A Manifesto to Strengthen Families

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 2nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

That this House takes note of A Manifesto to Strengthen Families, published on 6 September.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, it is with a great sense of purpose and, indeed, determination that I open today’s debate on A Manifesto to Strengthen Families. It has more than 50 signatories from honourable Members on Conservative Benches in the other place and a solid showing from noble Lords here, many of whom are speaking today. I am sure that all will wish to join me in welcoming my noble friend Lord Agnew to his place on the Front Bench. Given his outstanding track record in business and educational improvement, he will, I am sure, rise admirably to the considerable challenge of making his maiden speech while responding for the first time to a long debate as a Minister. He is very well placed to do so, given his evident passion for tackling disadvantage.

I am grateful to him and all noble Lords who have taken the time to contribute to our deliberations today. They are long overdue: it is almost 10 years since my noble friend Lady Gardner of Parkes led the last debate on the importance of strengthening families, following the launch of the Centre for Social Justice’s landmark report Breakthrough Britain. It is fitting, therefore, that my noble friend Lady Stroud is here to add her considerable weight to our debate—I trust she will take that in the spirit intended—as she was instrumental to this report’s delivery.

Published mid-2007, Breakthrough Britain highlighted the role family breakdown plays in driving poverty and further entrenching disadvantage. Prior to it, our social and political commentary had become stuck in the groove of orthodoxy that said financial hardship caused families to fall apart and, as a result, family policy had been reduced to a three-word slogan, “End child poverty”. Yet shortly before the Labour Government came to power, Tony Blair told his party conference that a strong society cannot be morally neutral about the family, and referred to:

“The development of an underclass of people, cut off from society’s mainstream, living often in poverty … crime and family instability”.


He described this as a “moral and economic evil”. The first ever Green Paper on the family, Supporting Families, published shortly after Labour came to power, did not shrink from addressing family instability, to Labour’s great credit. However, policy proposals to tackle relationship breakdown within it were largely abandoned and family stability became the elephant in the room of social policy, despite it being a root cause, as well as an effect, of poverty. It hits the poorest the hardest, compounds existing disadvantage and is a potent driver of wider social breakdown.

My own involvement with the Centre for Social Justice, and my work in this House, are deeply rooted in a desire to address root causes of disadvantage, and I am encouraged that current government policy is pushing in this direction. Indeed, my noble friend Lord Freud, when he was Minister for Welfare Reform, committed the Government to developing,

“a range of non-statutory indicators to measure progress against the other root causes of child poverty, which include but are not limited to family breakdown, addiction and problem debt. Anyone will be able to assess the Government’s progress here. The Government are saying, ‘Judge us on that progress’”.—[Official Report, 9/12/15; col. 1585.]

In April, several family indicators were published, including parental conflict, parental worklessness and parental mental ill-health. These are all essential for building a picture of the number of children growing up in families where relationships are under such strain that children are highly likely to suffer ill effects. Certainly, that is what research on the outcomes of adverse childhood experiences, or ACEs, on later life teaches us. However, there is one ACE, parental separation, that used to be captured in the family stability indicator but seems to have been quietly dropped. How can we judge the Government on their progress against family breakdown as a root cause of child poverty when we no longer measure it but instead use the proxy of parental conflict? Will the Minister explain why the family stability indicator does not sit alongside the other parental indicators?

The manifesto we are discussing today makes it clear that parental conflict devastates a child’s emotional world and is a cause of mental ill-health, even if it manifests itself not in violence or verbal aggression but in a pervasive and permanent atmosphere of coldness, indifference and hostility. Couple counselling should be available through children and young people’s mental health services if parental conflict lies behind children’s mental illness.

However, research by Amato and Booth shows that low-conflict divorces can be as harmful to children as high-conflict but stable relationships. Children do not understand why a split has happened. They blame themselves and assume that relationships are inherently unreliable. Additionally, they almost invariably lose daily contact with one of their parents and, if they stay with their mothers, their incomes are more likely to drop. The first Children’s Commissioner for England, Sir Al Aynsley Green, said that children’s biggest fear was that their parents would split up. We have one of the highest divorce and separation rates in the OECD and one of the highest rates of children growing up without both birth parents. These truths make us very uncomfortable. They also make us very uncompetitive. Rightly, we have a Chancellor who is determined to boost our nation’s productivity and ability to live within our means. Well-functioning families are wealth generators, which make a considerable contribution to society. However, when families falter they often become welfare consumers, and relationship difficulties that affect mental and physical health can make it incredibly hard to perform well at work.

The cost of family breakdown has been set at a shade under £50 billion per annum. However, many indirect costs accrue to every department of government. For example, high demand for local authority care has an impact on prison budgets, as a quarter of prisoners were looked-after children. Some of the greater need for counselling in schools, children’s mental health services and housing stems from fractured families. They will also be less available to supplement social care for elderly people.

These costs are ultimately borne by the Exchequer, so the Chancellor has the greatest interest in demanding that each Secretary of State brings forward plans to strengthen families. Government-wide challenges need cross-departmental co-ordination. Our manifesto recommends that a senior Cabinet Minister take responsibility for driving family policy in the same way that the Secretary of State of a big existing department champions qualities across government as part of their wider brief, is aided by an equivalent to the Government Equalities Office and has a dedicated budget.

To change the structure of government in this way would be a clear signal that this country no longer pays lip service to the importance of families. At every election there are warm words on the subject from across the political spectrum but, to date, Governments of all colours have delivered very little when they hold the reins of power. This week, the President of the Family Division of the High Court pointed out that too many Whitehall departments were responsible for children and that,

“there is no department and no secretary of state whose title includes either the word ‘families’ or the word ‘children’”,

and implied that the current structure was failing those who needed it most.

We have been encouraged by the response from Ministers since the manifesto was launched, and I think they have got the message that we are not going to go away. David Burrowes, the highly respected former honourable Member in the other place, has been appointed executive director to ensure take-up of the manifesto recommendations, whether at a national or local government level. There will be an annual progress update and, as policies are implemented, we will add more to a rolling programme of family-strengthening measures.

The input of noble Lords to this process would be very much appreciated. In the process of rallying support from our Benches, the ideas were sharpened by signatories’ decades of government and front-line experience. Now they are published, all those involved in the manifesto are keen to draw on cross-party expertise. Reversing our damaging family breakdown trends will not be achieved by one or two terms of government—it will take a generation.

I conclude my remarks by focusing briefly on three areas in the manifesto in which I am personally much invested. First, in this Session I will bring forward a Private Member’s Bill, the Family Relationships (Impact Assessment and Targets) Bill, which will make it a statutory obligation for all government departments to carry out a family impact assessment on all their policies and expenditure. At present, we have the non-statutory family test, introduced during the coalition years. I have found a lack of clarity in some departments about whether this is still government policy, so it has by no means become embedded. Moreover, officials are under no compulsion to publish the results and findings from impact assessment exercises, which makes a mockery of transparency and accountability.

Secondly, the manifesto refers to family hubs, about which I have spoken several times in your Lordships’ House, the introduction of which was Labour Party policy just before the 2015 election. Family hubs are local one-stop shops that particularly help children in need, offering families with children aged from nought to 19 early help to overcome difficulties and build stronger relationships. Such provision is typically co-located with superb early years healthcare and support, such as in transformed children’s centres, supplementing and not supplanting those vital services.

We have recommended that the Government put in place a transformation fund and national task force to encourage local authorities to move towards this family hub model, working closely with charities and local businesses. These should build on the experience of councils, such as on the Isle of Wight, that have pioneered family hubs effectively. Barking and Dagenham is also making hubs part of a major local authority reorganisation, in which housing and other departments have been subsumed into a community solutions department that draws in community assets—not “doing to” people but “doing with” people.

Finally, policy 14 encourages police and crime commissioners to work with local schools to ensure that any child who experiences domestic abuse gets the support they need, after a bad night at home, from the minute they go through the school gate. In his book Blue, former borough police commander for Southwark, John Sutherland, recounts how for those young men who go on to cause serious harm,

“it all began behind closed doors—hidden in their homes and their childhoods. It’s one of the undeniable conclusions of my professional life”.

Gang formation is partly driven by children and young people seeking out comfort and security from their peers because they did not find it among the adults in their lives. Schools are ideally placed to offer that but, unless children’s emotional pain as a result of experiencing or witnessing abuse at home is picked up early in the school day, it can result in inattention in class, other forms of disengagement and, at worst, them mimicking that abusive behaviour. Instead of experiencing care and sympathy, they will likely be reproached and feel rejected.

Over 25 police forces have adopted this Operation Encompass model, which requires them, after a call-out to a domestic violence incident, to share data in a timely way with schools. It needs to be every force and every school, with the ultimate aim of stamping out domestic abuse for good.

In summary, this Government urgently need to develop a strategic approach to strengthening families. We recently heard in this House that the Farmer review recommendations in this manifesto are already being implemented by the Ministry of Justice. Can the Minister encourage us that this welcoming spirit towards similar policies will be evident from all government departments?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Farmer]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend the Minister on his maiden speech and on giving us such an encouraging government response to the debate. It is clear that he will make a huge contribution to government in his role at the Dispatch Box.

The debate has been excellent, with a lot of constructive contributions. I thank all noble Lords who have contributed. I make the point that I made at the beginning: the family manifesto that has been produced is an ongoing work. It is progressive and rolling, and I am sure that your Lordships’ involvement today will be both a great help in continuing the thinking behind the manifesto and a challenge to the Government as they read Hansard for what was said today. A lot was added to the debate; I do not have the time to go over individual contributions, but I want to mention the word “counterculture”; I think the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Oxford used it. We have been living in an age that is focused on the individual. To repeat what I said at the beginning, it will take a couple of Governments at least to turn around this culture on the individual and focus it more on the family unit as the basic social unit.

I thank all noble Lords. There have been a lot of additions. We have had emphasis on military families. We have a new Secretary of State for Defence today. We will be knocking on his door and talking to him about how to look after the peculiar pressures military families are under.

I come back to the Minister and thank him for his news about what is going on in DWP on parental conflicts and for the fact that a policy will be developed reducing that. I am also very encouraged by Prime Minister’s Questions yesterday, when she said she was all for family hubs. If that is coming from the top we might get somewhere. Talking about family hubs, I mention the criticism of Sure Start children centres from the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. I tried to touch on that; the Minister also did. Apart from the fact that money is scarce, there is the whole idea of joining in with the community, as we heard from the noble Lord, Lord Bird, and using voluntary organisations, but also of developing Sure Start children centres into a family hub for children aged zero to 19, in particular for the category of children in need. Families can go there to find out where to go for the problems they may have.

I do not have much time. I again thank all noble Lords for an excellent, constructive debate. It had a lot of ideas in it. I am quite encouraged by the current mood in government to recognise that families are very important to strengthen. We cannot go on having the record we have in OECD countries and, as we heard earlier, our record in Europe. It is appalling. We need to refocus our minds and hearts on strengthening family relationships. It will be to the benefit of the whole of society. I beg to move.

Motion agreed.

Children in Need

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2017 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Farmer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that local authorities put an action plan in place for all children in need that will improve their family relationships and resolve other difficulties sufficiently for them to be stepped down from that status.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)]

My Lords, our statutory guidance, Working together to safeguard children, is clear that, where a child is found to be in need, support should be provided to address those needs in order to improve their outcomes. Where the outcome of the assessment is the continued involvement of local authority children’s social care, the social worker and their manager should agree a plan of action with other professionals and discuss this with the child and their family.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

I thank my noble friend the Minister for his reply. At his suggestion, I visited Feltham’s Reach Academy, where staff are working with the local authority to develop a family hub. Parents with children aged nought to 19 will get any early help they need so that they can partner with the school to help deliver outstanding pupil outcomes. This could be transformational for children in need. What are the Government doing to encourage the development of family hubs?

[Lord Nash]

I am delighted that my noble friend visited Reach Academy in Feltham. It is an outstanding example of the success of the free schools programme, and I am pleased that it has also been approved to open a second free school. I know that my noble friend has done a great deal of excellent work with the Centre for Social Justice on the concept of family hubs. Obviously, the earlier we can help children the better, and this is why we are encouraging so many primary schools to open nursery schools, through the free schools programme and otherwise. A number of local authorities have introduced family hub-type models, and I hope we will see more of them. However, ultimately it is up to local authorities to decide the best local solution.

Technical Education

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Wednesday 5th April 2017 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Lord Farmer]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, in the light of the Budget announcement that new T-Levels will be introduced to give parity of esteem for technical education, how they intend to ensure that young people also have the interpersonal skills required to succeed in the workplace.

[Baroness Eaton (Con)]

My Lords, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Farmer, and at his request, I beg leave to ask the Question standing in his name on the Order Paper.

Educational Attainment: Boys

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 30th March 2017 Grand Committee

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I too thank my noble friend Lord Lingfield for raising this important issue. As he and the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, it is a complex subject, to which it is hard to do justice in one hour, so I will focus on the lack of male role models, which is a significant factor in boys’ underachievement. To set this in a broader context, UK studies show that only one-fifth of the variability in pupils’ achievement can be attributed to school quality; the remaining four-fifths is attributable to pupil-level factors. The influence of family background accounts for half of that four-fifths. To put it plainly, 40% of variability in pupils’ achievement has absolutely nothing to do with the school or the neighbourhood.

Here I disagree with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. Poverty is an inadequate explanation. Attainment among pupils on free school meals from Bangladeshi, black African and Chinese backgrounds has improved by more than 20% over the last 10 years, while poor white pupils do worst in their GCSEs among all the main ethnic groups and have seen no such uplift. Boys do especially badly: less than a quarter of boys on free school meals achieve five good GCSEs, compared with just under a third of girls.

The right honourable Member for Birkenhead, Frank Field, said:

“Raising the aspirations and results of white working-class boys would do more than anything to cut the supply route to Britain’s burgeoning underclass”.


Joseph Rowntree Foundation research shows that raising aspirations requires working with parents, yet a 2011 Ofsted survey of 37 secondary schools found that none of the schools was focusing specifically on drawing in the families of white British students. One high-attaining inner-city secondary school was working effectively with groups such as black Caribbean boys and Somali girls but had not attempted similar work with its lowest-attaining group: white British students eligible for free school meals. It is a fairly small survey, which highlighted only one otherwise successful school, but it is telling none the less.

Over 3 three million children are growing up in lone-parent households, about a million of whom have no meaningful contact with their fathers. Rates of lone parenthood are far higher among poor white and black groups than among Chinese, Indian and Bangladeshi populations. Research clearly shows that family breakdown is a risk factor for educational underattainment. Can the Minister explain how we are supporting families to prevent family breakdown? I draw the attention of noble Lords to my entry in the register of interests in quoting from the Centre for Social Justice’s 2013 report, Requires Improvement. In it, Sir Robin Bosher, director of primary education at the Harris Federation of academies, emphasises that 25 years as a head teacher has taught him that,

“society must not underestimate the impact of family breakdown and the colossal effect a parent leaving home has on children”.

John d’Abbro OBE, who heads the outstanding-rated New Rush Hall School, argues that underlying almost all the exclusions that he sees is the issue of family breakdown. Boys are three times more likely to be excluded than girls, and many of the boys whom d’Abbro sees excluded grew up without fathers. A lack of discipline at home means that boys will test boundaries to the limit and beyond at school. US and UK research shows that, even if he is not spending a lot of time doing things with his son, a father’s presence is still a protective factor. We should not underestimate how hard it is for even the most dedicated single mothers to compensate for the psychological impact of a boy’s father not being there to encourage him, pull him up when necessary and show him love and care. The father gives a boy more reason to try harder, push himself and overcome: all vital for doing well at school, as is a father’s modelling of being able to provide for one’s family by linking effort and reward.

There are micro-communities in our country where three-quarters of households with children have no father living in the house. Male teachers are, therefore, even more vital in these local schools, as was highlighted by the noble Lord, Lord Lingfield. In 2012, however, one in four English primary schools had no full-time qualified male teacher and 80% of state-educated boys were in primary schools with three or fewer full-time qualified male teachers. In one low-income area—Lewisham, in London, which has well over twice the national average of lone-parent families—one-third of primary schools had no qualified full-time male teachers. Can the Minister update us on the number of male teachers today and tell us what is being done to increase their prevalence, especially where lone-parenthood rates are high?

Keeping fathers involved, even if they are separate from mothers, is vital. We have to start early: the last Labour Government passed legislation to ensure that all fathers’ names are on birth certificates in all but the most exceptional circumstances. This part of the Welfare Reform Act 2009 should be brought into force. Will the Minister inform us what is currently being done to improve the rates of active fatherhood?

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 23rd November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, as noble Lords will be aware, Clause 2 requires local authorities to consult on and publish a local offer for care leavers. The local offer will set out the services provided by a local authority to assist its care leavers as they move into adulthood and independent living. It should include services relating to health and well-being, education and training, employment, accommodation, and participation in society. On Report, noble Lords expressed concern that services relating to relationships were not included in this list. I recognise this concern and agree that strong and supportive relationships are critical to supporting care leavers to lead successful independent lives. I committed to consider in detail whether an amendment to the Bill would be the best way of securing the necessary progress in this area and, on reflection, we believe that it would. I have therefore tabled this amendment to add services relating to relationships to Clause 2. If local authorities believe that particular services may assist care leavers in or in preparing for adulthood and independent living, they will now have to publish information about these services as part of their local offer, alongside information about services relating to the other five areas stipulated in the clause.

The remainder of the amendments in this group should not, I hope, detain the House for too long. They are a set of technical and consequential amendments relating to Part 1 of the Bill. Amendment 7 allows regulations relating to local reviews of serious cases of harm and abuse that would otherwise be made under the negative scrutiny procedure to be made under the affirmative procedure. This will allow the Government to bring forward regulations relating to both local and national reviews for the House’s scrutiny in a single instrument, ensuring greater coherence and making best use of the House’s time. The other amendments create a new schedule to the Bill, which comprises changes necessary to existing legislation as a consequence of the substantive changes we have debated on the Bill.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for bringing forward this welcome amendment—Amendment 2. It follows an amendment I tabled in Committee and on Report, to which the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern and my noble friend Lady Hodgson put their names. I am grateful to them for their enthusiastic support and for speaking so eloquently in the various debates. I tabled that amendment because it would remedy a serious omission in the list of the areas of support that local authorities are required to include in their local offer.

Recently, North Tyneside Council rallied staff across the authority to improve the employment outcomes of care leavers. Experience taught the council that it would need to be very intentional about ensuring that young people have at least one strong relationship with someone who genuinely and obviously thinks they matter. The council also knew that it would have to help them be part of a supportive network. This emphasis had to be explicitly stated if it was to become embedded in everyone’s practice.

There is a dynamic to this: it is not simply a case of providing young people with an adult who will keep in touch with them and to whom they can turn. Young people need to know how to maintain and grow relationships and how to work through conflict and avoid destructive feuds. Disruptions in attachment processes often lead to an understandable but ultimately vicious circle of an “I’ll reject them before they reject me” pattern of behaviour. Many long for independence far earlier than they can handle it because they do not want to be let down again. Furthermore, our individualistic culture seems to endorse the natural inclination to go it alone and avoid hurt. Not having relationships to draw on can also result in these young people being unbearably lonely, which can have severely negative effects on their health and well-being. It can undermine their education, their ability to maintain a tenancy or other accommodation and manage work, and their financial security. If they do not understand bills, they can easily get into arrears and debt, which can be quite terrifying. Such life skills often develop through a process of guided mastery—encouragement and guidance from someone who is genuinely concerned about them.

In summary, healthy and supportive relationships are fundamental to the other five areas included in the local offer. The Government’s amendment has the potential to tackle the haphazardness of current arrangements which mean that it is not automatic, and is probably highly unlikely, that young people will receive help and advice in the area of relationships.

Given the careful attention that the Minister and his team paid to this matter, I hope that this amendment is a portent of a more relational approach in many other areas of policy. Given the enthusiastic support from across the House that this amendment has received, I am sure that many other noble Lords would agree.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, for his work and persistence in this area. I recall a 28 year-old woman with experience of the care system who recently married a lovely man, an accountant. She had had the most terrible start in life and never met her father until she was 16. She talked in public about her experience at university and the relationships she had with the women with whom she shared a house while at university, who visited her and comforted her when she often fell into depression and withdrew to her room and isolated herself. I commend the noble Lord for his perseverance on this matter. I am very grateful to the Minister for listening to him and bringing forward this amendment today.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Report: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 8th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I do not have a prepared speech. I came today to listen to the arguments, because this issue is difficult and finely balanced. I think that the Government have come a long way and listened extraordinarily carefully over the summer. I was able to come in during my holiday, to be seen and listened to by officials and to have my hopes and fears for social work heard. I think that a lot of that was taken on board.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord True. I do not agree with the noble Lord, Lord Low, that this is a way to dismantle the whole legal system for children. Having been a director of social services who was involved in not one or two but three child abuse inquiries and who has experienced some of the most difficult areas of social work down the years, I am concerned—I have talked to colleagues about this—that we have such a mass of guidance and procedures to follow through the present legislation that, without some intervention, social workers and their managers will be overwhelmed. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, would agree with that. I say to the noble Lord, Lord True, that it is likely to be social work managers and not social workers who are looking for innovation, but let us hope that they will be informed by the social workers, who in turn will be informed by those whom they listen to and try to help—in this case, children.

I say to the Minister, for whom I have huge respect, that he has simply not won the hearts and minds of the vast number of people out there in the community. We have letters from mothers who are totally confused and seem to think that this has something to do with being able to cut across the whole of law so that their children may be taken away—I have sent the letters to the Minister so that he might see them. I do not think that it has anything to do with that, but it shows the breadth of confusion.

I have talked to people who want to innovate. I co-chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children and have listened to directors of children’s services—good directors—who are in difficulty and who would like to make changes. There are difficulties. For example, if you are caught in the common assessment framework, you can spend your life assessing situations and never getting into the position of providing a service—and there are legal requirements about assessment. I give just that one example; as a practitioner, I could give a number of examples of cases where easing the regulation would make it much better in terms of providing and delivering services.

The question that I am still stuck with today in not knowing which way I would want to vote is whether the Government have done enough to reassure us that the structures are strong enough to ensure the safeguarding of children’s services, the development of social services and the long-term protection of children. The Government have not convinced most stakeholders in the community. Whether there is more that the Government could do to reach those hearts and minds, whether the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, will press his amendment at this point and we will therefore find ourselves unable to move forward on innovation—which would be a pity, because there are things that need to be done and changes to be made—and whether this was the best way to do it or whether an inquiry into and review of guidance and the law would have been better I do not know. We are where we are. Many of us do not want to see the stifling of innovation; we just want to make sure that it is safe.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I follow my noble friends Lady Eaton and Lord True in supporting Clauses 29 to 31. My noble friends made many of the points that I thought were important to this debate, so I shall limit myself to the single issue of testing and reiterate the commendation of the Government for their reforming courage, not just in what they are seeking to achieve but in how they are seeking to achieve it.

Few can doubt that reform is needed in national social work practice. The number of children coming into care is soaring. My noble friend Lady Eaton has already mentioned how the complexity of their lives, especially when they are late entrants into the care system, cannot be adequately catered for in the current legislative framework.

Every sheet of Pugin wallpaper on the walls of this Palace could be replaced by policy reports brimming with ideas and care studies about social work and children’s services reform. Many of these ideas have been learned from good practice here and in other countries; they emerged not from a clear blue sky but from grass-roots practice. However, if they are ever to be implemented, they need the leeway referred to by my noble friend. On the subject of learning, modern government increasingly has to draw inspiration from the way corporations innovate but avoid going bust in a highly complex world—without, of course, handing over the core business of protecting the vulnerable to profit-making companies. I welcome the Government’s amendments to Clause 29 that bar local authorities from doing precisely that.

To explain what I mean with a recent example, the Institute for Government published Nicholas Timmins’s highly instructive report on the rollout of universal credit, at the heart of which was a change in approach from the traditional way of managing big projects. Previously, managers operated a “waterfall” approach, where government would legislate on a programme and set the rules, suppliers would then design in detail how these would operate, do some testing and then cascade a finished system out to the regions, either in phases or even on one day. One of the major drawbacks was that any errors, misjudgments or even rigidities factored in early or midway through the design process tended to be, as Timmins said, “baked in”, and end users could find that the project did not meet their needs because requirements were wrongly specified or simply not anticipated early on.

The opposite—which the private sector has increasingly adopted over the last 15 years or so—was known as the “agile” approach. Again to quote Timmins, this is,

“a mindset of humility around how little you should expect to understand about how real people use your service. So you optimise your whole approach by working with them and learning to iterate quickly based on learning in the real world”.

The mantra of test and learn that emerged from the adoption of an agile approach became a welcome hallmark of wider welfare reform, as well as of universal credit. It is a far more realistic and sensitive way to carry out reforms in areas such as welfare benefits and social care, which have such profound implications for people’s quality of life, well-being and even survival.

Obviously, there are many differences between the rollout of an IT-controlled benefits system and an iterative improvement in the responsiveness of children’s services, but the key similarities lie in the words “iterative” and “responsive”. We heard from my noble friend Lord True about the Royal Borough of Kingston and the London Borough of Richmond—Partners in Practice local authorities. They have said that the clauses will enable them to safely test new approaches that their front-line workers come up with and remove barriers to effective work. Leeds City Council is seeking to become an exemplar of a new and more sustainable safeguarding system where children do better, families are supported to do better and the state has to intervene less. One local authority after another is aspiring to become a learning organisation that can be instructed by and instruct others—all within an enabling framework of intense scrutiny from government and those charged to put children at the forefront of all they do.

We are all here with the aim of ensuring that children thrive. But, as anyone who has lived in a family with several children knows, parenting must be nimble if each unique child is to flourish. I suggest that we also need to be agile in how we approach these clauses. We should no longer fetter well-trained professionals but enable them to develop strategies for their patch within the protective envelope of the Bill.

[Baroness Lister of Burtersett (Lab)]

My Lords, I will briefly take up a couple of points made by the noble Lord, Lord True. He said—I may be slightly misquoting him—that we should allow professional social workers to take proper decisions. But is it not telling that, as we heard, only one in 10 social workers in a survey supports the Government’s proposals, and more than two-thirds of them believe that letting local authorities exempt themselves from children’s social care legislation will lead to more children being placed at risk?

The other point made by the noble Lord was that Parliament will be at the heart of the process, but that will only be in so far as we are allowed to debate the regulations. We all know that we have no power when it comes to regulations, and that if we try to use what powers we have we get lambasted for overstepping them. It is not fair to say that Parliament will be at the heart of this process, whereas it would be if there were proper, primary legislation.

Children: Local Authority Care

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Monday 7th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Nash]

The noble Earl makes a very good point. I will certainly look at this and I am very happy to discuss it with him further.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Laming, highlighted the potential implications of out-of-area care placements on young people’s sense of stability and belonging. Can my noble friend explain to the House how decisions about out-of-area placements are made and how rigorous the sign-off process is?

[Lord Nash]

Yes, there is a very clear process for out-of-area placements. They have to be approved by a nominated officer and if the placement is a distant one, which means not in its local authority or a local authority adjoining, it has to be approved by the director of children’s services. Local authorities must consult with the authority in which children are placed and the independent reviewing officer—IRO—has a role as well. Ofsted will inspect local authorities for how well they are performing in this regard.

Social Mobility

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Thursday 27th October 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Holmes on securing this important and timely debate and I also very much look forward to my noble friend Lady Couttie’s maiden speech. One of the policy areas I will touch on today is the troubled families programme. Since 2008, Westminster Council, which my noble friend leads, has been helping families to restore order when they find themselves in chaos, through its family recovery team. It was an important trailblazer for this Government’s national programme. I am delighted that she will be on these Benches and I hope that she will join me in keeping the pressure on the Government, and indeed on all political parties, to develop an armamentarium of policies sufficient to tackle the epidemic of family and relationship breakdown.

Families are of fundamental importance to the whole process of social mobility, for good or for ill. When relationships between parents break down or when families cease to provide a safe, stable and nurturing environment for children and young people, it can make it far harder for them to thrive, especially when the family has other difficulties such as worklessness, serious personal debt, mental ill-health or addictions to drugs or alcohol.

Children from stable families tend to have better mental health, and preventing mental health problems from developing is incredibly important given their concerning prevalence among today’s young people. Such children also have greater access to social capital, more confidence, better-developed social networks and, therefore, more of the ingredients needed for them to experience upward social mobility.

Young people’s character and resilience have deep roots in the parenting they have received, as the noble Lord, Lord Addington, mentioned; important life skills are for not only the education system to impart. Yet, in efforts to improve social mobility, it is far too easy to ignore families’ influence, focus solely on other areas such as education and work and to be overly “economistic”. The noble Baroness, Lady Lister, cautioned us against this during the passage of the Welfare Reform and Work Bill.

Families are the neglected third pillar of the welfare state. That is why I, the Children’s Commissioner and the Centre for Social Justice keep bringing the concept of family hubs to the attention of Ministers and policymakers. Rather than letting their children’s centre stock wither on the vine, several local authorities have recognised that they need to make this infrastructure work even harder. They are integrating troubled families, early help and other budgets, including public health, in order to integrate and expand services within existing spending settlements. So help, including relationship support, is accessible for parents of children at any age through family hubs. They are somewhere to go where someone will have the answers.

The Children’s Commissioner has indeed issued a discussion paper on family hubs this month, which states:

“Family hubs would co-ordinate statutory and voluntary approaches to tackling the root causes of inter-generational poverty, family breakdown and poor outcomes for children. They have social mobility and family stability at their core”.

The Department for Education has a role to play in spreading such good practice and helping local authorities work through financially credible alternatives to simply closing children’s centres. Can my noble friend the Minister inform the House when the long-promised consultation on children’s centres will be launched?

The costs of family instability and failure are picked up by the health service, criminal justice and the courts, the benefits system, education and social care, businesses—the whole of society. This is why I have also been talking to many Ministers about the need for every government department to develop policies to strengthen families. I welcome the introduction of the Government’s family test and urge its strengthening. But this is reactive.

The test needs to be complemented in every government department by proactive policies to help create strong families, in the awareness that they are as essential to national success as employment and education. This join-up is happening locally; an important part of the rationale behind the troubled families programme was that getting truanting children back into school and long-term workless parents into employment required addressing the complex family issues holding everyone back. For example, it means integrating help and support so that specialist employment advisers work alongside family intervention key workers, and schools reinforce what these workers are seeking to achieve with families.

Could the Minster inform the House, what has been the impact of employment advisers from the troubled families programme on getting people into work? The great prize of this programme has always been its potential to drive systemic change, not just in the families whose problems are blighting their lives and draining local budgets but in how public services work. A similar systemic change in the structure of central government is also required if stronger families are to emerge and help drive much-needed improvements in social mobility.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Report: 1st sitting: House of Lords
Tuesday 18th October 2016 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Farmer]

11: Clause 2, page 2, line 43, at end insert—
“( ) relationships.”

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I rise to speak to Amendment 11, tabled in my name and those of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. To begin with, I must confess that I was not giving the Minister my full attention when he referred to this amendment earlier in speaking to Amendments 2 and 9. However, I think I heard encouraging words, so I will be speaking with an optimistic heart.

As I said in Committee about an identical amendment, including the word “relationships” would remedy an omission in the list of the areas of support that councils are required to include in their local offer. It stipulates that information and services to help young people develop and maintain healthy and supportive relationships should be available alongside the other five areas of health and wellbeing, education and training, employment, accommodation, and participation in society. I explained then how, when children and young people are taken into the care of the local authority, first and foremost these circumstances typically create a relationship problem. There are profound long-term effects of losing parental attachments and bonds with siblings and others in the extended family. Ministerial architects of the Bill had the best of intentions in this area but the wording acknowledges relationships only scantily and, as a consequence, ineffectively—as I hope to show here today. If the goal is to change the culture in local authorities so that relationships become of central importance, as the Government intend, legislation has to provide a stronger lead.

Clause 1 provides seven corporate parenting principles, including that children should have stability in their home lives and relationships. The local offer provided for in Clause 2 will, according to the note for Peers we received at the recent meeting with the Minister, be one of the main ways in which the corporate parenting principles are brought to life in relation to care leavers.

However, the draft local offer that was recently circulated to Peers was devoid of any reference to relationships, so how can this document claim to bring to life the corporate parenting principle about relationship stability? Yet this omission could have been anticipated, given that Clause 2, which guided the guidance, as it were, did not specify that information on relationships would form part of the service offering, hence this amendment.

The draft statutory guidance for applying corporate parenting principles for care and pathway planning does mention, on page 19, the need for looked-after children and care leavers to build resilience by forging strong relationships if they are to thrive. It goes on to say that this will mean local authorities having regard to the need to maintain, as far as possible, consistency in the home environment, relationships with carers and professionals and school placement. It then goes on to make important points about stability of housing tenure and provide good practice examples of financial and practical help.

However, there is nothing in either the guidance or the local offer about how to maintain stable relationships, and nothing about helping young people to form networks of supportive relationships beyond those with paid professionals and those formally designated as carers.

We withdrew this amendment earlier after reassurances from the Government that,

“the whole thrust of what we seek to achieve through the Bill is the reinforcement of the importance of relationships and helping children and young people to recover from their pre-care experiences to make a successful transition to independence. The importance of relationships is central to the corporate parenting principles … We will publish guidance for local authorities and I would fully expect it to say that they should include in their offers information about relationship education among the services available for care leavers. Our forthcoming care leavers strategy will set out our plans to ensure that care leavers are better supported to develop and sustain the social networks that support them in their transition to adulthood and beyond”.—[Official Report, 4/7/16; cols.114-115.]

So the Government understand that care leavers need not just continuity of care, but support networks and relationship education.

Support networks do not just spring up but typically need the encouragement and facilitation of adults. In Committee I mentioned family finding projects, such as those taking place in Orange County in California. Family finding is an intensive search method to find family members and other adults who would like to step in and care for children and young people in, or about to leave, foster care who lack permanent relationships. The goal is to locate long-term, caring, permanent connections and relationships for them and to establish a long-term emotional support network with family members and other adults. They may not be able to take the child into their home but still want to stay connected with them and to journey with them through life. In Orange County, 97% of the young people who took part increased family contact, and 89% have lifelong connections. Edinburgh City Council has already adopted this approach. Encouragingly, in Grand Committee the Government stated their interest in this approach for their care leavers strategy, which the Family Rights Group is now testing in a number of local authorities.

Yet however many family members and caring adults we try to cluster around young people, these connections will be insufficiently sticky if young people are pre-programmed to reject the relationships that are on offer because of past experiences, or have no understanding of what a good relationship looks like. This is where relationship education comes in. It can be delivered informally when a young person finds it very hard to maintain a relationship with a key figure in their life. They mention it, say, to their personal adviser, and that person purposefully helps them to navigate through difficulties or misunderstandings in exactly the same way that a loving parent would. I am sure this already happens but it needs to be an important part of every personal adviser’s job description and skill set. Alternatively, it can be more formally delivered through the work of services like Love for Life, which is part of TwentyTwenty, the award-winning mentoring organisation with which the Government have contracted to work in the recently announced Derby social mobility hub. The ethos running through this and many other third sector organisations is that the skills to build good relationships can be taught and caught.

I have met the Minister, Edward Timpson, and am in no doubt that he is alive to the importance of relationships, but the Bill simply does not yet reflect how quintessential they are, as stated by the Government. Instead of trying to get this in the Bill, I could be arguing for better recognition in the draft guidance, the draft local offer and the forthcoming care leavers strategy. However, it is not a question of either/or; it is both/and. It could sensibly be surmised that the Government overlooked the need to make explicit reference to relationships in their draft local offer, despite what they say about its importance to the corporate parenting principles, because it was not included in the legally binding list provided in Clause 2. This suggests that it would be to all too easy for local authorities to do the same, thereby undermining the opportunity presented by the local offer to drive much-needed cultural change in this area. I beg to move.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield]

My Lords, I support Amendment 11, to which my name is attached, as it was in Committee. To reiterate what I said then, and despite the very good debate we have already had today on Amendment 2, the Bill itself is currently almost devoid of references to relationships; indeed, you might almost say it is a bit of a relationship-free zone. That is ironic when what we are all trying to do here is improve the lot of the very vulnerable children and young people who most need love, warmth, emotional security and human empathy to help them on their journey through life, given their very troubled start. It is a statement of the blindingly obvious that good relationships are utterly indispensable to that end.

The noble Lord, Lord Farmer, who is such a passionate advocate in this field, has already referred to the need for a change in the culture of many local authorities so that they also make promoting relationships central to their work. I know that there are some very good examples of good practice here, but I want to talk very briefly about what cultural change requires and why it is important. It could be assumed that good-quality relationships, particularly the support of peers and adults who are not paid to take an interest, are somehow nice to have but out of the reach of many young people in, or coming into, the care system. If so, that assumption will shape a local authority’s response. It will focus almost exclusively on ensuring that a young person has the material, financial and practical support that they need in the absence of the family ties through which these things typically come. It will also put a greater load on the social worker and personal adviser role.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Nash]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Farmer and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for the amendment. It seeks to add services relating to relationships to the services that local authorities may offer as part of their local offer. I understand the intention behind the amendment, and I agree that high-quality and consistently supportive relationships are critical to supporting care leavers into successful independent lives. I believe that the key to getting these relationships right is down to how the services are delivered, with individual professionals, volunteers and personal advisers building a strong and positive rapport with young people. I was very interested to hear what my noble friend Lord Farmer had to say about Orange County. It is an area I know well because in a past life I used to travel there regularly on business. I know that it is a very forward-thinking part of the world.

This is an important issue and I am certainly very sympathetic to the points that have been made. I am therefore very happy to take them away and consider further in detail whether an amendment to the Bill along these lines is the best way of securing further progress in this area. I hope that, in view of this, the noble Lord and the noble Baroness will feel reassured enough to withdraw the amendment.

[Lord Farmer]

I thank the Minister for that encouraging response. I also thank the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for their support. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment 11 withdrawn.

Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Farmer Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

My point is that we need to look at the specific needs of the young person as a unique individual when making this crucial information available so that we can be sure that they can all benefit from it.

[Lord Farmer (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 39 in this group, tabled in my name and those of my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay of Clashfern and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. Our amendment remedies a serious omission in the list of the areas of support that councils are required to include in their local offer. It stipulates that information and services that will help young people to develop and maintain healthy and supportive relationships should be available alongside the other five areas of health and well-being, education and training, employment, accommodation, and participation in society.

When parental care fails, for whatever reason, and children and young people are taken into the care of the local authority, it is easy for us as legislators to treat this primarily as a legal problem. Obviously, it is essential that a minor’s legal status be clear and established. However, first and foremost, we should be aware that these circumstances typically create a relationship problem because of the profound long-term effects of losing parental attachments and the often taken-for-granted bonds with siblings and others in the extended family.

At birth, every child comes into that little unit, their family, where relationships are, ideally, formed and nurtured. Relationships are foundational to all human societies and what human existence is all about; without them, that existence can feel precarious, fraught with fear and difficulties and even fundamentally unwelcome. This is especially the case when making the transition from dependence into independent adulthood, a difficult and protracted shift for every human being, even when they have the back-up of good enough parents.

Although I welcome the inclusion in Clause 1 of the corporate parenting principle that children should have stability in their home lives and relationships, this is the only place where the word “relationship” is mentioned in relation to care leavers. Others noted this infrequency at Second Reading, such as my noble and learned friend Lord Mackay and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, who mentioned a lack in this area. Three-quarters of young people leaving care admit to difficulties due to loneliness and isolation. Almost half found these very difficult to cope with, and those numbers could easily be higher, as admitting to such feelings is still stigmatised in our society.

Information about and provision to assist young people to build relationships should be included in the local offer laid out in the clause because it is highly likely to be another area of lack, given that they have not been able to learn such “habits of the heart” in their birth home. The Government might consider that this is covered by subsection (2)(a), on health and well-being, but we simply cannot take that for granted. Relationships are not yet embedded as a priority for public bodies. The best example of that is found in Public Health England, whose mission statement says:

“We protect and improve the nation’s health and wellbeing and reduce health inequalities”.

However, both its annual plan and the public health outcomes framework are relationship-free zones, something that the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships and others have been challenging for several years on the grounds that at least three-quarters of the indicators contained in the public health outcomes framework are directly or indirectly influenced by the quality of people’s couple relationships. It is stated rather narrowly, but noble Lords will take the point.

The inability to form and maintain relationships is a root cause behind poor health and well-being. It undermines educational attainment, employment prospects, the ability to maintain a tenancy and have otherwise stable accommodation, societal participation, and all the other itemised aspects of the local offer. This is not just because of the lack of self-esteem, self-confidence and other internal factors that can put lonely and rootless young people at such a disadvantage. Relationships have instrumental value. The deficit in social capital, when a young person has no family members to open their contact books to get them work experience and almost no settings in which they can acquire soft skills, can have devastating effects. Services do exist for young people to help address these relational difficulties. I have talked before about Love4Life in Loughborough, and Oasis College was recently established to ensure excellence in the many organisations that work in this and other related areas. They will not, however, be automatically commissioned without some indication from the Government that they are indispensable to a comprehensive and effective local offer.

I also gave concrete examples at Second Reading of the kind of services that local authorities can provide and commission. Northern Ireland’s model of person-specific personal advisers enables local authorities to draft in people who already get on with and are trusted by the young person leaving care. At present, care leavers are matched up with someone they may never have met before who usually has a couple of dozen or more vulnerable youngsters on their books. There is also a lot of staff churn, which makes a mockery of relationship stability.

I also recommended consideration of the family finding and engagement model in California and other parts of the United States. That name is slightly misleading in our system and not to be confused with the family-finding process to locate good potential adoptive parents. US family finding makes the most of blood connections with extended family and other supportive relationships that children entering or in the care system have already developed with adults, such as teachers, youth workers or the parents of friends. Instead of allowing them to lapse, local authorities treat these relationships as potential lifelong links and draw on this resource to build intentionally a network of support around young people before they leave care. What they are looking for is a small number of adults who are reliable and willing to be involved in the young person’s life and will keep in touch with them whatever happens, inviting them for Sunday lunch or to spend Christmas Day with them, for example. As I said, a highly suitable personal adviser could emerge from that process. If the Department for Education were able to furnish local authorities with model contracts, this would help them greatly.

I conclude by saying that this is a probing amendment. If my noble friend does not feel that this clause is the right one in which to place the necessary emphasis on relationships, I am open to the legislation being strengthened in this way elsewhere. Otherwise, the legislation will not, I fear, boost vulnerable young people’s life chances as much as might otherwise have been possible.

[Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)]

My Lords, I add my support to Amendment 39, to which my name has been added. It says it all that we are discussing this important issue about relationships in a hugely important group with some hugely important amendments but, frankly, the two do not sit very happily together.

At Second Reading and last week I talked about mental and emotional health, including how the love and support of foster parents can make all the difference. That is because of the relationship involved. I also stated that very little notice appears to have been taken in the family test, which was part of the impact assessment accompanying the Bill, of children’s wishes and feelings, particularly about relationships that they value or may want to preserve. It is not an exaggeration to say, as the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, did, that the Bill at the moment is almost devoid of reference to relationships. I am very pleased to see that other noble Lords are trying to ensure that this emphasis comes through more strongly in other amendments in other groups. I fear that that this lack of emphasis on relationships threatens to undermine the admirable intent of a good chunk of the Bill, which is obviously to ensure that we improve outcomes for care leavers.

There is an absolute wealth of research reports, including those from the Centre for Social Justice, concluding that if we do not put strong, healthy relationships at the heart of the care system, we will never see the improvement in life chances that we are all ambitious for. At Second Reading, I talked about the need for ambition—for setting ourselves a higher standard. We simply cannot treat the presence of strong relationships in the lives of children who have been in care and are leaving care as a “nice to have”. That is just not good enough. Strong relationships are of fundamental importance to any young person in their transition to adulthood. Without someone who will provide unconditional love and acceptance, the challenges that the world presents can sometimes seem insurmountable. Such relationships must be a fundamental element of young people’s care-leaving packages. Those young people need to know how to draw on the resources inherent in good-quality relationships; for example, how to handle misunderstandings and perceived slights, and the constant need for compromise—give and take, if you like.

Finally, there are good relationship support services available for young people. Indeed, there is evidence of their effectiveness—they work. They are provided by a broad range of providers, mainly in the voluntary sector. I draw noble Lords’ attention to my declared interest as vice-president of the charity Relate. If local authorities were required to provide information—not the service itself, just information—about relationships and these services, we would begin to see far greater take-up of what is on offer. Those benefits would then go into adult life and adult family relationships.