Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(9 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, there is much to welcome in this Bill. It is a genuine attempt to make life better for our most vulnerable children. However, we must not forget those children outside the scope of the Bill who are living terrible lives but have not yet reached the threshold that would lead to them being taken into care. I agree with my noble friend Lady Pinnock that this is an opportunity missed. I would like to focus on four of the many issues that I could mention—corporate parenting, mental and physical health, safeguarding the rights of children, and learning from cases when something has gone wrong.
First, I welcome the Government’s attempt to lay out the responsibilities of the corporate parent, though I endorse what my noble friend Lady Pinnock said about the need for clarity about who that is. Unfortunately, as they stand, the principles are weaker than existing duties under the Children Act 1989 in respect of looked-after children. In Clause 1, local authorities must only,
“have regard to the need”,
to act in accordance with each of the principles. Yet separate, stronger duties already exist, though not for care leavers. Surely, all we need to do is to add care leavers to existing principles. There are things missing, and some of them have been mentioned, such as the importance of keeping siblings together; valuing children and young people’s backgrounds and personalities; and the promotion of the rights and entitlements of children and young people and their full and equal participation in society.
I agree with the NSPCC that it is essential for this clause—which, after all, is a list of what children have a right to expect from corporate parents—to include a responsibility to support recovery from the trauma of abuse or neglect. Over 60% of children enter care due to abuse or neglect, and the trauma of these early experiences can have a significant impact on long-term life chances.
The NSPCC has recently highlighted the shocking lack of therapeutic support in its new campaign, It’s Time. I have been in Your Lordships House now for 16 years. I clearly remember, soon after I came in, going to a presentation about the lack of therapy for children who had been sexually abused. This is not a new problem; it really is time it was addressed, because failure to address it ruins lives and costs the state money.
Neglected children often suffer poor physical health, through physical abuse, a lack of a good diet, et cetera. Along with that go mental and emotional health problems. It is crucial for these children that all their needs—physical, mental and emotional—are addressed together. It is not enough just to feed, clothe and educate the children if we are to compensate them for what they have gone through, and prepare them for the adult world. Therapeutic support to recover from past abuse or neglect must form the bedrock of the care experience.
As my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield said, current statutory guidance requires that children entering care receive a physical health assessment by a trained clinician. However, mental health and emotional well-being are assessed only through a strengths and difficulties questionnaire. I agree with her that this is both insufficient and carried out by the wrong people. Children need a full assessment of their physical and mental health when they come into care, as well as continuing services to address their problems all along the way.
Going back to the corporate parenting principles, I have another point to make. I welcome the bits that encourage children to express their views, wishes and feelings. It is nice not to have to badger the Government any more about including something about children’s wishes and feelings in a Bill. However, I would like to make two more points about Clause 1. First, many of these children will have speech and language difficulties. It is essential that these difficulties are identified during their health assessment and speech therapy provided. Otherwise, they will struggle to express their wishes and feelings; they will not have the skills to do so. Secondly, children need information about the local offer and their entitlements in a format they can understand. Their foster parents need that too in order to provide the stability children need.
I now move to the plans for the new Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. This panel will have the duty to identify and review those serious child protection cases in England that raise issues deemed complex or of national importance. Well, they are all complex. I listened very carefully to what the noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, expressed about her concerns. I think it is justified for such a panel to look at those cases that appear to be of national importance. However, any new system must ensure that lessons are disseminated and incorporated into meaningful changes in practice. The panel will be judged on how well it does that. Given the difficulty in disseminating learning from serious case reviews in the current system, how will the Government ensure that the learning from national reviews trickles down and creates a process that delivers better safeguarding practice on the ground?
Secondly, as I suggested a moment ago, there is a danger that the establishment of two parallel processes—with local learning reviews at one end and the national review panel at the other—could lead to a two-tier system. That is highly undesirable. Can the Minister say what steps the Government will take to ensure that local practice review panels are not considered a lesser counterpart to the national review panel? After all, they know their local area, their local children and local circumstances. How will thresholds for consideration by a national review be determined, and by whom? As to the criteria for the involvement of the new panel, would not greater protection be provided by broadening the definition of harm? This could be developed from the definition of harm already contained in section 31(9) of the Children Act 1989. I think that the definition should include physical injuries and harm caused by unlawful or abusive restraint. This is a national issue. The vulnerability of children to such abuse was graphically illustrated by the BBC “Panorama” programme on the Medway secure training centre earlier this year, and here we have an opportunity to address it.
On the matter of innovation, I welcome the Government’s determination to improve outcomes for children, but I confess to having serious concerns about the measures in the Bill and we will be looking for assurances and safeguards for children’s rights. I worry that the proposals set out in Clause 15 are too broad and could be used by cash-strapped local authorities—for which we have great sympathy—to avoid carrying out some statutory duties. Those duties were put in place for a purpose, usually by Parliament, and they comprise the rights of children in law in respect of their care. We tamper with them at our peril.
To exercise the new powers, the Secretary of State would have to introduce regulations. However, these could be approved without a debate and vote in Parliament, which is a matter of concern. I support the concerns raised by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and others regarding the skeleton nature of this Bill. This appears to be a trend. We need a lot more information before we can carry out our duty to scrutinise. Where exemptions are made to legislation which was passed with active parliamentary approval, these must be subject to appropriate parliamentary scrutiny and agreement, specifically through affirmative resolution.
I would like to know who will be consulted before exemptions from statutory duties are made. Will the responses be published? What are the criteria for judging whether this would improve children’s outcomes? Could this judgment be made by an independent body? How will progress over a three-year pilot period be monitored, and will this oversight come from an independent body? For instance, if a local authority is exempt from Ofsted inspections, how will we know that outcomes for children are improving or are neutral? Can the Government guarantee that directors of children’s services and lead members for children will remain accountable under the new proposals?
Under Clause 18, this system would also apply where a local authority was failing to perform its duties and the Secretary of State had already intervened under Section 497A of the Education Act 1996. Currently too many vulnerable children are failed by the system. For every child subject to a child protection plan or on a register in the UK, it is estimated that around eight other children are likely to be ill treated. How can we be sure that the exemptions being called for will improve these failing authorities? Is it really the duty to carry out statutory duties that is getting in the way of improving quality or is it more likely to be management failures, a poor corporate culture, poor multiagency working or one of the other possible causes, such as workloads or case loads that are too heavy? What is the Government’s evidence of the need for these enabling powers, and will they demonstrate in each case how the exemption will lead to better outcomes for children? I think that we need some examples. There are many issues of concern in relation to this part of the Bill.
Before I finish, I want to say a brief word about the idea put forward by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham concerning the regulation of social work. I am very attracted by his suggestion of a royal college but it would absolutely have to be independent. I just wonder what would happen if the Government said that they were going to set up the BMA and decide who was to be on its council. There would be a riot. I think that we ought to provide similar scrutiny of the suggestion of the Government setting up the regulation of social workers.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(9 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, before turning to the gracious Speech, I first echo the thanks of the Lord Speaker to the noble Baroness, Lady Thomas of Walliswood, and the other three colleagues who have ceased to be Members of this House today. To my personal knowledge, the noble Baroness was an excellent and very hard-working Peer in this House when she was in full health. She made an enormous contribution to the work of these Benches, and I am quite sure that the other noble Lords mentioned had a similar track record. I would not have felt it necessary to make these remarks had it not been for the rather unfortunate laughter after the announcement earlier, which our ex-colleagues and their families may have found somewhat hurtful. I am sure that the House did not mean any disrespect.
On these Benches, we welcome much of what was in the gracious Speech, especially those items that have been Liberal Democrat policy for some time. Of course, we will scrutinise the measures very carefully when they are put before us. Noble Lords will hear from my noble friends on these Benches about various topics today. My own remarks will be addressed to health and social care, although my noble friend Lady Brinton will say more about the latter.
When I heard the gracious Speech, I did not know whether to be astonished that there was hardly a mention of the NHS or glad that the Government were not planning another disruptive top-down reorganisation. This morning, there is a Statement in the other place about progress at last with the junior doctors’ contracts but we have no Health Minister in this debate in your Lordships’ House. I asked for the Statement to be taken in this House, but I was refused by the Chief Whip. The noble Lord, Lord Prior, has been such a trooper, patiently standing at that Dispatch Box week after week reporting that there was nothing to report. Then, on the very day when there actually is something to report, the noble Lord is not allowed to answer our questions. That is treating your Lordships’ House with contempt and it is treating the health service with contempt.
I hope that the Minister, when winding up, tells us what will happen next and why, when it is now possible to make arrangements to protect women doctors who wish to take maternity leave or take time out for training or research, it was not possible to do that a long time ago. Why, if it is possible now to make some small concessions to the quality of life of doctors and their families, was it not possible to do that before? Why, if it is not just about money, did we have the Secretary of State telling us this morning on the BBC that it will cost hospitals one-third less to roster doctors at the weekend? At least the gracious Speech contained a further commitment to mental health, but my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield will express our concerns that the commitments made during the coalition Government have not been followed through.
As to the proposals to charge non-resident visitors to the UK for health services, we will wait for the details before we comment further. However, our main concern will be that no one in the UK should go without the healthcare they need.
It has to be said that the past 12 months have not been the NHS’s finest hour, and certainly not the finest hour of the Secretary of State. This is not because NHS staff are not working hard or because they are not working at weekends, because they have been, but rather it is the failure on the part of the Government to be realistic about the legitimate health and social care needs of our population and the right of those who work in these services to be properly paid and have a reasonable work-life balance. While I accept Jeremy Hunt’s personal commitment to patient safety, he has not gone about it in the best way. The industrial action taken by junior doctors over the past year is only one, although a very serious one, of the indications that health and social care services are at full stretch. The whole debacle has been damaging to the morale of the health workforce, and the Government will have to work hard to regain its confidence.
It never was just about money, it was about being constantly asked to do more with less, or at least the same amount. While I do not deny the right of the Government to make a commitment in their manifesto and then try to implement it, I believe that the way they have gone about it has been a disaster. Governments should be very careful about the factual basis on which to build their policies. There have been several expert reports, including a recent one by a health economist in Manchester, which have questioned the weekend death rates quoted by the Government as being the basis for what they are trying to do. We shall see how the members of the BMA vote, but I hope very much that this matter can now be settled in the interests of patients and doctors.
The pressure does not apply only to junior doctors in hospitals. GPs are also hard pressed. I shall quote from an email I received recently from a GP known to a friend of mine: “I was working from home last Sunday night going through results, patient records and letters. Tim was also on the system from home and Dan was in the surgery doing administration. We are working 12-hour days in the surgery as it is and we really do not have the capacity to do seven days on top of what we are doing now and remain healthy. We are also working on our frailty project, plus looking to see if we can expand the premises. As you can see, I am juggling lots in addition to the daily seeing of patients. These other bits do not get registered: talking to social services, carers, families and patients, looking at the systems in place for clinical safety, multi-disciplinary meetings, emails, keeping up to date and more”. That could be echoed by GPs all over the country. I am lucky that I live in an area where my GP is able to give me a good service, but in some places, especially in London, patients have to wait weeks to get an appointment.
This is the result of bad planning. It takes eight years to train a GP, so today’s needs should have been planned for years ago. Unfortunately, the planning of training for health professionals has been fragmented and everyone blames everyone else for shortages. Now the Government even want to charge a £1,000 skills levy on visas for health workers from overseas. That is crazy and it certainly is not joined-up government. Sadly, the system is playing catch-up all the time. Targets are being missed, deficits have skyrocketed and will swallow up most of the new money announced last year. The Government will not recognise the real black hole in funding and believe that the hard-pressed workforce can make £22 billion of savings in the next few years when it is struggling just to stay afloat.
Then, of course, there is the equally serious shortfall in social care funding. The recent NHS ombudsman’s report on unsafe discharges from hospital with non-existent or inadequate social care packages made for very sad reading. Frail, elderly people are being discharged to cold homes, left alone at night and their families not informed. This should not be happening in this country in this century, and it is no good saying that guidelines were not followed. No one in the NHS would do something like that deliberately, but the pressure on beds through delayed discharges sometimes causes people to make mistakes—fatal mistakes in some cases.
The pressure on the NHS could, of course, be lessened in future if we paid more attention to prevention, yet the Government had to be led kicking and screaming into agreeing some kind of sugar tax to reduce child obesity. The measures announced lack ambition. They should be broader and introduced sooner, but at least they are something. But where is the long-promised child obesity strategy? And what about putting fluoride in all our drinking water to prevent children getting tooth decay and having to go into hospital for extraction? What about fortifying flour with vitamin B to prevent neural tube disease? What is being done about the quality of the air we breathe? Why did Boris Johnson suppress the report about the terrible state of air pollution in London? We need to be told. Then there was the further cut in public health spending, attacking the very local services that help people to stop smoking, get active, avoid unwanted pregnancy and all the other things that local authorities try to do for their residents. This is all so short-sighted, but, if it were reversed, what a difference all these measures would make to rates of heart disease, stroke, diabetes and the sustainability of the NHS.
Savings could also be made on the drugs Bill. I wonder whether the Minister will tell us what progress is being made with the recommendations of the noble Lord, Lord Carter, on that. Will she also assure us that the Government will take notice of the recommendations in the report from the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, published today, on the actions that must be taken nationally and internationally to combat the over- prescribing of antibiotics and the consequent rise of antibiotic-resistant micro-organisms—a global disaster waiting to happen?
What else should happen? We need some straight talking about the funding and capacity challenges our NHS faces and the steps needed for positive change. So although much of what needs to be done in health does not require the signature of Her Majesty, the Liberal Democrats propose a future of healthcare Bill to find solutions to these challenges, independent of interference from political parties, so that the NHS can continue to deliver health and care for future generations without detriment to its hard-working staff.
Children: Drugs
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(9 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Nash
Drug education is a statutory part of the new curriculum for science at key stages 2 and 3. Teachers are best placed to understand the needs of their pupils and it is for them to develop their own PSHE programmes, drawing on resources and evidence-based tools such as ADEPIS, which provides accurate, up-to-date information and resource on what works. In March last year, we published a PSHE review of what works best in drug education and the PSHE Association has an excellent programme of study on drugs.
Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, does the PSHE curriculum include comparisons of the health harms of drugs such as alcohol, tobacco, heroin, cocaine and cannabis, including the numbers of people who die every year from their use? If the Minister does not have the figures to hand, I would be grateful if he wrote to me.
Schools: Food Nutrition Standards
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(9 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
The Government are undermining free school meals for up to key stage 1, which was a Liberal Democrat achievement in the coalition Government, by starving the programme of cash. Why are the Government going to remove the grants to small primary schools that enable them to deliver these hot meals to children? How will that help nutrition for those children for whom this is the only decent, nutritional meal they get in the whole day?
Lord Nash
My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right that we have paid an extra £33 million to small schools to enable them to engage in this programme. It was always intended as transitional funding to help schools put their service on a sustainable footing and we believe that that has been done.
Queen’s Speech
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(10 years, 8 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, in stark contrast to its emphasis in the gracious Speech, the NHS was one of the biggest issues in the recent general election, with an auction of all sides promising increased funding. The Conservative Party promised to provide all the money the NHS needs to carry out its five-year plan and yet, as we have just heard, we have had no details of where this money is coming from and we still have not. This has to be the biggest question to be asked today and I hope the Minister will be able to answer it.
Our health service is the envy of the world and is precious to all of us. We on these Benches are proud of our record on health in government, in particular the contribution of Paul Burstow and Norman Lamb on mental health. I will leave further comment on that subject area to my noble friend Lady Tyler of Enfield. Suffice it to say that we will continue to scrutinise the Government’s plans in this Parliament.
The NHS is only as good as the quality of its staff and management and there are major problems ahead. Nigel Edwards, the NHS chief executive, recently said:
“The NHS needs to hit very ambitious efficiency targets, at the same time as fundamentally changing the way care is delivered and moving to a seven day service. That can only be done if it has the right staff in the right places. Yet there are not enough staff to fill gaps in key areas, and we are seeing clear signs of stress and disengagement”.
This must be addressed. There is a demographic time bomb waiting for us, with doctors, nurses and midwives nearing retirement without an adequate supply in the pipeline. It is all very well promising 24/7 GP services but there are not enough GPs now. Patients in some areas wait weeks for a GP appointment. No wonder they resort to A&E. How will the Government monitor how HEE plans to train the staff needed to fill this yawning gap?
Qualifications are also an issue, especially among care workers. The Liberal Democrat manifesto called for a Bill to regulate the qualifications of health and care professionals. This would improve patient safety as well as reduce the burden and cost of an outdated regulation regime. Does the Minister recognise the need for this and have the Government any long-term plans to address the issue?
The Conservative manifesto promised integration between health and social care and yet the gracious Speech was silent on the matter. The pressure on hospital beds has made this matter all the more urgent. The first section of the Care Act began its implementation last month. Can the Minister say whether it is going according to plan, and what are the plans to learn lessons to ensure that phase 2 goes well?
Every relevant patient has an entitlement to a care assessment but how portable are these across the borders between England and Wales and England and Scotland? I happen to be a resident of Wales and have in the past year had experience of the health service in both England and Wales. Although my own care has been good, it is horrifying for residents of Wales to read every week of the failings of the Labour Welsh Government and poor standards of care and extended waiting lists. We even have calls for the inspection system to be scrapped and a health board to be put in special measures because of terrible failings in the treatment of elderly, vulnerable people at the Tawel Fan unit. That is just the latest of many problems. This is of course a devolved matter but if the problem is funding the people of Wales will want to know if a fair amount of the proposed increased NHS funding announced by the Government will come to Wales. They will hold the Welsh Labour Government to account for spending it all on health and for spending it wisely.
There are serious cross-border issues which should be of concern to the Westminster Government as well as to the devolved Administration in Cardiff. The House of Commons Select Committee on Welsh Affairs rightly maintained that access to healthcare should be on the basis of need, not which side of a border you happen to live. Yet Welsh patients referred to English hospitals have had their treatment delayed, regardless of their clinical need, because the Welsh Government wanted to save money. That cannot be right. What assurance can the Minister give me that the Government will work with the Labour Government of Wales to prevent this discrimination against Welsh patients?
Of course, it is often wise to invest in order to reap rewards later and health is a very good example of the truth of this rule. Health promotion and sickness prevention programmes must go hand in hand with treatment of disease. Indeed, the undoubted pressure on the NHS could be alleviated if there was more focus on health education and on ensuring that everyone has a safe, warm home and access to good fresh food. Both of those are causes of ill health. These issues are now mainly devolved to Public Health England and local health and well-being boards. Will the Minister say how the Secretary of State will use his mandate to ensure that the NHS is a health service and not a sickness service?
There has been much talk in recent days about the use of agency nurses as part of the debate about privatisation in the health service. From my point of view, delivery of services to everyone free at the point of delivery is the absolutely top principle. In order to ensure the best interests of the patient, if this can be delivered in a small minority of cases by a private organisation, that is acceptable as long as it provides good value for the taxpayer and gives no advantage to the private company over NHS providers.
Agency nurses are not the answer and neither is a cap on their remuneration. To me, the crucial challenge is the quality of management and planning within the NHS, the public service. I was recently in a ward with two patients and nine members of staff. That was poor planning when the procedures concerned were elective and not emergency. At the same time, there were other wards where the staff were run off their feet. Hospitals which plan their staffing well make little use of expensive agency nurses. It is fashionable for some politicians to make a big thing about cutting managers and increasing the number of nurses and doctors but I believe we must not forget that good management allows the nurses and doctors to do their job better. That has to be our aim in the interests of the patients.
School Curriculum: PSHE
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(10 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, in the light of the fact that deaf and disabled children are three times more likely to be sexually abused, and four times more likely to be physically or emotionally abused, than other children, will the Government make sure that schools ensure that these children receive their PSHE education in an appropriate form of communication that they can understand and are not withdrawn from PSHE classes for one reason or another because it is the easiest class to take them out of?
Child Exploitation in Oxfordshire
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(10 years, 11 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, my question is about the proposal to extend the offence of wilful neglect because there is evidence to suggest that that will not work. The BBC’s “Panorama” reported a case from the 1990s where a member of staff had sexually assaulted several boys. That was reported to the headmaster but the member of staff left and found another job, where he carried on abusing children. The police officer investigating the case, Alec Love, tried to bring a case of wilful neglect against the headmaster of the first school, but the judge threw it out. Mr Love said it was very hard,
“to prove the person wilfully set about to neglect the child or young person”.
Today, the serious case review report found that the authorities made mistakes and could have acted sooner but it found no evidence of wilful neglect or that the signs of exploitation were ignored. In the light of both these findings, why do the Government think that simply extending the offence of wilful neglect beyond the health service and adult social care will be effective?
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her comments. The Government do not think that simply extending this offence of wilful neglect will be effective in and of itself. It is obviously a high bar and, as a result of consultation, I am sure we will be taking advice on whether there is something else that we should do, in addition or instead. We have already committed to consult on the introduction of mandatory reporting.
Early Years Intervention
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(11 years ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for giving me this opportunity to speak about preventing the abuse and neglect of children. Scientific and social research have proved that the development of a baby during the first two to three years has an enormous effect on the personality, happiness and achievement of the adult, and thus on the whole of society. National and local government policy can and should be mobilised to ensure that all babies can have good, healthy physical and mental growth and develop resilience. These matters affect their social mobility and, consequently, are the very foundation of progress towards social justice.
International experts have shown the effects of stress, violence, poor parental attachment, neglect and poverty on babies’ brains. We now know that during the first two years, new synapses are being added at a rate of more than a million per second and that the nature of these pathways is affected by the treatment that the child receives. We also know, without a shadow of a doubt, that the child’s brain can be damaged irrevocably by violence and maltreatment.
Politicians have played their part, too, but there is one organisation that has played a greater part than any other in bringing these matters to the attention of government and in developing policies and strategies to address them. It is the WAVE Trust, of which I am honoured to be a patron, led by its founder and CEO George Hosking. WAVE began in 1995 when George realised that the levels of child abuse in this country had not reduced in 60 years and that the majority of the policies and the money spent were reactive, simply cleaning up the mess which was left in individuals and society. He realised that unless we develop effective preventive strategies we will never be able to improve the situation, so he began researching worldwide for strategies that worked. One of the most outstanding was the family nurse partnership in the USA, and George managed to persuade the Blair Labour Government to start one up here. It has since been expanded by the coalition Government.
It is vital that we work with young mothers who are at risk in order to ensure the physical and mental health of their babies. Despite its success, however, the FNP deals with only the tip of the iceberg and is expensive, so we need other strategies to help more parents who are struggling to do the best for their babies. WAVE’s report, Conception to Age 2—The Age of Opportunity, sets out a blueprint for local authorities. It has been widely used in the UK and recommended by UNICEF for use by countries across the world. WAVE is now leading a campaign to reduce child abuse and neglect by 70% by 2030. Responding to the challenge of providing hard evidence of how results can be achieved cost effectively during the normal life of a Government, it designed the Pioneer Communities project to test the effect of a comprehensive approach to preventing harm to children before it happens. The aim is to do this in six communities in the UK between this year and 2020. A pilot in four small areas is being supported by a £15 million grant from the Treasury. I am confident that the project will prove the case for prevention as a cost-effective approach to individual child well-being and social justice but it needs more financial support. We need a general national shift to primary prevention, not just a test in four small areas.
WAVE has also led a consortium of organisations which helped the Scottish Government to improve their Children and Young People (Scotland) Act to deliver that Government’s aims. One of the ways that it has done this is through the Scottish Early Years Collaborative, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. This could be done on a regional basis in England. Will the Government consider this collaborative approach which has been so beneficial in Scotland?
Finally, the WHO recently called for a public health prevention approach: specifically, a national action plan to reduce child maltreatment by 20% by 2020. Last October, Luciana Berger MP asked a Written Question of the DfE asking if it would respond positively to this. The Minister, Edward Timpson, answered:
“Responsibility for action to tackle child maltreatment and respond to the needs of vulnerable children rests primarily with local government … health services and the police … co-ordinated by local safeguarding children boards”.
I fear that I find this answer extremely disappointing. It smacks of passing the buck. We need a nationally co-ordinated primary prevention plan, supported by the Government. Can the Minister do better than his colleague in another place? The evidence is there, the experts have spoken and the financial case is currently being made. It is time that this country was a leader in this matter, not a follower, and we could start by introducing a complete ban on hitting children and by introducing the mandatory reporting of child abuse.
Adoption
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree that although it is highly desirable that children in need should find a loving for-ever family, as they have in the case of the noble Baroness, Lady King, it is much better, where it is in the child’s best interests, to keep them at home with their parents? Could it be that some of the Government’s prevention measures are having an effect here? Could my noble friend say something about the success of the family nurse partnership and some of the pilot schemes set up by my right honourable friend Sarah Teather to provide further support to parents in different parts of the country? Will that scheme be rolled out?
Schools: British Values
Baroness Walmsley Excerpts(11 years, 7 months ago)
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Baroness Walmsley (LD)
My Lords, does my noble friend agree with me that it might be very illuminating to ask immigrants to this country which British values incentivised them to come to live here? I suspect that free speech will be one of them, but there may be some very interesting ones that we could add to the list.