming weeks.
I hope that what I have said reassures noble Lords of our commitment to this issue and I therefore urge the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, the noble Baroness, Lady Young, and my noble friends Lady Sharp and Lady Walmsley not to press their amendment.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(10 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, may I welcome the Minister to the first meeting of his first Bill Committee? I thank him for the opportunity to discuss some of these issues in advance. I hope that all of us together can build on the commitments that we made at Second Reading to make these provisions as good as possible because they affect some of the most vulnerable children.
Part 1, as we know, concerns adoption. Clause 1 would enable agencies, as the Minister said, to place a child in a fostering for adoption placement. This would apply to any child coming into care for whom a family placement is not possible and before any decision to move towards adoption has been approved by the adoption panel or the court through a placement order. We certainly share the Government’s concern that where adoption is the best option for a child, any delay in matching and placing the child should be reduced to a minimum. We share the Government’s overall intention. I am also pleased that the Government have listened to the debate on kinship care and brought forward Amendment 1 today, which addresses that issue.
In introducing the amendments from the Opposition Front Bench, I would point out that some of the amendments were placed in respect of the original Clause 1. Those are Amendments 4, 6, 8 and 9. Since then, we have seen the Government’s Amendment 1 and we have tabled further amendments, Amendments 2, 3 and 10. It is to those more recent amendments that I am predominantly speaking at the moment.
While welcoming the Government’s amendment, I still think there needs to be further improvement to the measures proposed in two important respects. The first is kinship care, by which I mean care by a relative, friend or other person connected with the child, as defined by Section 22C(6)(a) of the Children Act 1989. The requirement in government Amendment 1 to consider kinship care as a first step appears to be—I will listen carefully to what the Minister says about this—a weaker prescription than that in subsection (7) of the current legislation, which requires local authorities not just to consider, but to give preference to, kinship placements where they are possible. Furthermore, Amendment 1 still disapplies subsections (7) to (9) in their entirety. These are requirements in the current legislation to place the child near their home, not to disrupt education or training, to enable siblings to live together, to accommodate any disability the child has and to be within the local authority’s area. We think that those are all sensible requirements that enhance the stability of the placement for the child. Therefore, our Amendment 3 simultaneously requires that stronger requirement on kinship care to take preference and retains those other criteria for placement, including keeping siblings together.
However, even with the current legislation, many people share a strong belief that local authorities could do more to explore the potential for kinship care, so Amendment 10 proposes the introduction of pre-proceedings work and family group conferences, designed to ensure that, at an early stage and in a systematic way, the family is encouraged to identify possibilities for the child within the wider family network.
It is easy to understand why family members might not initially come forward at an early stage to suggest options without such structures and support. They might be concerned not to upset the parents who are—obviously, by definition—their relatives. Many often feel, certainly, that they have to wait for the decision of the court as to whether the child is free for adoption, but by then it is too late. Therefore, Amendment 10 would build into the process an early examination under professional guidance of kinship care possibilities.
Our second concern about the clause, as it would be if amended by government Amendment 1, is about the extension of fostering for adoption placements potentially for all children coming into care through whatever route. As currently formulated, Amendment 1 would require the local authority to consider a fostering for adoption placement for every child for whom kinship care was not possible.
I am very much in favour, as we all are, of reducing delay in achieving quality alternative permanent placements for children who need them. I have supported the development of concurrent planning adoption, which is the template for fostering for adoption placements. Concurrent placement has undoubtedly been beneficial for the children placed early on with foster carers approved to adopt. However, we need to be clear that concurrent planning has so far been used only for babies under two born into families where it is already well known that the parents have serious and chronic problems, such as long-standing drug addiction, which interfere with their ability to parent, and who have often already had to relinquish previous children.
In the pilot run by Thomas Coram that the Minister mentioned, 61% of the children were referred for concurrent planning placement at or at about birth and 95% were under one year old, so this is a very special group. In the 11 years of that pilot, only 59 children were placed by this method, so carefully selected are the children for very good reasons. Of those 59, two were returned to the birth family and 57 were adopted, with their original foster carers having been approved for adoption, and they had very good outcomes. However, opening up to the whole diverse range of children coming into care a model conceived specifically for a very small and tightly drawn group of babies seems to be dubious, not least because there is no evidence base as to the possible outcomes for children and families with different characteristics, particularly for older children.
Most particularly, the requirement to consider a fostering for adoption placement would apply also to children placed into care voluntarily by their parents under Section 29 of the Children Act. By definition, these parents have not relinquished their children for adoption, nor have the local authorities applied for a care order. I do not think it is appropriate even to consider placing such children on a pathway to adoption without the fully informed and independently witnessed consent of the parents, as is required by current legislation. That is why our Amendment 2 would make it clear that the requirement to consider a fostering for adoption placement would apply only to children for whom the local authority had a care order. Indeed, I think that the unintended consequences of not exempting from this requirement children who come into care voluntarily may be to deter parents in the future from approaching local authorities with a view to voluntarily placing a child into care when they are in difficulty.
Briefly, there are a number of other issues on which we should like to hear the Minister’s views before deciding whether the Bill might need further amendment on Report. The main issue is that there is still a lack of clarity, including in the draft guidance that the Minister helpfully issued last week, as to when in the process a local authority may be judged to be considering adoption. We welcome the intention outlined in the guidance to require the director of children’s services to approve a decision to use a fostering for adoption placement and to inform parents and prospective adopters in writing. However, as the draft guidance makes very clear, the local authority will be required to consider a fostering for adoption placement even when the first priority for that child is to be rehabilitated with the birth parents. I think that that is very questionable. When will considering adoption come into play? The guidance says that this will vary from case to case. That is not nearly tight enough and a defined trigger may be needed, possibly as suggested in the amendment tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee.
Secondly, there is very little emphasis in the guidance on matching. Thinking about fostering for adoption placements, that is a very important issue. It is worth noting that under the current arrangements it is very often during the fostering phase that detailed knowledge about the child comes to light with professional and expert foster carers. They may learn additional things about a child’s disability or behavioural problems, or the child may disclose experiences to the foster carers that were not previously known, and all this goes into the matching process to try to ensure that the adoptive placement, when it occurs, is as secure as possible. I am concerned that in a fostering for adoption placement, outside of the narrow range of the babies I talked about, of whom knowledge is probably pretty full, issues may come to light during that placement that deter those potential adopters currently fostering a child from proceeding with the placement any further because of the nature of the issues that come to light.
Finally, there is an important issue of timely planning for permanency across all alternative permanent options and I regret that the Bill as it stands does not say very much about those other options. However, we look forward to hearing the Minister’s response on these issues. I beg to move
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I thank all noble Lords for their contributions to the debate on this important subject, many of which were contributions from positions of considerable expertise and experience in this field, working with children, families and foster carers, and on adoptions. I will not rehearse those contributions as Members of the Committee have heard them. In concluding this debate, perhaps I may draw some threads from them.
I am very grateful for the support of the noble Baronesses, Lady Hamwee and Lady Walmsley, and my noble friends Lady Massey and Lord Ponsonby, particularly their support for Amendment 10. The noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, asked me some specific questions about the phrase,
“unless emergency action is required”.
That is just a reference to the fact that in situations of urgent child protection it may not be possible to make these offers. She also asked me a technical question about the implications for Section 47 of the Children Act, and I would like to get back to her on that if I may.
However, I think all those contributions testify to the importance of trying to maximise the possibility of kinship care and of recognising that, while at the moment the law requires that local authorities give preference to such an option, the reality is that—often for very good reasons, as I and others outlined—those possibilities often become evident, if at all, too late in the judicial process to act upon them. That is why Amendment 10 specifies pre-proceedings work. It is important that that is done in a structured way under the stewardship of an experienced professional. It involves handling very difficult issues within the family, and family group conferencing has been proven to be the safest way to do that.
I would say to the Minister that Amendment 10 does not in fact make offering those pre-proceedings activities and family group conferencing compulsory; it would simply require local authorities to offer them in those circumstances. Therefore, it does not put a compulsion on that issue at all.
While we are on kinship care, the Minister—and perhaps he could write to me about this—did not clarify whether the Government’s wording in the amendment is a weaker prescription for local authorities than the current legislation; that is, whether the requirement for local authorities to “consider” the kinship care option is weaker than “giving preference to”, as specified in Section 22C(6)(a) of the Children Act 1989. Perhaps he could clarify for the Committee in writing whether he regards the current formulation in Amendment 1 as a weaker prescription, because that was one of our most important points.
I turn to the points about fostering for adoption. Again, I am grateful for the contributions from, in particular, the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, my noble friend Lady Armstrong and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. They speak from great experience. My noble friend Lady Armstrong made a point, which echoed my own, about concurrent planning. At the moment, it is restricted. You see adverts in newspapers and in the trade press from local authorities offering concurrent planning, and it is all for babies aged nought to two. Coram has a restriction of age two. In fact, the evidence that I cited showed that in practice 95% of babies who have been referred and placed through that route have been under one year old. This is not a situation in which one can imagine that a seven or eight year-old or a teenager will present the same issues. A great deal is already known about the babies who have been placed by that route. They are very young, so they are unlikely to have a lot of negative experiences as older children may have done, and there is therefore a great deal of certainty from the outset about the child whom the fostering for adoption parents are taking on. That would not be the case with older children or children who are known to have had difficult experiences.
The Minister responded to the question of whether we should have a specific trigger for fostering for adoption placements. In relation to that, one issue that we have not touched on is: what is the perspective of the foster carer approved to adopt in all this? Certainly at the moment, the foster carer approved to adopt is hoping for an adoption.
When it comes to placing children, a direction of travel and a change of culture are being signalled here. Putting all children on a pathway for potential adoption is not appropriate. It would be putting children on a pathway to adoption; that is what the adopters themselves hope will be the outcome of this. As my noble friend Lady Armstrong and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, have said, once cases get to court, judges will be very reluctant to disrupt a situation that they feel a child has become accustomed to and embedded in, where they have started to develop relationships.
Secondly, the Minister replied to the comment, “What does ‘consider’ mean?”, by rehearsing the arguments in the draft guidance that it can mean different things to different local authorities in relation to different children. Another way of saying that is that it can mean almost anything at any time. I worry about that, because for the local authority to have to consider a fostering adoption placement for all children, including those going into care voluntarily, is a very serious change. He said that adoption might be one of several options; there might be a list of options and adoption might be on it. Why, then, if there is a list of options, is fostering for adoption the one that the local authority has to consider first? That is the effect of the Government’s amendment.
The comment that concerned me most was what the Minister said about matching. He said—I wrote this down and I hope I have got it right—that in a fostering for adoption placement, the local authority is not required to consider matching in the same way as it does for adoption. If the fostering for adoption placement looks like it might proceed to adoption, then it will undertake the formal matching process—by which time the child will have been there for perhaps six, nine or 18 months. Given that this is supposed to be a device to minimise disruption to children and to place them early with parents with whom they may remain if they cannot return home, that seems to be totally counterproductive. I urge the Minister to think again, certainly in framing the guidance, about what is said about matching. Clearly, if children can stay in a placement that started out as fostering for adoption, then matching needs to take place right at the outset, otherwise there is a real danger that children may then be moved.
I do not feel that I can say we have had a lot of assurance from the Minister on the points raised so far. I hope that he will reflect further on the points that Members have made and on the amendments put forward, and will come back to us before Report with some further thoughts. We will be thinking about what we may want to bring forward on Report ourselves, and it may be that we can come to some consensual agreement on some of these issues. With that, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 14 to 17 in my name in relation to Clause 3, which, as we have heard, grants the Secretary of State a new power to direct local authorities to outsource their adopter recruitment services to another local authority or to a registered adoption agency by amending the relevant part of the Adoption and Children Act 2002. We understand that the driver for the Government seeking these powers is to tackle the shortage of people approved to adopt. Certainly, we share this starting point with the Government.
I listened with great interest to the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, and it is clear that there is deep concern about these provisions and where they might be taking adopter recruitment services in the future. For me, that is the key issue, as I will explain. I have no disagreement in principle with the power for the Secretary of State to intervene in individual underperforming local authorities as in subsection (3)(a) of new Section 3A under Clause 3. As a Minister, I issued many such directions. Indeed, my first point is that there already are substantial powers of intervention, including the ability of the Government to outsource services when local authorities are underperforming. Perhaps the Minister will explain why these powers in subsection (3)(a) are necessary.
However, it is difficult to see how intervening in an individual local authority can solve or address the wider problem of the national shortage of potential adopters, which brings me to the powers under subsection (3)(b) and (3)(c) and where our concerns lie. Those powers would give the Secretary of State the power to remove responsibility for adopter recruitment either from entire categories of local authorities or from all local authorities at a stroke completely.
There are both practical reasons and reasons of principle why those two powers are problematic. First, on the practical reasons, local authorities currently recruit and approve about 80% of adopters. Moving many or all local authorities from this task would seriously compromise the adoption system when there is already an acknowledged shortage of adopters.
Secondly, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, elegantly pointed out, the voluntary and not-for-profit sector has made it clear that it does not have the capacity to take on the recruitment of the numbers of adopters that would be needed. The third reason is very important. Given that local authorities would retain responsibility for the placement of children and for seeing them through to adoption, it seems to me to be wholly undesirable that they should have no stake in the adopter recruitment process. We actually want local authorities to be more willing to use adopters approved by other agencies. This is more likely to happen if local authorities retain some responsibility for recruitment and are still part of the adoption system so there are some strong, practical reasons that I would like the Minister to address.
In discussion with the Minister this week, he said that the problem of adopter shortage was not in any case primarily one of underperformance by individual local authorities. In his view this was system failure at the national level, particularly because of the disincentives for local authorities to recruit more adopters than they need for their own individual populations and the reluctance, as he perceived it, of agencies to work collaboratively. Again, there have been really positive moves in that direction, as the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, pointed out, albeit perhaps recently. That might be so: it might be system failure, as the Minister said, and if the Government wish to review adopter recruitment and propose a radically different system, they are of course entirely free to do so. But if the Government wish to come forward with a new system that would take responsibility for adopter recruitment away from local authorities and give it to some new or different kind of agency, I put it to the Minister that they should come to Parliament with those proposals now for wider scrutiny and debate.
My objections to subsections (3)(b) and (3)(c) are therefore fundamentally ones of principle. It seems quite wrong to go partway along that path to pave the way for wholesale outsourcing or privatisation of adopter recruitment through the negative resolution procedure set out here without spelling out for Members what the endgame here is. I asked the Minister whether he had a vision of where he would like these services to end up and he said no, he did not. However, I cannot see the point of the power in subsection (3)(c) unless the Government have at least some desire, if not the intention, to move towards providing the recruitment of adopter services in a very different way.
In our view, the powers in subsections (3)(b) and (3)(c) are a step too far unless the Government set out their further vision. Our Amendment 14 would delete them from the clause. Amendments 15, 16 and 17 would address the issues that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, raised were the Government to retain the ability simply to intervene in an individual authority by instituting: that it should be by the affirmative resolution procedure; for the Secretary of State to give reasons for direction and to allow the authority to ask for a review; and for the Secretary of State to revoke any direction should he desire so. Amendment 17 would address the point that the direction should be based on the quality or performance of the local authority in providing these services.
With those amendments, this would be a reasonable and proportionate mechanism for the Government to use when they believe a local authority could do much better at adopter recruitment. They would take away the possibility that the Government could slide through an entirely new system on the back of a negative resolution procedure in relation to subsection (3)(c).
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, it really is important that we do what is best for the potentially adopted child or young person. If we consider this carefully, we can see where some—I would use the word “some”—local authorities have been very poor in this respect. That is in the amount of time taken, the lack of care and attention to detail and the way things are organised. Quite frankly, that is not good enough but it is a very small proportion of local authorities. As we have heard, 80% of placements are carried out by local authorities, which themselves recognise the need for changes to be made in how some of them operate. Many have been hallmarks of good practice and have been highly praised by the Government and the voluntary sector. So the notion that the Secretary of State is given the power to say that all local authorities should cease placement is concerning to me, and I wonder why it is there.
I am not sure that I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, that this is some plot by the Government to privatise adoption—surely they would not—or push everything to the voluntary sector, because we know that the voluntary sector has said, “No, we don’t want to do that, and even if we did we wouldn’t be able to cope with it”. I am surprised that the noble Baroness would even consider such a daft notion. No, I think that this is about the Government. I well remember David Cameron, our Prime Minister, saying in the early days, “Look, I am concerned at the time that some potential adopters have to wait before all the paperwork and the processes are carried out”, and he was right to say that. This part of this wonderful Bill addresses that issue by saying, “Yes, we need to ensure that the amount of time taken is proportionate”.
Still, the notion that you give the Secretary of State—maybe Michael Gove’s successor in two, three or five years’ time—the power to come along with these draconian powers is quite concerning, and actually not in the best interests of children. I hope that, if we want to ensure changes, the Government will look at how we learn from best practice in local authorities and in the voluntary sector—not all the voluntary sector is perfect in this, of course; we think that because the tag is “voluntary sector”, they must be fantastic, but not all the voluntary sector is. We must learn best practice from the voluntary sector and from local authorities, and constantly lift the bar and learn and disseminate those best practices so that we do what is best for our children and young people.
Lord Nash
I begin with the proposal to remove the clause, but most of what I will say is also relevant to all the amendments. I think that we would all agree that we have an undoubted problem in the narrow but important function of recruiting, assessing and approving a sufficient number of prospective adopters. The statistics are stark. As I have already said, the average length of time that it takes for a child to be adopted from entering the care system is two years and seven months, and of course this conceals many children who do not get adopted.
My noble friend Lord Storey said that there is poor performance by local authorities in only a minority of cases, but I respectfully suggest that the figure of two years and seven months denies that. However, I agree with him that there is good practice: in West Berkshire, for instance, the figure is a year and a month. I question why many if not all local authorities cannot do the same.
At the end of March this year, there were 6,000 children with placement orders waiting to move in with a permanent family. This is 15% higher than a year previously. When compared with the 3,980 children adopted from care last year, one can see that this is a very significant backlog. Indeed, one cannot conclude from this backlog anything other than that the system is broken and we are facing a real crisis.
In order to find families for all the children waiting to be adopted, we have estimated that we would need around 2,000 more adopters than are currently approved and waiting to be matched. We would then need at least a further 700 additional adopters each year to meet the growing demand from children waiting. Ofsted data tell us that in the year ending March 2012 just over 25,000 enquiries about becoming an adopter were received, but these resulted in only around 4,000 applications to become an adopter—a 16% conversion rate, which I suggest is very low.
The size of the recruitment gap requires us to take radical and immediate action to resolve the underlying problems within the system. These were set out in our January publication, Further Action on Adoption. We currently have around 175 adoption agencies, many operating at too small a scale to be efficient, yet they have no incentive to expand and meet the needs of children outside their local area. Even worse, some local authorities turn away prospective adopters because they do not need them themselves.
A further problem is that, while some local authorities work in constructive partnerships with voluntary adoption agencies, too many commission from them only as a last resort. In large part, this is a consequence of local authorities acting as both a provider and commissioner of adoption services. By this, I mean that they are trying to find or commission adoptive parents on behalf of the child while simultaneously trying to recruit or provide those same parents. There are also issues around the level of fees that are paid to voluntary adoption agencies.
These underlying problems have resulted in a system that fails us in national terms; a system that is unable to make best use of the national supply of potential adopters or respond effectively to the needs of vulnerable children waiting for a loving home and a system that provides no incentives to individual organisations to address a national shortage of adopters. These problems are not the fault of the individual adoption agencies concerned. Indeed, many are doing their best to rise to the challenge and we know that there are some good examples of partnership working between different agencies:
Harrow, Kent and Cambridgeshire, for example, have all contracted elements of their adoption service to the voluntary adoption agency Coram. Oxfordshire has brought in the Core Assets Group to run its adopter assessment process. Three boroughs in London—Kensington and Chelsea, Westminster and Hammersmith and Fulham—and three unitary authorities in the north-west, Warrington, Wigan and St Helens, have merged their adoption services in order to save money while improving quality.
The problems result from the flawed way in which the current system is structured and operates. We therefore require a structural solution that tackles these systemic problems; a solution that incentivises and enables the recruitment of a far greater number of adoptive parents. Clause 3 provides for such a solution.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
I have been accused of being rather unkind to the Minister in thinking that there might be some plans already as to how to do that. He said that this needs a structural solution to address a national problem and that Clause 3 of itself is that solution. In fact, Clause 3 of itself is not that solution. Clause 3 would pave the way for a solution but we do not yet know what that solution and change of policy might be, as the noble Lord said. Can the Minister indicate the kind of solution that Clause 3 would pave the way for so that we might have some indication of the Government's thinking?
Lord Nash
Yes, I did say that Clause 3 provides for such a solution. It is not a solution in itself. As I said to the noble Baroness earlier this week, there is no dark plan and no end game. The fact is that the system is working poorly and erratically. There is good practice and there is clearly bad practice. Adopter recruitment could clearly be done more efficiently and on a greater scale, which may involve working more closely together. Of course, the sector may take time to develop and recognise that, which is why we have funded voluntary adoption agencies substantially in order to stimulate them. The power is necessary to stimulate change and I am grateful to the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, for supporting the Government in having a power.
Turning to Amendments 14, 16 and 17, Clause 3 is not therefore intended to tackle cases of poor performance or service failure within individual local authorities. Our recruitment problem is not the result of individual failure and, if it was, the Secretary of State already has substantial powers to intervene. We therefore do not consider that the amendments, which would effectively use Clause 3 as an additional intervention power for a small number of local authorities, are necessary.
I am aware that the structural change proposed under Clause 3 would be substantial. I also acknowledge the view of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee concerning the delegation of a power of such scope. With respect to all the amendments, and with particular reference to Amendments 13 and 15, I would therefore like to reassure the Committee that I am keen to continue to listen to views as to how this power could best be used. In due course, the Government will then bring forward their own amendment which is likely to provide greater clarity about the process by which the power might be exercised.
When I write to Members of the Committee following this debate, I will provide a summary of the many steps that the Government have taken to support voluntary adoption agencies, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, requested. Briefly, we have invested £150 million in local authorities through the adoption reform grant and recently announced a £16 million boost package for voluntary adoption agencies which will help to recruit and approve more adopters. In terms of stimulating the system generally, as the Committee will know, we have introduced the national gateway. I therefore urge my noble friends Lady Hamwee, Lady Walmsley and Lord Storey, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes, Lady Jones and Lady O’Loan, not to press their amendments.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his introduction to this important Children and Families Bill and welcome him to the Dispatch Box for his first major task as a Minister—steering the Bill through your Lordships’ House. I look forward to debating with him during our proceedings.
It is good finally to have a Bill on aspects of children’s well-being from a Secretary of State who so far has shown little interest in children’s lives outside the classroom. Indeed, he has presided over the decimation of many children’s services, all much needed by vulnerable children. I am sure, too, that Members on this side, at least, will be commenting on the disastrous impact on vulnerable children and young people of the Government’s wider policies on welfare, employment and cuts, with falling incomes and higher prices stretching family budgets to the limit. These will cause real hardship for ordinary families that will see child poverty rise again by 2015. There is nothing, sadly, in the Bill that will alleviate those hardships.
I, too, followed the debate on this Bill in the other place with great interest. I agree there was much agreement on all sides on many welcome measures in the Bill. I am sure we will conduct the debate in your Lordships’ House in a similar vein. However, it was noticeable that, apart from two very welcome government amendments, the Ministers there resisted any of the sensible proposals put forward, including many from Mr Robert Buckland, the Conservative chair of the All-Party Group on Autism. I give the Minister notice that we will return to the amendments we think are essential to address shortcomings in the Bill. I am sure he will be more prepared to work with colleagues across the House as we seek to improve it.
The Minister has outlined the key measures and I will begin with those we can broadly support. The provisions in Parts 6, 7 and 8 for shared parental leave, time off work for antenatal appointments and flexible working all build on the progressive record of the previous Labour Government and we welcome these next steps. However, we would like to widen access to leave for parents—especially, as the Minister himself said, for fathers—because these measures may turn out to be highly restrictive, with only 2% of eligible fathers expected to be able take up the new changes. Coupled with recent data from the TUC which show that less than 1% of fathers have taken up the additional paternity leave that was established in 2011, we clearly need something of a step change for fathers.
Part 5 strengthens the role of the Children’s Commissioner, also established by the Labour Government, and we welcome these proposals, too. However, the existing functions of the Children’s Rights Director, which are to be incorporated into the commissioner’s remit, include the power to take up individual complaints from children, and we want to discuss how we can ensure that this safeguard is not lost.
Although we have no problem in principle with the proposals in Part 4 for new childminder agencies, they will need careful examination. There are two obvious concerns here. First, childminders in agencies will no longer be inspected directly at all by Ofsted. Instead, the agency will be inspected on its quality assurance processes. We know what happened in Haringey when Ofsted undertook these arm’s-length desktop inspections —it gave Haringey a satisfactory rating shortly before baby Peter Connelly died.
Secondly, the Childcare Minister said in a meeting last week that the agencies would be responsible for the training and development of their childminders but that there would be no new money. She envisaged that the cost would be passed to parents, but we know that the high cost of childcare is currently very difficult for parents to meet. Also, while the vexed issue of childcare ratios is not in the Bill, we will want to ensure that in future no Government can attempt to change these important ratios without recourse to Parliament. We also believe that local authorities have an essential economic, as well as social, role in assessing the sufficiency of childcare in their areas, and we do not want to see this repealed as the Government propose.
We welcome measures in Part 2 of the Bill to improve and streamline family justice. However, while we very strongly support the continued involvement of both parents, the child’s interests must remain paramount. I welcome the Minister’s assurance today that plans in Clause 11 for shared parenting will not dilute this paramountcy principle. We will want to probe the practical implications of that, as we would not want to see any apportionment of children’s time to satisfy shared parenting.
We agree that the 26-week time limit is an important benchmark to make sure that court proceedings are carried out as quickly as possible. However, we want to see safeguards to ensure that complex issues are not overlooked and particularly that siblings are not needlessly separated.
I come now to the parts of the Bill about which we have more substantial concerns. Part 1 builds on the reforms introduced by the Labour Government to improve the adoption system. It is unacceptable that on average it still takes almost two years for a child in the care system to be placed for adoption. We agree that that has to change and we welcome attempts to reduce unnecessary delay in adoptions. However, the best interests of the child must come above all other considerations. We are concerned that the Minister in the other place envisages that a child can be placed in a new fostering for adoption placement as soon as he or she enters care. That seems possibly counter to careful assessment and good-quality decision-making.
We also feel that the Government are not right to imply that adoption is the only, or possibly always the best, solution for every child. Many children are not adopted and there is little in the Bill to improve outcomes for them. Fostering gets very little mention, and there is disappointingly little on improving the lot of children in the care system, although we welcome putting virtual school heads on a statutory basis. The majority of children return home, often with no continuing support, and we would like to raise that during the passage of the Bill.
We would also like to see more emphasis on the importance of contact between adopted children and their birth families. I very much welcome the Minister’s statement today that local authorities will have to consider the possibility of kinship care as the first option in every case and give priority to contact between sisters and brothers. That is something that we were going to pursue.
Finally, there are concerns across your Lordships’ House about the changes to consideration of ethnicity. We agree with the Lords Select Committee on Adoption Legislation that these should, appropriately, not be abandoned but be part of the welfare checklist.
We come to the reform of the special educational needs system in Part 3 with the establishment of integrated health and care assessments and plans and the publication of a local offer of services in every area. The aspirations of the Green Paper to improve the system across the board for all disabled children were widely commended. However, we fear that the Bill as drafted cannot hope to meet those aspirations. This is also the conclusion of the Special Education Consortium, the Every Disabled Child Matters alliance and, indeed, all the children’s organisations with which we have had contact.
I will outline why we share this conclusion. First, the measures in the Bill do not apply to all disabled children. Those who do not have a special educational need or who are detained in youth custody will be excluded. I would be very interested to discuss with the Minister his reference to some new ideas for how those in youth custody might be embraced by these or similar provisions. However, how can the exclusion of children with disabilities be justified? Children with a major physical disability—for example, a visual impairment or a complex health problem such as cancer or diabetes—have just as much need for services integrated across education, health and social care as children with special educational needs. The barriers to their educational progress can be just as serious.
Secondly, while the education, health and care plans assessment will be a step forward, albeit for a minority of children, and we welcome the Government’s change of heart in making health as well as education enforceable in the plans, there clearly needs to be a parallel duty on the third element in those plans, the local authority social care services, so we will want to raise that again.
The rights of children and parents to request an assessment is a positive change, as is the continuation of plans through further education and apprenticeships. However, parents need a single route of appeal on all three elements of the plan. As the plan is drafted, parents may have to go down three separate appeal routes simultaneously, and clearly that is not acceptable. The draft code of practice makes clear that this new system, welcome as it may be, will apply to only a tiny minority even of the population of children with special educational needs, compared with the 13% of SEN children statemented currently. Other SEN children —some 1.4 million—together with all those disabled and seriously ill children who do not have special educational needs will have to depend on the local offer to get support. For these children and their families, there will be no practitioner to forge the integration of health, education and care, despite the fact that many will need this. Parents will have to do it themselves, and yet this is one of the major problems with the current system that the Green Paper promised to address. The local offer gives no guarantee of services, only a list of what might be available and which is not enforceable. The Government do not want to specify what should be in a local offer, so parents face the same postcode lottery as they do now. Those are the headline issues. There are others, particularly the abolition of school action and school action plus, without any clarity as to what will replace them. This is a major change because it will erode many current entitlements for the majority of children who will not be eligible for an education, health and care plan.
Finally, as the Minister has acknowledged, there is widespread support across both Houses for young carers and for the parents of disabled children to be given the same entitlements included in the Care Bill for adult carers of disabled adults. The Minister in the other place agreed to look at it, and the Minister said that this has been done. I had hoped that we might get a progress statement today but, if not, I am happy that they are on the case and I hope that we may get further details during our debate.
The issues in the Bill are of the greatest importance to some of the most vulnerable children and families. The Bill is a tremendous opportunity for us to improve substantially their experiences, life chances and outcomes. I know that, right across the House, Members will want to secure the best outcomes for these children. We look forward to working with colleagues and with the Minister to make this Bill the best that it can possibly be.
Children: Adult Material Online
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, schools are also central to safeguarding children in this area. Yesterday the Minister said that teachers should be able to teach internet safety effectively in computing classes. With respect, I doubt that anyone knowledgeable in this area agrees with that view, because it requires teachers trained in addressing these difficult personal and social issues with young people—and that will not happen in a computing class. One of the most compelling arguments for statutory personal, social and health education within the national curriculum is the provision of specially trained teachers. Will the Government now consider making these important child safety issues part of the national curriculum?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness and I entirely share that view about the importance of teaching children PSHE. We are bringing in e-safety for the first time in both primary and secondary computer science—and we trust teachers to deliver the pastoral care that their children need. Oddly, the Opposition, who are the party of the unions, do not seem to do so. However—I said it twice yesterday and I shall say it again today—we are not going to make PSHE statutory.
Schools: PSHE
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Nash
My noble friend raises a very good point. All schools should focus on their pupils’ diet and health, including home health, because we know that so many pupils suffer from poor parenting. I will write to her more specifically about what we are doing in this regard.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, the worldwide campaign against violence towards women, along with recent criminal cases, has highlighted the danger that internet pornography presents to children and young people. The Children’s Commissioner’s inquiry shows that many young people are exposed to internet pornography through their schools and their friends. What guidance have the Government issued to schools to help protect children from exposure to internet pornography? Is this issue not a really good example of why we now urgently need statutory PSHE?
Lord Nash
I entirely agree with the noble Baroness’s point about the danger of internet pornography, which is a much bigger issue than just in schools. We are working with the industry, through the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, to make it easier than ever for harmful and inappropriate internet content to be filtered from home broadband and all devices. The top five ISPs have committed to having parental controls in place by the end of 2013. On 18 June, the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport will meet internet businesses to see what more they can do to tackle illegal online pornography. Further work is also going on in this regard.
Education: Personal, Social and Health Education
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, I too, congratulate my noble friend Lady Massey. She has been a tireless champion of the importance of PSHE and has given us the opportunity to keep this issue live by debating it again today. Indeed, we have had a very rich debate.
I apologise in advance that in the short time I have, I will not be able to acknowledge the excellent individual contributions that we have had from noble Lords across the Committee today. I shall structure my remarks around three points: first, the arguments in favour of strong PSHE, including sex-and-relationship education, delivered through schools; secondly, the question of whether that objective can be achieved without statutory underpinning; and, thirdly, to ask the Government what are their next steps, given their response to the results of the recent consultation on PSHE.
On the arguments in favour of strong PSHE, we have heard in the many excellent speeches today the reasons for promoting the health, well-being, personal safety, confidence and self-esteem among young people. I will not rehearse those powerful contributions; I could not improve on them, and agree with all of them. Not only in this House but in the other place there is a strong cross-party consensus for high quality PSHE and SRE in schools, promoted not least recently by the international campaign to tackle violence and abuse towards women and girls. The particular point in that recent debate was made strongly that boys as well as girls need good sex-and-relationship education, as the noble Baroness, Lady Kidron, rightly warned us today.
There are many other reasons to support strong PSHE in schools—not only problems, such as the soaring rise in sexually transmitted diseases among young people, but in the inculcation of positive values, resilience, good citizenship, and so on. Not least, there is evidence from young people themselves in surveys conducted by the Youth Parliament showing strong support for this subject in schools. Parents, too, in many surveys, including on Mumsnet, overwhelmingly said that they want this provided for their children in schools. Teachers, too, and even the Government have conceded, in Elizabeth Truss’s Written Statement on the results of the PSHE consultation that,
“all schools should teach PSHE, drawing on good practice”.—[Official Report, Commons, 21/3/13; col. 52WS.]
There is no argument about the importance of good PSHE and sex and relationship education in schools.
My second point refers to the crucial question: whether the objective that we all share can be achieved without statutory underpinning. First, as we have heard, we know that the teaching of PSHE is at best patchy. The Ofsted report in 2010 suggested that provision was at least good in three-quarters of schools, but the survey did not include any school in special measures or under notice to improve, so that figure is likely to be a gross overestimate. Even so, it means that at the very least a quarter of schools are not providing good PSHE. Secondly, from our experience in government we know that left to their own devices, we do not see the improvement that we want from schools. In government we got consensus for statutory sex-and-relationship education as a first step to statutory PSHE, but unfortunately that fell away in the wash. Finally, the respondents to the consultation showed that 78% supported statutory PSHE or at least SRE, recognising that the necessary consistency and quality in these subjects will not come from schools left to their own devices.
In conclusion, given the Government’s position, despite that result on the survey they will not make this subject statutory, at the very least will the Minister first pull back from watering down the compulsory sex-and-relationship education as outlined in the national curriculum consultation and instead strengthen the factual content and build in a strong relationship component? Secondly, will he take up the suggestion of the National Children’s Bureau and others to make an explicit link between PSHE and the national curriculum when they publish the national curriculum document?
Children: Care
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Nash
The noble Baroness raises a good point. This is something that we will consider carefully in the consultation. It is not our intention, which is to provide higher-quality care by more highly qualified staff. All the evidence is that children from deprived backgrounds in particular, who have a deficit of structure and language in their home lives, need higher-quality staff to care for them.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, the Government’s proposals will allow childminders, for example, to look after six babies at any one time: two aged six months and another four aged 12 months. Does the Minister think that it is possible for one childminder singlehandedly to provide safe, good-quality care for such a group of babies? If so, what evidence have the Government examined to support this, and to form their view that this will not be detrimental to the development of those children?
Children and Young People
Baroness Hughes of Stretford Excerpts(11 years, 3 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I shall try to get the words out in the right order now. I agree that many children in children’s homes have had failed foster placements. Our statistics show that 29% of children placed in children’s homes have had five or more previous placements. I have met quite a few children who have had over 20 placements. That is why we set up the expert working group: to look at how to improve the quality of support these children receive, building on good practice. This group has now reported to Ministers, and Ministers will make announcements on this shortly. We recognise Break’s impressive record—four years is an impressive average length of stay—and that is why we invited Hilary Richards of Break to be a member of the department’s expert group on quality.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford
My Lords, before he lost his job, the previous Minister for Children, Tim Loughton, said that it was a scandal that there remains under this Government,
“an enormous and widening attainment gap”,
between children in the care of the state and their peers, and that this is still evident throughout the school system and in further and higher education. In welcoming the noble Lord to his brief, which I think includes educational attainment, can he tell the House what priority he will put on the educational attainment of children in care and what steps he will take to close the attainment gap?
Lord Nash
The Government have strongly encouraged local authorities to have a senior educational officer known as a virtual school head to track closely the progress of every child in care and ensure they receive the support they need. Children in care are entitled to free early education for two year-olds, the pupil premium while at school and the new 16-to-19 further education bursary. Every child in care has to have a personal education plan setting out how they will be supported to fulfil their potential. Every school, including academies and free schools, has a legal duty to have a designated looked-after child teacher, and children in care get top priority in school admissions.