Childcare Entitlements
Debate between Baroness Twycross and Lord Storey(3 weeks, 4 days ago)
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Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome the opportunity for us to discuss the Statement made yesterday in the other place. I thank the Minister for repeating it today in your Lordships’ House. Noble Lords present are probably united in thinking that the Government’s aspiration in expanding free childcare is welcome. However, unfortunately, it appears that currently only the Government believe that their flagship policy is on track.
My first question to the Minister is: why are Ministers proactively bringing a Statement to Parliament to say that everything is on track, when the Government’s own auditors are now saying otherwise, without the Government acknowledging that there are issues? When I suggested yesterday at Oral Questions that the policy was in trouble, the Minister stated that
“it is a huge success”.—[Official Report, 23/4/24; col. 1369.]
I woke up to headlines that indicated that I was not far off. In light of the report published today by the National Audit Office, will the Minister accept that the policy is, at the very least, at risk of not going to plan? Even the Telegraph is reporting that parents are facing worse childcare under this Government’s childcare expansion.
Are the Government still guaranteeing that every eligible child has a spot now, that every eligible child will have a spot later this year, and that every eligible child will have a spot in September next year? Are parents getting the savings that they have been promised? Why have the Government repeatedly dismissed genuine concerns about the rollout of the plan, when the problems are so clear and stakeholders across the board are highlighting the same problems?
Even the DfE has the expansion as its top programme risk, with risks including insufficient places, operational infrastructure not being ready, insufficient parental demand and an unstable market. When will the Government make a formal response to the NAO’s report? Furthermore, could the Minister confirm that the DfE has itself
“assessed its confidence in meeting milestones beyond April 2024 as ‘problematic’”?
Does she agree with the NAO that the extension does not “achieve its primary aim” or demonstrate “value for money”? How did the DfE think it was appropriate to set dates for expansion without engaging with the sector or understanding local authorities’ and providers’ capacity? Will the Government act on the NAO’s recommendations about continuously reviewing the achievability of the 2025 milestones and will they now publish interim performance thresholds?
I return to the point I made to the Minister yesterday: the DfE’s own pulse survey from last week found that 45% of childcare and early years providers said it was unlikely that they would increase the number of places they offer to under-threes as a result of the Government’s childcare expansion. The NAO estimates there is in fact a net reduction in places—albeit just a 1% reduction —since 2018, but this is at a point at which we need a significant increase in places. Could the Minister outline what the DfE’s plan is if it accepts that it will struggle to reverse this trend, if it finds that the providers simply cannot afford to offer free places, or the one in three nursery and pre-school providers that the Early Years Alliance says are at risk of closure simply do not survive? This would potentially put 184,000 places in jeopardy. How does the Minister explain the disparity between what the Government say and what the sector, parents and councils, and now the NAO, are saying?
The Statement repeated today states confidently that
“no local authorities are reporting that they do not have”
sufficient “places to meet demand”. This is very different from the National Audit Office view that only 9% of areas are confident that they will have enough places. To clarify this point, I contacted the Local Government Association, which told me that councils have reported greater concerns about the next stages of the expansion, where it will extend to children and families who would not previously have accessed childcare to this extent. It is deeply concerned about provision for families that require a different range of childcare options, such as outside traditional hours, or families for children with SEND.
The Coram Family and Childcare survey found that England has seen reductions in the availability of childcare in all categories. Worryingly, the greatest reductions have been in childcare for disabled children, which I understand is now at 6% sufficiency. Can the Minister say why this is the case and what the Government will be doing to remedy this? Local authorities are also concerned about recruitment, particularly because of the higher ratios required for under-twos. They are concerned about the lack of sufficient level 3 qualified staff in the sector. Is the Minister confident that recruitment is on track?
There is broad consensus on the need for a decent childcare and early years offer, including increasing free hours. It is a shared ambition across political parties to have an improved system that works for parents and carers and delivers the best start in life for children. Labour genuinely wants better childcare and early years provision. We have commissioned a review by Sir David Bell to assess a way forward. We want a well-planned, well-designed system that delivers for children and improves the offer to parents.
I am confident that the Minister also wants a system that works, but the first step in this instance to getting that has to be for the Government to accept that there are problems, and work to get this scheme back on track. I look forward to her response as to how, in light of the serious risks facing this flagship government policy, the promised expansion in free childcare and early years provision will be delivered.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for her detailed Statement. I would guess that all of us aspire to the aspirations that she espoused on childcare. The issues that we are concerned about—and they concern a number of people—are around whether this can be delivered. I listened to the Statement with great care and the words that were missing were not about numbers but about quality. I have always believed, as my party always has, that it is not just about providing childcare. It has to be quality childcare—and I did not get a sense of that in the Minister’s Statement. There are a number of issues. She mentioned pay, quite rightly, but it is about training as well.
As we have heard, the National Audit Office has raised concerns that plans to extend free nursery provision could compromise—again, that word—the quality of childcare as the sector expands to meet demand. The NAO cautioned that hiring inexperienced staff and a lower supervision ratio for two year-olds could undermine childcare quality. There are also worries about whether inspections by Ofsted would identify issues early enough. The NAO has highlighted concerns about the Department for Education’s confidence in delivering required places, with only 34% of local authorities expecting to have enough places by this September. On the other hand, the Minister has painted an extremely positive picture of rollout. It will be interesting to see who is right.
This ministerial Statement did not mention or address the up-and-coming report and findings, which have been described as utterly damning by the early years sector. The Government must address the findings of this report urgently. The report concludes that there is a risk posed by
“the lack of contingency and flexibility”
in the Government’s “fixed, ambitious timetable”. It is therefore important that clarity and reassurance is provided quickly on how they will address the report’s findings. Families across the country will struggle to plan their arrangements if certainty over the next phase of the rollout is not provided.
Only 17% of nursery managers said that they could offer the extended entitlement, due to the crisis of recruitment and retention. What will the Government do to address this recruitment and retention issue?
Finally, I was interested to hear about the campaign to use unused schools. The Government want to set up what I think they call “in-home nurseries” to create some of the 85,000 places needed. How many schools will be used in the pilot scheme that the Minister told us about? If the scheme is successful, how many schools do they think they will be able to finally use?
Pupil Mental Health, Well-being and Development
Debate between Baroness Twycross and Lord Storey(2 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Twycross (Lab)
My Lords, this has been a truly interesting and varied debate. I join others in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, on securing it. There can be nothing more important in a child’s development than ensuring that they have good mental and physical health, not least in what many noble Lords have noted is a complex and often confusing world.
Children need a healthy, caring, constructive, lively and varied school environment, of the type to which the noble Baroness referred in her opening remarks. As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, good mental health is a prerequisite for learning. My noble friend Lord Touhig powerfully articulated the need for children to have the confidence to succeed.
I also agree wholeheartedly with my noble friend Lady Morris that academic education and mental health and well-being should not be seen as being in competition with each other. I am very much in the camp which believes that schools should prepare children for life and work, and liked how my noble friend Lady Morris articulated how this might be balanced in relation to exams, and how people view exam success and failure.
I do not, however, think that this excludes fun or creativity. I agree wholeheartedly with the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, on the need for creative arts to be a key part of school life and the lives of students. The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Chichester also spoke powerfully to this point, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, on the work of the charity, Books Beyond Words.
My noble friend Lady Blake did not speak in this debate, but I understand she did great work as leader of Leeds City Council in ensuring that all children had access to learning a musical instrument. This is the type of thing that can enrich children’s lives and make school life much more rewarding.
I found the contribution of the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, on physical activity and food very compelling. Clearly, the quality of food in school is an issue that my noble friend Lord Brooke has campaigned on with vigour, not least on sugar, and will continue to do so.
From what we have heard today, none of us can be in any doubt that we have a huge mental health crisis among children and young people. As the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, also made clear, schools have a very distinct role in identifying and triaging issues. Schools and teachers do incredible work in a difficult environment. Schools sometimes struggle to meet the needs of their students, and teachers do not always have the support they need, or the time or expertise to identify and deal with student mental health issues. CAMHS cannot deal with the scale of the demand, with unacceptable delays for treatment that risk an individual’s mental health issues escalating.
I return to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, about the focus on fun. I think that we all now want to visit his school, so he should expect a queue for us to do that.
Baroness Twycross (Lab)
He does not have to become a primary school teacher; he can carry on as he is.
The noble Earl, Lord Russell, mentioned the need for a whole-school approach, as did others, but what we really need is an understanding of how we get a better whole-system approach—I would welcome the Minister’s thoughts on that. Surely, that is what is needed to address the issue. There is a clear need for the Government to drive forward and work much more on a cross-departmental basis. The NHS, individual schools, charities and local authorities cannot solve the child mental health crisis alone. The noble Lord, Lord Wei, discussed the need for school pathways to be made clearer and simpler for parents and children, and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s reflection on his point about the correlation with decisions that parents might make on home schooling.
I will give a personal view of an amazing meeting I had this week with a fabulous group of students from the Ark King Solomon Academy near Edgware Road. It was a reminder of how a good school can provide a truly nurturing environment. The students spoke to me about the mental health provision in their school with their vice-principal and the charity Place2Be, whose services the young people had accessed. They told me that Covid had led to isolation, that they needed more clubs and activity to improve their well-being, and that PHSE could do so much more than it does currently to help young people understand their mental health and how to deal with any issues they might face. They also said that their parents often did not know how to help, so the parents also needed additional support to help deal with the issue.
The provision that the students had accessed had given them a sense of belonging and a trusted space. But they said that there was a need for more provision, so that students did not have to wait to access services. The students were hugely articulate in how they spoke about their experience and the need for young people to build resilience. I have no doubt that their school and their parents are incredibly proud of them. After they met me, they went to No. 10 to deliver a letter to the Prime Minister; I would be very grateful if the Minister could ensure that it reaches the right person for a response.
We cannot talk about the role of schools in mental health without discussing the wider context. The scale of the problem was mentioned by a number of noble Lords, including the noble Lord, Lord Sterling, who noted that the rise means that, on average, five children in a class of 30 are likely to have mental health issues. He also noted the recruitment crisis in specialists.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, asked what was probably the most valid question of the whole debate: what is going on? In 2022, 1.4 million children were referred to CAMHS, with 270,000 children waiting longer than three months to begin treatment. The Local Government Association has found that at least one in six children and young people aged seven to 16 has a probable mental health disorder, which increases to one in four for young people aged 17 to 19. The Children’s Commissioner, who has been quoted several times, has raised particular concerns around older teenage girls; she found in her report last year that nearly two in five of 16 to 17 year-old girls were unhappy with their mental health. Things going wrong— such as when children and young people do not get support in a timely way—can lead to forced hospitalisation. In the worst cases, unresolved mental health issues lead to self-harm and attempted or successful suicide, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, highlighted in his remarks.
Children living in poverty, where parents separate or have a financial crisis, or children whose own parents have poor mental health or poor health, are even more likely to have poor mental health themselves. As my noble friend Lord Touhig said, children with speech and language difficulties are twice as likely to have a mental health issue than their peers—the noble Baroness, Lady Hollins, also highlighted this point. This is also the case for children and young people with a wide range of other special needs, physical illness or disabilities.
Can the Minister say what the government view is on how provision is currently tailored towards the needs of different groups of children, and what more can be done to ensure that children and young adults get access in a timely way? To tackle an issue of this scale, you surely need a thorough understanding of what needs to be addressed—and with apologies to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I do not think that policy should be made routinely at London dinner parties.
Can the Minister clarify whether the Government intend to start to routinely collect statistics on mental health provision in schools, including the type of provision and therapy provided? As the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, this should include a cross-referencing of this with other data, including absenteeism. If not, can the Minister tell the House when the Government at the very least intend to carry out a new survey, given that it is almost a decade since the last one found that only 62% of schools offered counselling services? However, I understand that that figure has risen. Can the Minister provide information on how many schools now have counselling services? Are the Government, like Labour, committed to specialist mental health support for children and young people in every school? Furthermore, can the Government provide a demographic breakdown of the number of children accessing mental health services in schools and through CAMHS?
Finally, I acknowledge that I am clear that the Government know that there is a problem. However, I do not feel that they have yet managed to introduce a comprehensive solution—the proposed ban on phones in schools is evidence of this. Many noble Lords referenced social media and phones. However, many schools have introduced this, and head teachers have noted that they cannot control their use out of school. Having heard today’s debate, what more is the Minister able to commit to the Government doing to address this epidemic of mental health issues in children and young people, both in and out of school, to ensure that our young people get the support they need to thrive both socially and academically through their childhoods to successful adult lives?