Children and Families Bill

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and my noble friends Lord Addington, Lord Storey and Lady Walmsley for tabling the amendments in this group and giving the Committee the opportunity to discuss this important issue. I also thank other noble Lords who spoke.

We have given Clause 70 considerable thought since it was discussed in the other place and following the informative debate in this House at Second Reading. I understand the concerns raised today, which were prompted by this clause being included in the Bill. I assure noble Lords that there was never any intention for this clause to suggest that the Government are not concerned with supporting this vulnerable group of children and young people. I am very clear that I want to use this Bill to improve the support we provide to children and young people in custody with special educational needs. This is an issue I have been concerned with ever since, 42 years ago, during my university course on criminology and penology, I spent three weeks in what was then called a borstal. It was probably the most eye-opening three weeks of my entire education.

Clause 70 is included to play an important technical function by disapplying duties which would be impractical to deliver while a child or young person is in custody. For example, it would not be possible to allow a young offender to choose where they are educated or to give them a personal budget. We have been considering how we can introduce provisions that will ensure continuity of education and health support while a young offender is detained.

In Amendment 214, my noble friend Lord Storey has set out how Clause 70 could be replaced, and I listened to his thoughtful contribution to the debate today. I hope it reassures my noble friend and others that legislation exists in Section 562C of the Education Act 1996 setting out how education and support for those with special educational needs is delivered in custody. That legislation places clear duties on local authorities to use their best endeavours to deliver the special educational provision that is set out in a statement of special educational need. The consequential amendments in Schedule 3 to the Bill will place the same duties on local authorities for young offenders aged 10 to 17 in custody with education, health and care plans. However, we all agree that more needs to be done.

The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, proposed a way forward in his Amendment 213 which seeks to amend existing provisions in the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Act 2009. I thank the noble Lord for this amendment, which I know draws on his considerable experience and expertise in this area. The noble Lord has spoken with knowledge and passion throughout this Committee’s debate on Part 3 of this Bill, and I am particularly grateful for his contributions. As I have discussed with the noble Lord, the intention behind this amendment is in many ways similar to the solutions we have been considering.

Ensuring continuity of support already set out in EHC plans for those children and young people moving into, through and out of custody is exactly what I want to achieve. I am also considering whether we can enable children and young people in youth custody to have the right to ask for an assessment for an EHC plan where special educational needs are identified for the first time.

However, as I have discussed with the noble Lord, this new clause does not achieve all that we might want. For example, it is important to ensure that duties are on relevant health bodies rather than local authorities. Concerning the point my noble friend Lord Storey raised on behalf of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, it is essential that we properly consider what the role of the home local authority should be as well as that of the host local authority. As many in this debate have said, this is a great opportunity to make a difference, and it is important that home local authorities maintain their involvement with children and young people who are in custody so they are aware of progress and can make sure that appropriate provision and support is available when a young offender returns home on release. This is important if we are to reduce further the risk of reoffending.

I thank noble Lords for the debate today. We will carefully read the contributions from noble Lords between now and Report as we reach a decision on how best to amend Clause 70 to achieve the aim of improving provision for children and young people with SEN in custody which we are all agreed on. I recently met the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to discuss how we might do this, and I would like to continue to work with him and others as we develop amendments to be tabled ahead of Report.

I turn to Amendment 212 and the issue of screening those in custody for dyslexia. I agree with my noble friends Lord Addington and Lady Walmsley that we must support young offenders who have hidden disabilities such as dyslexia. I should like to assure my noble friends that assessments to identify such needs already take place in the youth secure estate. Education providers assess all young offenders’ levels of literacy, language and numeracy on entry to custody. They also use a variety of tests such as the hidden disabilities questionnaire developed by Dyslexia Action to screen all young offenders who show signs of having a learning difficulty or disability. These assessments are extremely important because they allow providers to identify a range of learning difficulties, including dyslexia. Once their needs have been assessed, all young offenders in custody receive an individual learning plan that follows them through the course of their sentence. Of course, if we are able to ensure continuity of EHC-plan support, then young offenders with plans will already have had such needs and relevant support identified. Education providers in young offender institutions are also contractually required to have a workforce trained to identify and support a young person’s individual learning needs.

Of course, despite the current legal and contractual protections, we can always do more. The Transforming Youth Custody Green Paper sets out how we want to put education at the centre of youth custody, thereby ensuring young offenders are equipped with the skills, qualifications and self-discipline they need to stop offending and lead productive lives on release. The consultation included a question on how best to support young offenders with special educational needs. The consultation ended on 30 April this year. Since then, the Ministry of Justice has been reviewing the responses received and carefully considering the next steps to transforming youth custody, and plans to publish the response to the consultation shortly. We want our amendments to complement the MoJ’s reforms and are working with it to achieve this.

With those reassurances, I hope that noble Lords will feel able to withdraw or not move their amendments.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for asking a quick question. How does the virtual school head that this Bill puts on a statutory basis keep track of a looked-after child who enters the secure estate? Many of them will have special educational needs. There is no need for a response now but perhaps it is a matter that the Minister can think about for us to discuss at some point.

[Lord Addington]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that—shall I say?—reassuring answer. It was not the radical announcement that I was half hoping for, perhaps forlornly. However, it is certainly reassuring to know that people are thinking about this problem. I should also say to my noble friend that there is a lot of cross-party consensus on this. I do not think that anyone has any idea other than to try and improve this Bill, so I encourage him to make sure that we are all engaged in this. The continuation of political support on this issue can, on this occasion, be added to and built on. All of us want to find a sustainable and improving way to reach this incredibly hard-to-reach group. My noble friend Lady Walmsley talked about the problems that someone who cannot read has in accessing help. To take that one step further: try accessing the benefits system without being able to fill in a form, and then have the fear of humiliation in admitting that you cannot read. I encourage my noble friend to encourage the Ministry of Justice to address this. It must do so because everyone is a winner if we get this right. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I, too, rise to support the amendment of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, and agree with the points that she has already made. In July 2011, the Prime Minister said in response to a Question from my right honourable friend Sir Malcolm Bruce MP:

“We do a lot to support different languages throughout the UK. Signing is an incredibly valuable language for many people in our country. Those pilot schemes were successful”.—[Official Report, Commons, 13/07/2011; col. 308.]

The scheme that the Prime Minister was referring to was the I-Sign consortium, which has piloted family sign language classes in two regions. NDCS, with support from the Department for Education, continues to work to support the development of sign language courses. However, local authorities cannot be compelled to provide sign language support because there is no duty to do so. As has already been outlined, a very high percentage of deaf children are born into hearing families who have no previous first-hand experience of deafness. These families really need support to communicate with their child, particularly where sign language is chosen.

It has been estimated that where deaf children need to communicate in sign language, eight out of 10 parents of deaf children never learn how to communicate with their child through sign language. Without the right support from the start, deaf children and young people are vulnerable to isolation, abuse, bullying, poor self-esteem and low levels of attainment. We have already heard from the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, how local authorities are very patchy in their provision of sign language services.

The SEN reform in this Bill offers the potential to generate a step change in the provision of sign language courses for families. For example, personal budgets may enable families to pay for this support themselves. However, while SEN reform might generate more demand for sign language courses, it really will be useless while local authorities can walk away, which is very damaging to deaf children and their families.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I rise briefly to support this amendment so eloquently moved by my noble friend and to ask two questions. I support it particularly because of the work done by the right honourable Iain Duncan Smith MP and Graham Allen MP, among others, on the importance of early attachment between infants and parents. Clearly, it is crucial that parents can communicate with their young child in order to make a strong bond with them.

I particularly want to emphasise the importance of that. We may have already covered this elsewhere in the Bill, but the two questions are: how is assisting parents to communicate with their blind children dealt with and, on the broader point about all children with some disability or another, how are parents enabled to communicate with them, for instance, those with dyslexia? There may be less of an issue in those particular cases.

The point that I would like some clarity on, and the Minister is welcome to write to me on these points if he thinks that would be appropriate, is that we do not see children on their own; we see them as part of a family and a set of relationships. I imagine that has probably been dealt with elsewhere in the Bill, and I probably have not followed that part closely enough. I hope that that is helpful.