Free School Meals
Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
The noble Baroness is talking about the changes to the transitional protections: as she knows, phase one has now come to an end. To reassure families, no pupil will feel any change as a result of the move to phase two of the protections until after the summer. I can assure the noble Baroness that, as with all government policy, we will keep our approach to free school meals under review. I am happy to write to her with the figures for those who have had transitional protections and how they will be supported until the end of this school year. Then, we will bring forward more information about what will happen at that particular point.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I was told before the election that this was a GDPR issue, but it became very clear that it is not. Now that that is clear, every single one of the 23 local authorities in the north-east is now engaged in auto-enrolling every eligible child for free school meals. In Newcastle alone, within the last year, that is over 2,000 additional children, and of course the schools also benefit. Will my noble friend join me in congratulating every one of those 23 authorities, but also really push to make sure that other local authorities just get on with it?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend makes an important point, and makes the case that I was trying to outline about the way in which local authorities are often very well placed to ensure that children are getting what they are entitled to, but often need the data and the information to be shared with them in order to be able to do that—although I know my noble friend thinks that they could have done it more easily. But we will facilitate the sharing of that data and I share her view that, where some local authorities have already made enormous progress in enrolling more children in free school meals, others should look to their example and ensure that they do that as well.
Adoption and Special Guardianship Support Fund
Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top(1 day, 9 hours ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
As I pointed out, for individual children there was transitional support for therapy that they had got permission to receive from last year into this year. However, I concede that this has been a difficult time for both the children and families that receive support through the fund and for therapists who supply support as part of that funding. We will work as hard as we can to make sure that we provide consistency and early indication of budgeting in future years.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, it seems clear that this support is critical for many children, and I am thinking in particular of children in kinship care. The problem is that at the moment the criteria restrict the fund to those who have previously been in the care system. When kinship care really works well is when the case conference enables the wider family to step in immediately, but the child may still be traumatised and indeed other members of the family may need support too. Will the Minister commit to looking at this so that, when the Government are thinking about the criteria for the now very welcome money, they think about those who are not just coming through the care system?
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
My noble friend is right that the adoption and special guardianship support fund is specifically aimed at recognising the state’s role in having previously cared for the child at the point at which they are adopted or go into special guardianship. She is also right about the enormously important role that kinship care plays in our system. That is why the Government have made a series of announcements about how we can support the important role of kinship care: the appointment of the first national kinship care ambassador; the new kinship care statutory guidance for local authorities; the delivery of over 140 peer support groups across England, available for all kinship carers to access; and, of course, the recently announced £40 million package to trial a new kinship allowance, to test whether paying an allowance to cover the additional costs of supporting the child can help to increase the number of children taken in by family members and friends, with all the benefits that my noble friend has identified.
Children’s Social Care
Debate between Baroness Smith of Malvern and Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top(4 months, 2 weeks ago)
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Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
I thank the noble Lord, who has done as much as anybody to improve the lives of vulnerable children, for his recognition of the principles that lie behind this Statement, which are exactly as he says: to prevent children getting into the statutory system in the first place by bringing in services and support for families much earlier on, and by ensuring that all agencies are working together to provide for that. We will of course bring forward the legislative elements of this Statement in the children and well-being Bill, which we hope to introduce when parliamentary time allows. I said to the noble Baroness the other day that we announced it in the King’s Speech and I hope and expect that it will be introduced reasonably soon.
Whether or not it is a formal update, I have no doubt, given the interest noble Lords have shown in this area of work since I have been in this House, that there will be ample opportunity for me to update the House on the progress we are making on what he rightly says is a very ambitious and wide-ranging programme of reform.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, first, I declare a new interest. Tomorrow, I hope to be endorsed as a trustee of Foundations, which is referenced in the Government’s report as having evidence-based the value of family-led decisions when children are at risk of entering care. It has been doing work following on from what the last Labour Government did in establishing evidence-based programmes in this area.
I particularly want the Government, and ask the Minister, to think about earlier interventions, which are mainly pre-school and early school and concentrate on evidence-based parenting programmes and relationship programmes, and which then really reduce the number of children who later in life need to come into care. We know this: the evidence is there in the authorities such as Leeds, which continue to do this despite the heavy cuts. I urge the Government to recognise the importance of these programmes and of sticking with them in the long term. We have learned from the last Government that cutting these programmes ends up in government having to pay far more money and children paying a much higher price.