Children’s Homes etc. Inspection Fees, Childcare Fees, Adoption and Children Act Register (Amendment) Regulations 2019
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(5 years, 6 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, I express my thanks to my noble friend for making this important debate possible. When the Minister responds, I would be very grateful if he could be as explicit as possible in assuring the House that no vulnerable child will have been disadvantaged by the change in policy that my noble friend has enunciated.
We and successive Governments have been very concerned about black, Asian and minority ethnic children, sibling groups and children with special education needs being left behind in the adoption process. To successive Governments’ credit, much progress has been made. Obviously, we are all very concerned that this change in policy is not a step backwards.
My noble friend has talked about the imperative to think about the needs of our children and the importance of their future happiness, but we must also as a society think about the cost to society of failing to intervene early and effectively. I visited a residential school for children with severe trauma on Friday. They told me that it can cost a local authority £1 million to place a child in a residential setting. It is costing local authorities huge amounts of money to intervene very late in troubled children’s lives. I pay tribute to what the Government have been doing, but I would really appreciate it if the Minister could make it absolutely clear that there is no disadvantage to the vulnerable children successive Governments have been trying to serve in this change in policy. I look forward to his response.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, my father and his brother were adopted into a loving family, and it changed his and his brother’s lives for good, so in a sense I have a vested interest in this important debate. I welcome the opportunity to speak in support of the Motion to Regret and thank the noble Lord, Lord Russell, for moving it.
I am deeply troubled that the Government’s behaviour has made such a debate necessary. I remember that, during the coalition Government, the then Prime Minister David Cameron rightly spoke of the importance of adoption and the need to ensure that children are matched with the right family and that the process is not dragged into bureaucracy of our making.
I paid careful attention to what the Government said in the Explanatory Memorandum about the revocation of the regulations referring to the adoption register, but there is no explanation, merely a statement of what the regulations state, ending with the following sentence:
“These revocations are necessary as the Secretary of State will not be operating or maintaining an Adoption Register from 1 April 2019”.
That is the sum total of the Government’s justification for simply allowing the adoption register to lapse. They have abandoned—or let lapse—plan A without any plan B.
In the letter to the scrutiny committee, the Children’s Minister says:
“I would like to reassure the Committee that this decision was made following careful scrutiny of all the evidence and I am confident that it will not have a negative impact on children and adopters”.
However, there is no information about what “all the evidence” comprised, nor details of the “careful scrutiny” that the Government claim to have undertaken. It is difficult to challenge the Government’s decision, as the Explanatory Memorandum offers no explanation. The Government cannot claim that there will be no “negative impact”—nor, indeed, any other impact—as they have not undertaken an impact assessment of any sort. The adoption register has disappeared without trace and without any transition arrangements being put in place. Worse than that, there is no suggestion as to what the Government intend to do to replace the register.
Later in his letter, the Minister admits:
“It is my understanding that the charity Coram, the former contractor for the Adoption Register, also intends to set up a matching service. They have communicated that to all local authorities, but I do not know when this service is expected to launch … I do not know how many local authorities choose to subscribe to additional services … I am unable to say what the distribution of local authorities across that range is, except to say that around £5,000 is the average. The amount paid is a matter between individual local authorities and Link Maker”.
The Minister goes on to justify the decision by saying:
“The Adoption Register ceased operating on 31 March 2019, and, since then, I have not received feedback from any adoption agency to suggest they are struggling without it”.
I hope that the Government do not think that the lack of feedback within just seven weeks is evidence that there is no problem.
Some people may think that the regulations are just tidying up some unnecessary bureaucracy or getting rid of another length of red tape, but they would be wrong. It is always easier to talk in the abstract, but this is a shameful—perhaps dreadful—example of the Government pulling out of or back from doing something positive. The Government are washing their hands of hundreds of the most vulnerable children.
According to Coram—it ran the adoption register, as we heard—the hard evidence is that 277 of the most difficult-to-place children were found families in the single year up to 31 March 2019. Although I say “most difficult”, the difficulties are not of the children’s own making but their often complex needs mean that they need adoptive parents with the skill, determination and commitment to provide them with a proper home.
The alternative for many of these children is life in an institution of one sort or another—a life that could be transformed by finding the one set of parents in England that could meet their need for a family life, as happened for my father. In her letter to the scrutiny committee, the chief executive of Coram stated:
“The Adoption Register was the only registered, child-focussed pro-active independent service helping agencies to find adoptive homes for children when all other approaches have been tried. It was a vital extra chance for those who wait the longest - those with additional needs, developmental uncertainty, BAME or in sibling groups”.
In its excellent briefing, Coram said:
“Without the Register, agencies may pay to use an alternative product, with the total cost to the sector likely to exceed the value of the Register contract”.
The commercial alternative, depending on the size of the local authorities and the looked-after children population, is typically between £5,000 and £10,000 per local authority. We are all well aware of the dire situation of children’s services and the difficulty in them finding even this relatively small sum. To cover its annual costs, the register needed to help to find adoptive families for just two children who would otherwise have remained in care for the rest of their childhood—a target that has been achieved every year since it was created.
For some children, the adoption register was their last chance. For every child not adopted because the Government have abandoned the register, and for every adoptive parent not matched with an adopted son or daughter, the impact is incalculable. This Government should be ashamed of allowing the register just to disappear.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(8 years, 5 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I, too, thank the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, for tabling this amendment. I join in supporting, as have all noble Lords, what he proposes: a national action plan for the welfare of unaccompanied children. I have to reflect for one moment that the current changes, with the separation of the UK from the European Union, must limit to some extent the important international activity that can reach out to countries such as Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa, and support them to promote stability. The EU is less able to do that without us and we are less able to do it without the EU, so more of these children may come to this country in future because of the decision that was recently taken. I regret that.
I was grateful to the Minister for what he said in his letter on the Committee stage, which I received this morning. In it, he talked about Section 10 of the Children Act 2004. At that time, we very much regretted that that Act did not include a duty on the Immigration Service to promote outcomes for vulnerable children. It does for various other services, as the letter lays out, but I hope we can look at including in the Bill a duty on the Immigration Service to work with local authorities to promote outcomes for these children. Perhaps they should train social workers, for instance, to understand immigration issues and ensure that children get the right advice early on. In the past, there was a champion for children within the Immigration Service. In anticipation of our meeting tomorrow, can the Minister tell us who that champion is currently and what he is doing to promote children’s welfare? I support this amendment and I look forward to the Minister’s response to it.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I have taught three unaccompanied children at my school—obviously this was before the conflict in Syria—and we were making it up as we went along. There was no clear plan of what to do or what support there was. The three boys, as they were, were literally processed in Liverpool and arrived at our school. There was then a time lag while we and the foster parents to whom they eventually went tried to find someone to help with the language and with any other issues that they had. That is why the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is so important. I could not dissent from a single word of it and, had this provision been available when those three boys came to my school, it would have helped tremendously.
Since then, of course, the unaccompanied children coming to this country have been traumatised by conflict and war. The noble Lord, Lord Judd, is absolutely right that what they need above anything else is stability in their lives. I agree with my noble friend Lady Pinnock: if the Government are not happy with the wording of the amendment, can they for goodness’ sake please come forward with amendments that will deal with this matter? There is the issue of when these young people reach the age of 18. We have grappled with that in a number of debates on various occasions. I found it heartbreaking when one of the unaccompanied children was nearing his 18th birthday and was going to be returned—to Mongolia, as it happened. Given that we as a country have now agreed to accept an additional 20,000 children, I hope that a national plan is in place for them.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(8 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Storey
My Lords, I came to this Committee looking at the amendment thinking “No”. Young people themselves should be able to say “No”. Actually, listening to noble Lords, I now think it is absolutely right. These are the most vulnerable young people. For them to try and cut through the bureaucratic enjoyments of social services does not come easily. The onus should be on us to provide that support. This shows the value of a Committee, does it not? You listen to arguments and might change your mind.
The Earl of Listowel
I support Amendments 52, 53 and 74A. I was most grateful for the Minister’s encouraging reply on the previous group, which is relevant to this discussion, and for his sympathetic stance towards this. The current discussions about the pressures on local authorities, and the huge and diverse burdens they carry, might be one further reason why the onus should be put more firmly on them in primary legislation. Also, I am a little puzzled why one would wish to treat over-21 year-olds any differently to under-21 year-olds. My puzzlement is that if we are agreed that we should in this Bill make sure that over-21 year-olds receive the same entitlements that under-21 year-olds leaving care have had up till now, why should we not treat them in exactly the same way? I would appreciate some help with that question. If we can, and there is no legal impediment to do so, would we not want to give them exactly the same offer as that for under-21 year-olds?
On the personal adviser role, which was also discussed, I recognise absolutely the wisdom of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in talking about some flexibility in how that role is provided. One of the great successes in policy in this area in reason years has been the introduction by the coalition Government of Staying Put. More and more young people are now choosing to stay with their foster carers past the age of 18. We heard eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, about the importance of relationships and the continuity of them. Thanks to Staying Put and the Government’s work, more and more children are choosing to stay, from a position where in the past we were not able to encourage them to do that or make it possible. Enabling foster parents to become their young person’s personal adviser may be a very good and appropriate thing. This is someone they already have a relationship with.
My concern is that there also needs to be rigidity in certain ways. My concern about the whole issue of children found in social care is that we have allowed too much flexibility in the social work profession. Until very recently, it was not a requirement that social workers should have a degree to practise what they do. Indeed, later parts of the Bill address this very fact of the overflexibility and a lack of specification of what social workers should do. This personal adviser role is important as well. Reports from right-wing think tanks such as the Centre for Social Justice highlighted the failure to have a consistent personal adviser workforce. There needs to be both flexibility and rigidity in the system. I suggest that there can be assessments and processes to decide whether it is appropriate to devolve responsibility to a foster carer or some extended family, or whether to keep it with a personal adviser. However, we need some rigidity.
It is very much an Anglo-Saxon approach to have a flexible workforce and it has many advantages to it, while the continentals face great challenges because they have a rather rigid way of approaching their workforce. I would argue that for vulnerable children, there have been advantages in the continentals’ rigid approach. It is well documented that they have far higher requirements for social workers. In staff at children’s homes, they have pedagogues who normally have a degree-level qualification and have had very substantial training, which I would argue is very appropriate to working in residential care. I recognise the noble Baroness’s concerns but I share the concerns around the Committee that the personal adviser role needs to be more clearly spelt out and specified. I hope that the Minister can help us with that in his response.
Cities and Local Government Devolution Bill [HL]
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(8 years, 11 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
My Lords, adolescence is a difficult time for all young people, whether they grow up in loving families or not. I remain concerned that the amendment would put an additional burden on adolescents. I am also worried that it would put a target on the back of young people for unscrupulous politicians, which might be unhelpful. Finally, I agree with Barry Sheerman, a very well-respected Labour MP who was, for many years, head of the Education Select Committee in the other place. In recent discussions on the franchise in that place, he talked of his concern about the shrinking of childhood.
Many noble Lords support this proposal: I ask them to consult on it with experts in child development. So far, only the Government have referred to the evidence about adolescence. They have referred to neurobiological research into adolescence terminating in the early 20s but, so far, I am not aware of that evidence being referred to by those proposing the amendment.
Lord Storey (LD)
The noble Earl mentioned child development experts. Could he name the experts who are saying that it would put a target on the back of 16 year-olds if they were allowed to vote?
The Earl of Listowel
Certainly. In her final paper on adolescence as a development disturbance, Anna Freud, a pioneer of child development, highlighted the challenges which children face as they go through adolescence. In particular, she highlights the burdens which society puts on them in terms of exams and decisions about careers, which may affect their whole life course, at a time when they are trying to move from childhood into adulthood. I refer the noble Lord to that paper. There are child development experts—I know of at least one—who are very much in favour of this and others who are very much opposed to it. I ask those proposing this amendment to find some consensus among these individuals.
There would be one further benefit. If those proposing this would consult child development experts on this matter, when people such as myself and others wish to raise the age of criminal responsibility it would make the case for us to say, “We have talked to the child development experts and they all say that 10 is far too low for the age of criminal responsibility. We should raise it”. Noble Lords can set a good example in this matter so I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Shipley, might consider withdrawing his amendment.
Education and Adoption Bill
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(9 years ago)
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Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 4, which is in my name and that of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. I think that the noble Earl has withdrawn from that, so I am now—
The Earl of Listowel (CB)
If it would be helpful to the noble Lord, I think that Amendment 4 is in the next group.
Lord Storey
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 3 and 4. I was taken with the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, in Committee when, speaking for the Government, she said:
“I absolutely agree that the mental health of adopted children is a key issue”.—[Official Report, 17/11/15; col. GC 38.]
She went on to say that the £1.25 billion would be available and how the Future in Mind report would be implemented. Of course, we all want to see children who are in adoption find the right parents to adopt them as quickly as possible, but we also want to make sure that that adoption works. It is no good children being adopted if the adoption then breaks down.
One of the reasons that adoption regularly breaks down is that we have not properly assessed the children, particularly in relation to mental health. If we want to make sure that adoption works, we must put this crucial area right. I will not—well, I will—repeat the figures that 45% of children in care have a mental disorder, which is a huge number, while 60% of those who come into care have experienced neglect or abuse.
How do we ensure that we get this right? To me, it is very simple; to use an old expression, it is not rocket science. It is about providing the expertise and the resources but also about making sure it happens, which is why these amendments actually specify how it should happen. Like the noble Lord, Lord Watson, I cannot understand why the Government would not agree to that. It will be to their credit, and to the success of the Bill, that children who are adopted or who go into care are in the right situation and getting the right support.
We have come a long way in terms of mental health issues in the last few years—and it literally is only in the last few years. One of the areas I am concerned about is that we say, “Oh, there’s a strategy; there’s X amount of money available”, but often those resources do not go to the right people. I know from experience and from talking to other teachers that getting CAMHS into schools now is much harder than it was a few years ago. Never mind a few weeks’ wait, it can often be several months before that support is given. So I wonder whether, when the Minister replies, we might hear how mental health support might be given to schools in a more orderly and speedy way.
I repeat that I want it enshrined in the Bill that we do the assessment for children and young people as soon as possible so that we get it right. In replying, perhaps the Minister could say whether, if the mental health strategy comes out and says that, the Government will agree to it and implement it as well.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 3 first, which I think is an excellent amendment. I wish to be very brief at this stage because I found the Minister to be most helpful in addressing my concerns in Committee and since then. Before I speak further about that, I thank noble Lords who have spoken on all sides of the House in support of amendments that I have tabled previously in this area to better address the mental health needs of looked-after children. I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Storey, the noble Baroness, Lady Benjamin, and the noble Lords, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Watson, for their support over those concerns.
Since Committee, I have received a letter from the Minister on the mental health needs of young people. I have heard that the office of Edward Timpson MP, the Minister for Children, will be contacting me about a meeting, which will be very helpful in this regard. I also heard him speak yesterday at the Nuffield Foundation at the launch of a report into the educational achievement of looked-after children. I was very much struck by his recognition that the mental health needs of looked-after children had not been properly addressed in the past and heard, in what he said, his real commitment to addressing these issues for them. We have yet to learn the specifics of what he intends to do, but I feel that the direction of travel is just right, and I look forward to meeting him to discuss the specifics of what needs to be done.
I will not speak to my amendments, and nor do I expect the Minister to respond to them. Being as brief as possible may be the most helpful thing I can do at this point, unless the Minister would like me to speak briefly to my amendments—if that would be helpful to him—in which case I would be glad to do so. But my feeling was that the Government have been very helpful and I do not wish to push things any further or take any more of your Lordships’ time at this moment. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Immigration Bill
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(10 years, 9 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
I shall speak to Amendment 81, which stands in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Storey, and, in doing so, support Amendment 81A.
The effect of our amendment would be to take children who arrive in this country out of Schedule 3 to the Nationality, Immigration and Asylum Act 2002, “Withholding and Withdrawal of Support”, so that if they arrive in this country as children and reach the age of 18, they will not have all support withdrawn from them. As vice-chair of the APPG on children and young people in care and leaving care, I am particularly concerned as many of these young people are care-leavers and would not receive the support that I see other young people leaving care getting. I am also concerned that, through a technical detail, I think, in effect some of these young people are treated more harshly than adults in these processes. Whereas adults can have support withdrawn from them only once they have received removal instructions, some young people leaving care who have arrived in this country as asylum-seeking children can have support removed before they receive their removal instructions.
Noble Lords might like to know what kind of young people these are. For instance, a young man I met had come from Afghanistan. He had taken photographs of a solider or soldiers who had been hitting a woman with a rifle. The soldier or soldiers concerned did not like that and started to take an interest in him and his family. That was the reason that he gave for coming to this country. I played chess with a young man of my acquaintance over a period of nine months several years ago. He was a Kosovan Albanian. His father was a teacher. He was a very well turned-out young man who took great care of himself. He was very well spoken and very polite and considerate. Those are the kinds of young people that I have come across.
I know that some of these young people will have come through camps at some point in their life. My experience of that has been visiting one of these camps in Angola several years ago, which was very densely populated by adults and families. There had been no planning involved: the camp had simply grown and had gone on for many years beyond the time that had been expected when it was set up. It was really arranged in an ad hoc way. The Government were so neglectful of it that the people living there even had to pay for the water that was supplied by tankers to the area.
These young people have often had traumatic experiences before they made those traumatic journeys. In this country, we recognise that young people who have had such trauma and come into care should get additional support when they leave. We recognise that they should have special services provided to them to the age of 21 and, in certain circumstances, to the age of 25. These are vulnerable young people. They need additional support. They have had additional challenges which other young people have not.
It is therefore concerning to me that these young people who have had such trauma often have so little support once they turn 18, and may even be made destitute. That, of course, also raises the risk that they may become involved in crime. I remember meeting this particular Kosovan Albanian young man, who was so kind and seemed of such good character, with another young man—perhaps from Kosovo as well—who looked to me like a real thug. This young man was looking up to this leather-clad, rather rough-looking chap. I can see that if one makes such young people, who may have come from good backgrounds, destitute, the risk is that they will get involved with such unsavoury characters. One is particularly concerned for the young women who may be put in this situation of having their support withdrawn at the age of 18, and thinks about what might become of them if they should become exploited and involved in crime. These concerns are shared by the Refugee Children’s Consortium, a coalition of 40 charities working in this area.
I meant to make an apology to the Minister; I am sorry not to have done so before. In our recent discussion on the welfare of women who are pregnant or who have newborn children, I regret that I may have given the impression that the Government and the Minister himself did not care that much for the welfare of these women. I am sure, of course, that the Government are very concerned about the welfare of such women, as we all are. I apologise for giving that impression; I will be more careful in future. I look forward to the Minister’s response. I beg to move.
Lord Storey (LD)
My Lords, I support the amendment in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, The noble Earl successfully moved an amendment during the passage of the Children and Families Act, which the Government courageously supported, on children in foster care staying on beyond the age of 18, realising that that care and support was crucial to those young people.
This is a simple but essential amendment. This has been my only contribution to the Committee, and I am grateful to the organisations that have sent me briefings on this topic, not least the Children’s Society. The principle behind Amendment 81 rests on the belief that all young people who came to these shores as children and were in care should be able to receive leaving-care support, as all other care-leavers do, until they settle here or until they leave the UK.
I am deeply concerned about the impact of Schedule 3 to the 2002 Act, which allows local authorities to withhold or withdraw support from certain migrants, and the effect it has on young people who came here as unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, who have been made destitute because they exhausted the appeal rights when they turned 18. This House has always believed that the welfare of young children is paramount. As such, care-leavers are rightly supported in education according to their need rather than their status. Whether they were trafficked here for exploitation, were escaping a war-ravaged country, or fleeing torture or persecution, they should be able to get the support they need while they are in this country.
Some Members of the Committee might well say that if the Minister accepts this amendment, we will create further incentives for young people to falsely claim to be under 18 when they put in an asylum application. That argument is baseless—it simply is not supported by any evidence. The OECD has shown that there is no correlation between levels of support, permission to work and access to healthcare, and the number of asylum applications a nation receives. I hope the Minister will tell us what he makes of that.
From my time as leader of Liverpool City Council, I am well aware that when children are taken into care, a local authority assumes the role of corporate parent. That means that the authority has both a legal and moral duty to provide the kind of support that any “good parent” would provide for their own children, regardless of where they were born or who their parents are. That role rightly continues as children approach the age when they leave care, as it equips those young people with the skills and confidence they need to succeed in later life. Crucially, that should include those who came here as unaccompanied children.
It is interesting to note that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England said the current situation was,
“a stark example of how legislation, designed with the best interests of children in mind, differs in its implementation between young people who are, and those who are not, subject to immigration control”.
Children are children. Best intentions are simply not good enough. Indeed, children’s charities have raised concerns about the correlation between Her Majesty’s Government’s policies on immigration and the incidence of destitution among asylum-seeking and migrant children. As the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, noted during the passage of the Children and Families Act, our understanding is that we currently treat those 18 year-olds more harshly than adults of similar status, but who have not come through the care system.
To withdraw leaving-care support from those young people will put them at risk of exploitation and forced criminality, as well as make it less likely for them to return home when it is safe for them to do so if they are no longer in contact with local authorities. I therefore hope that the Minister, in his reply, might agree to review the impact that will have on child protection and children’s rights. We must not miss this opportunity a second time. I have personal experience of this as a head teacher. When an unaccompanied child from Mongolia came to my school, I saw the wonderful support he was given by his foster parents, but also saw the problems he faced when he got to the age of 17 and a half.
Forget targets and quotas; I hope that we will have the courage to remember that we are talking about children and young people here.
Children and Families Bill
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(11 years, 2 months ago)
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Lord Storey
My Lords, I would like to explore this in a bit more detail. Perhaps the Minister, if he is not able to give the information in his reply, could write to us. My experience in local government and as a head teacher is that, of course, children are trafficked, but some are trafficked because their parents in another part of the world want a better life for them, so they pay someone to put them on a plane and the poor child then arrives in the UK. As I understand it, there are regional centres where the children are received. There is one in Dover. Liverpool was and is another regional centre. The children come to Liverpool and Liverpool tries as best it can within the resources to cater for them and to look after them. I know that for two reasons. One is that, four or five years ago, our director of social services wrote a report saying, “Look, my budget can’t cope with the number coming in. We want to help, but it seems unfair financially that Liverpool should carry this burden”. Secondly, I also know as a head teacher that some of these children have been put into foster care. I gave the example at a meeting of a Mongolian street child, whose grandparents had paid a trafficker to bring him to the UK. He landed in London but was sent to a regional centre, which happened to be Liverpool, where he was fostered with a wonderful family in Halewood. He came to my school and he was well looked after. For me, the issue is not the reluctance of local authorities to deal with this but the sheer size of the problem and the support that they get. I hope that that makes sense.
The Earl of Listowel
I am reminded of the report by my noble friend Lord Laming on the death of Victoria Climbié. One of the comments made by the social workers in Haringey who were interviewed was that they were overwhelmed at the time, particularly by unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people. This can put a heavy burden on local authorities. I have another, related experience of visiting a children’s home some years ago. I spoke to the manager, who was very experienced—in many ways, she was a remarkable manager—but when it came to working with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, she felt that these were not their children. She had enough to do looking after the children with whom she had to deal, rather than having to deal with these other children, if you like. There is a difficulty and perhaps the amendment is a helpful way of tackling it. Some people will just say, “Look, we have enough on our plate. We don’t want to think about these extra children and we’ll find ways not to do so”. I am not sure whether that is exactly the issue in hand, but my experience is that, understandably, given the strains on social services and the immense emotional burden that caring for children with complex needs brings with it, some people can find ways to rationalise not giving proper care to vulnerable children because those children come from a very different background from theirs.
Education Bill
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(13 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Storey
My Lords, I echo what the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, has said. My concern is that physical contact happens in schools, whether it is in music, sport or a whole range of things. If you try to codify it and say, “These are the areas in which you can have physical contact”, what about the other areas—for example, when a four or five year-old wants reassurance and wants to hold the teacher’s hand in the playground? If that is not in the guidance, does that mean that that should not happen? We need to be very thoughtful about this.
The Earl of Listowel
I support what has been said. It is a theme across children’s services that many practitioners feel inhibited—particularly with children who have had an upbringing where there has not been much demonstration of love—about giving a child a hug or comforting them. The theme there is that an environment of overall excellence is the best safeguard for children, as Sir William Utting said. The better the staff and the better they are supported, the more confident they will be to do the right thing for the child at the right time.
I was very grateful for the comments made by the noble Baroness, Lady Perry of Southwark, about reading the committee report and, if I understand her correctly, the impression that it might give teachers about our sense of how good a job they are doing and how professional they are. It is a helpful way to rebalance our discussion. Certainly, from my experience principally in the past year when I met head teachers of primary schools, I was very impressed by their experience, judgment and understanding of children. I am particularly concerned about children from environments where they have experienced a lack of love, parents who are alcoholic or misusing drugs, or parents who are just not available to their children, which might be one of the reasons for my perception. When these children go into school they bring with them their home environments and earlier experiences and difficulties can arise if teachers are not well supported in responding to them. The Government’s adviser, Charlie Taylor, highlighted that point last week at a meeting and said that in his special school for children with EBD he was careful to help teachers to reflect on what had happened with the children and help them to see that, however aggressive a child might seem to be, that behaviour did not constitute a personal attack on the teacher but probably had something to do with the child’s home experience. By perhaps emphasising that area too much, I may have inadvertently omitted to emphasise the fantastic job that many teachers do with children. This is not an issue for many children but concerns only a small minority. I hope that my comments are helpful and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Education Bill
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, in moving Amendment 66, I will also speak to my Amendment 67. These are probing amendments, the purpose of which is to gain reassurance from the Minister about the entitlement of teachers to continuing professional development. Given that this is a changing environment, I would be grateful for reassurance about that entitlement.
In particular, if schools are taking more responsibility for the CPD of teachers, there must be clear funding for that in the future, given the need for consistency of CPD across education. As I hope noble Lords will agree, if we are to do well for our children, it is absolutely vital that our teachers are well supported in schools. If teachers do not get the support that they need through professional development, they are much more likely to burn out early. In addition, matters such as the inclusion of difficult pupils will be more difficult if teachers are not given the support that they need to give those pupils the necessary understanding and support.
When Professor Sir Michael Rutter, the renowned clinical psychologist, spoke some time ago at the British Psychological Society, he highlighted his concern that initial teacher training includes very little input about child development. In the past, there was some reference to child development, but it consisted of a rather dry few pages on Freud, Piaget and other theoreticians. The teachers to whom I speak say that they would prefer to learn about child development and about managing children’s behaviour a little while after they have started in practice with pupils, because they realise then the importance of understanding these things. It is very important to have a reflective workforce if we are to get the excellent outcomes for our children that we all want.
The bulk of teachers are already in the profession. Although we are looking at ensuring quality in teacher training and induction, most of our teachers are already in schools and many of our teachers are over 50 years old, so it is very important that we also attend to their continuing professional development. I look forward to my meeting tomorrow with Charles Taylor, the Government’s adviser on behaviour, who I think would probably agree with me—I hope that I am not being presumptuous—that it is very important for teachers to be able to depersonalise their interactions with their more challenging students so as not to take personally what may seem to the teacher to be a personal attack but which will very often be something to do with what is going on in the home environment.
It is also important that teachers are aware of developmental milestones, for reasons that many colleagues have given in the past. I hope we might also consider developing some of the best practice from the continent, whereby trainee teachers get to observe a child over a long period, take careful notes and share those observations with other teachers, and thereby learn about child development.
Another very helpful approach is that adopted by the child psychotherapist Emil Jackson and others who are working in 10 secondary schools in Brent, north London. They are working with groups of both school staff and head teachers, sitting with them and helping them to reflect on their relationships and the way that it is working in their classes. Another way of getting that understanding of child development into the teaching workforce is in allowing them a space in which they can sit with professionals such as child psychotherapists, clinical psychologists and child psychiatrists, particularly to discuss their more problematic pupils with them. That is very effective and has many benefits. I apologise for already speaking for rather too long to the Committee and beg to move my amendment.
Lord Storey
My Lords, briefly, I agree very much that in-service training—CPD, as we call it—is hugely important for the teachers in our schools. However, I would say that we currently do that. Every school has to have five days of training. In some schools we still call them Baker days, from somebody we know. My concern is that that training has to be of the highest calibre. As often as not, it is merely a day when people can sort other issues and training does take place.
Also, Ofsted inspections have to look at the quality of training in schools. In terms of observing teachers, every teacher—unless they are newly qualified—has to have set performance and management targets and, as part of that, classroom observations have to take place so that every teacher has to be observed, for a maximum of two lessons per week. To answer the noble Earl directly, training takes place in schools for five days a week, but I am always concerned about quality and teachers are observed at least twice a year.
My third and final observation is that the training days can, however, be quite disruptive to pupils because schools take them at different times. Would it not be great if all schools in an area took their training days at exactly the same time, so that parents could prepare for that and it would not be to the detriment of our pupils?
Education Bill
Debate between Earl of Listowel and Lord Storey(13 years, 5 months ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
Perhaps I could briefly make two comments on this very difficult issue. First, I hope your Lordships might agree that this highlights the importance of teachers and their development and their need to be highly reflected practitioners—not to get drawn into emotional situations but to have that professional capacity to stand back and be dispassionate. I very much welcome what the Minister is doing to help teachers to reflect on their practice with young people.
I spoke with a head teacher of an EBD school recently. He described a particular situation on a school outing. One of the children picked up a piece of glass on the beach, perhaps, and put it in his pocket, and the teacher was told about it by one of the school children and acted very quickly to search the child and take it away. For schools or institutions that deal with high numbers of children with challenging behaviour issues, it might be helpful for teachers to have this discretion. The head teacher’s point was that it was very important for teachers to be able to exercise their discretion and not feel inhibited by too much regulation in the background. I do not have particular experience in that area, but I share it because I heard it recently from a head teacher.
Lord Storey
I understand noble Lords’ concerns about crises, but I want to paint a different picture. In most situations, there will be teaching assistants in the classroom and learning mentors—a whole plethora of support staff who can support a particular situation. If there is a crisis, the best way to deal with it is not to provoke the situation further but to calm everything down. My concern is that if a teacher carries out this act by themselves and no one else is present, it could put them at risk. I can see all sorts of legal actions being taken whereby pupils, particularly at secondary school level, make allegations about what the teacher did to them. The police and law courts might become involved and it might become an absolute nightmare for schools and schooling, so I understand the concern about the crisis that might occur, but I am equally concerned about the well-being of the individual teacher and pupil. To put that teacher in that situation is potentially quite dangerous.