Prison: Support for Dependent Children
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(9 months, 3 weeks ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
Of course, we need to focus on supporting those children and trying to mitigate some of the terrible scarring effects of the trauma that they will have suffered. That is why there is an increasing focus on early help and making sure that we get consistency in that help. That is what we will be testing in the pathfinder projects, which we will launch shortly, following our review of children’s social care.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, support for carers of children whose parents are in prison can make all the difference between stable and unstable home arrangements. Hence, Spurgeons has opened a family hub in Winchester prison visitor centre, linking families to all the support available to them in their local area. How is the Department for Education’s terrific family hubs team working with the Prison Service to encourage this innovation in other prisons?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I take this opportunity to thank my noble friend for all his extraordinary work in this area, and for his generosity in acknowledging the work of my colleagues in the department. This is a great example of local innovation, and one that we will share with the National Centre for Family Hubs, which seeks to share examples of best practice. I will make sure that it is also taken back to our work with the Prison Service, and more broadly the Ministry of Justice.
Archbishops’ Commission on Families and Households: Love Matters Report
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(10 months, 4 weeks ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, some of the work that we are doing has already anticipated the recommendations, including the one to which the noble Baroness referred. She will be aware of our significant investment of around £300 million to enable 75 local authorities to create family hubs designed to give children the best start in life and of our childcare reforms which include £4.1 billion of investment by 2027-28 to fund 30 hours of free childcare for children over the age of nine months.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, as co-founder of the Family Hubs Network, I am pleased that the archbishops’ report, Love Matters, mentions family hubs more than 30 times and recommends that they also help separating families. The Ministry of Justice’s mediation reforms for England and Wales anticipate family hubs helping separated or separating parents to access services. However, there are not yet family hubs in Wales. While recognising that social care is a devolved matter, how might the Government encourage Wales to integrate family support in this way?
Baroness Barran (Con)
Like my noble friend, the Government are committed to championing family hubs. I will ensure that my officials engage with colleagues in the devolved Administration to share evidence and best practice about them.
Schools: “Ghost Children”
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(1 year ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
As the noble Lord may agree, I am not sure that a home education Bill would be quick. More importantly, we support the rights of parents to educate their children at home and know that many parents are very committed and do a fantastic job. Equally, we cannot overlook the rising numbers of children being home educated. We remain committed to introducing statutory local authority registers of children not in school, but in the meantime we are working closely with local authorities on a voluntary basis to collect that data. I recently met the chair of the ADCS to discuss this exact point.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, guidance on school absence refers to multiagency and whole-family approaches but not to family hubs, which specialise in this for children aged nought to 19, not just the early years. They exist in more than half of English local authorities, but the Family Hubs Network—which I co-founded, as recorded in my entry in the register—finds many schools not engaging with them. Will the Minister commit to updating the guidance to refer specifically to family hubs so that they become the starting point for addressing anxiety and other underlying issues affecting our children?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his work in this area and I agree with him that very often persistent absence will not be the only issue that is going on in a family; therefore, the nature of family hubs is ideal to address this. The department has commissioned a team of 10 expert attendance advisers who are working with every local authority and with multi-academy trusts to help address issues of persistent absence. As part of that support, those advisers strongly recommend and encourage engagement with family hubs.
Schools: Transgender Guidance
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(1 year, 3 months ago)
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Lord Farmer
To ask His Majesty’s Government when they intend to publish their official transgender guidance for schools.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, we recognise that issues relating to sex and gender can be complex and sensitive for schools to navigate. That is why we are developing guidance to support schools in relation to transgender pupils. It is important that we are able to consider a wide range of views to get this guidance right, so we have committed to holding a public consultation on the draft guidance prior to publication.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer, but schools need this guidance now. There is much confusion in schools, children are suffering, and teachers and headteachers are struggling. Also, the experience of NHS gender dysphoria services points towards future class actions, brought by former pupils. Some of those who want to detransition fully will be unable to do so. Will the Minister assure this House, and headteachers and their staff, that this guidance will be definitive enough to protect schools legally?
Baroness Barran (Con)
The guidance to support schools in relation to transgender pupils will set out schools’ legal duties and aim to provide clear information to support their consideration of how to respond to transgender issues. However, the guidance will not create new laws or be able to pre-empt the decision of a court on any specific case that might be brought.
Family: Protective Effect
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
The right reverend Prelate will have heard me say already the scale of the investment we are making in family services and the importance we place on them. In particular, the Government are committed to opening 75 family hubs in areas which need that support most. But I agree with the right reverend Prelate and stress the striking point in the report regarding who families in need turn to: namely, their families and friends, far, far before any statutory service.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, we have a new Cabinet since my own Question on this review, so I ask again whether a Cabinet Minister has been appointed to co-ordinate every department’s policies to strengthen families? Also, acknowledging the 75 hubs already mentioned and my registered interests, will the Government bring funding forward for the remaining 75 local authorities to develop family hub networks, given the huge pressures facing families and the test-and-learn approach taken to hubs in the first 75 councils?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend knows that working to strengthen families is a key priority across several government departments and although there is not currently a designated Minister, we will be actively considering this. We share my noble friend’s aspiration to see family hubs across the country and it is crucial that we deliver really well in the selected local authorities, so we will be building on the evidence and learning from this investment to improve services across the country.
Family-strengthening Policies
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Lord Farmer
To ask His Majesty’s Government, further to the Children’s Commissioner’s Family Review, published on 1 September, what steps they will take to ensure every department brings forward family-strengthening policies.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Baroness Barran) (Con)
My Lords, across government we are committed to strengthening families. We recently announced over £1 billion for programmes to improve family services, including funding for family hubs and the Supporting Families programme. Recent reviews such as the independent review of children’s social care and the Children’s Commissioner’s review of family life make recommendations on how public services should understand and respond to family needs. We will take a cross-government view when considering those recommendations.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for her somewhat positive response. Has a Cabinet Minister been appointed to co-ordinate every department’s policies to strengthen families? Also, the Institute for Fiscal Studies says that the hallmark of British families is their “greater fragility and complexity” compared with other western European countries. Only 56% of children are still with both parents at the age of 17; the OECD average is 84%. The IFS also says that parental separation lowers the economic and psychological well-being of the adults. How will the Government address the importance of family stability for economic growth?
Baroness Barran (Con)
I thank my noble friend for his question and I take this opportunity to thank him more broadly for his tireless work over many years on support for families and recognition of their value. The Government, too, recognise that a stable environment and well-functioning families are vital for children’s outcomes, which in turn can support economic growth. On the issue of a Minister within the Cabinet with responsibility for families, obviously my right honourable friend the Secretary of State is extremely focused on this, but our current focus is on how we can drive join-up, and the department is leading on collaboration with several other government departments in this area.
Child Safeguarding
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(2 years, 5 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend is absolutely right, and I am pleased that I can reassure him. Obviously, there are children who will have been at school with Arthur and people who will have been involved in his life in many different ways, and we are making sure that all of them receive the support they need.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, can I ask my noble friend the Minister whether the review will look at the contribution of family breakdown? Evidence shows that children on the at-risk register are eight times more likely to be living with a natural parent and their current partner than the general population. Children living in households with unrelated adults are nearly 50 times as likely to die of inflicted injuries than children living with two biological parents. Will the review consider the contribution that robust prevention and early intervention can make to safeguarding children?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, on my noble friend’s last point, I know that he is aware, and extremely supportive, of moves that this Government are making to focus more on early intervention and on the first thousand days of a child’s life. In terms of whether the review will look specifically at family breakdown, I am not aware of that although clearly that appears relevant in this case. If it is different to that, I will let my noble friend know.
Video-sharing Platforms: BBFC Ratings
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(3 years, 2 months ago)
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Baroness Barran (Con)
We do not believe that we are running against the tide. The online harms legislation, which we have discussed extensively in this House and which I know we will debate in great detail in future, will make us a world leader in this regard.
Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, sensibly regulating the wild west of user-generated content on the internet is essential, but potentially a whack-a-mole exercise, given the risk that it simply displaces activity elsewhere. How will the DCMS work with Ofcom to ensure that its implementation of the video-sharing platform regime develops understanding of how to regulate online services, in advance of the online safety Bill coming into force?
Baroness Barran (Con)
My noble friend makes an important point. By the implementation of the video-sharing platform regime, as he suggests, Ofcom will build its experience in regulating harmful content while balancing freedom of expression. I understand that Ofcom is already preparing for its new responsibilities in relation to online harms by bringing in new technology and people with the right skills.
Criminal Justice System: Women
Debate between Lord Farmer and Baroness Barran(4 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Farmer (Con)
My Lords, I thank all who will contribute today for staying until the last moment before the House rises for a well-earned Recess. There is a wealth of expertise on the list of speakers, and I greatly look forward to hearing everyone’s contribution.
Opening a debate provides the opportunity, perhaps even the responsibility, to stand back a little and set the scene. Last month the Ministry of Justice launched the final report from my review, Importance of Strengthening Female Offenders’ Family and Other Relationships to Prevent Reoffending and Reduce Intergenerational Crime—quite a mouthful. Commissioned as part of the female offender strategy, in effect I was asked to look at women in the criminal justice system through the lens of family and other relational ties.
Obviously, it is my intention that this debate should go much wider than that. However, over the course of the review, I became aware of just how fundamentally important healthy and supportive relationships are to women in the criminal justice system, and how many other problematic issues stem from a lack of these. Ministry of Justice research identifies them as women’s biggest criminogenic need. If a woman has bad relationships and lacks good relationships, she is at greater risk of reoffending.
Nearly three-quarters of all female offenders, whether in custody or serving sentences in the community, have problems with relationships that increase this likelihood. This rises to over 80% of female prisoners. Many enter custody from chaotic relationships from which they require protection, and domestic abuse, which frequently includes pressure from coercive partners to commit crime, lurks in the background for 57% of them. Over half experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse in their family backgrounds and almost one-third spent time in care as children. Unresolved trauma related to such adversities in childhood or later life typically drives unhealthy coping strategies such as substance misuse and self-harm. Indeed, women’s vulnerabilities, concentrated in the criminal justice system, are the distillation of the breakdown of family and other relationships so prevalent in our wider society.
My concern about this and the lack of a comprehensive and coherent government strategy to address it was a key motivator for my becoming involved in politics over 12 years ago. It is a quarter of a century since the then aspirant Labour Prime Minister talked generally about being tough on the causes of crime and particularly about the role played by family breakdown. The implication was clear then and still is now: we need to do more to prevent crime happening in the first place. Research from the Centre for Social Justice, which controlled for factors such as socioeconomic grade and ethnicity, found that those who experience family breakdown in their childhood or youth are over twice as likely to experience homelessness, be in trouble with the police or spend time in prison.
Around a quarter of families with dependent children are headed by a single parent, which has perhaps normalised relationship breakdown. An understandable zeal to avoid piling stigma on top of the very heavy load single parents already bear can hamper public discussion about the significant challenges they face. They can also be framed almost exclusively in terms of financial poverty, as lack of money is a major problem for half of single parents. The lack of a co-parenting relationship to ease the load is a less readily acknowledged challenge, which is greatly amplified when a woman becomes enmeshed in the criminal justice system. The dependent children of three-quarters of women in prison are not looked after by their fathers. One study found that adult children of imprisoned mothers are more than twice as likely to be incarcerated than adult children of imprisoned fathers.
Such evidence compels me to support this and former Governments’ efforts to keep women out of prison where possible, as such punishment encroaches on family life in many troubling ways. The damage done to good relationships is one of the “referred” pains of imprisonment, the psychosocial burdens experienced by an inmate’s family members. These pains are particularly acute when it is a primary carer who is behind bars.
Professor Nicola Lacey from the LSE points out that for most of the two centuries in which imprisonment has been routinely imposed as punishment for crime, the systems of thought and governance on which it rests have focused on,
“the individual offender and his or her relationship with the state”.
She goes on:
“Penal philosophy’s strongly individualistic presuppositions about the nature of human beings and social relations are open to challenge”.
Hence my call for the importance of family and other relationships to be the golden thread running through all processes and the culture of the criminal justice system, including liaison and diversion services, sentencing, probation and prison. Ministry of Justice research found that male and female prisoners who received family visits were 39% less likely to reoffend than those who do not. Healthy and supportive relationships are undoubtedly rehabilitation assets. Enabling offenders to maintain and strengthen these relationships where appropriate must be valued as much as other rehabilitation activities such as employment and education. Indeed, this is the third leg of the stool alongside these, and can bring stability, meaning and motivation to offenders’ lives.
As I have already touched upon, female offenders are typically among the most vulnerable members of society. This word is used so frequently in relation to female offenders that we need to understand exactly what it means. From the Latin “vulnerabilis”, it means “wounding” or being susceptible to “attack”, “physical harm or damage” or,
“emotional injury, especially in being easily hurt”.
This describes very well many of the women I met in prison, or those serving community sentences. Deprivation of liberty, the purpose of detention, has to be accompanied by diligent exercise of the duty of care. This has to involve thinking ahead to when a woman leaves prison, where she will live and who will be there to meet her.
While I was deeply motivated to improve the lives of mothers in prison and their children, many women have no children and no one in their family able or willing to come and see them. About half of prisoners may have no family or other visits and some have no supportive relationships at all. Frankly, these are the women who concern me most. Without the safe haven of good relationships, it is highly unlikely that they will be able to rebuild their lives. When they leave prison, they lose all anchor points and are cast adrift, and life can be unbearably difficult. Many will return to drugs or other crime. Abuse and trauma can have profoundly affected their ability to develop and sustain healthy, trusting relationships.
Therefore, it is essential that all professionals, wherever they are in the criminal justice system, are trained in and adopt a trauma-informed approach, and know which relationships are rehabilitation assets in the life of a female offender and which are toxic. I recommended gathering information about a woman’s relationships, any children in her care and other circumstances, such as her accommodation, in a personal circumstances file which she, not the state, owns and controls. The aim is that, with her permission, this information is used to help her sustain or resume supportive, meaningful relationships with people with whom she might otherwise lose touch. For the more than half of women in custody who have dependent children, we need to know who and where those children are.
A key priority of my review was enabling mothers to continue to shoulder their parental responsibilities. A governor told me women often ask her, “How can I stop being a mother now that I am in prison?” She replies, “We don’t want you to stop, we want you to continue”. These women are still assets to their family and need to know it, yet the practical and emotional difficulties that mothering from inside prison entails must not be underestimated. Several of my recommendations sought to mitigate these. For example, I proposed Skype-type visits for all women who do not breach risk boundaries.
On that subject, more broadly, I encouraged governors and the Government to think about risk-to-reward ratios. As a trader, I take risks for a living based on sound intelligence and the expectation that I will reap a reward. Research suggests that taking bold and ambitious steps to make the most of prisoners’ family and other ties could reap significant gains. Whatever is learned by rolling out Skype-type visits across the small female estate will inform deployment of this technology in the much larger male estate, where the risk-to-reward ratio might be harder to gauge without the insights garnered from a pathfinder population.
I also called for workforce changes inside female prisons, largely on the advice of prison governors on the female estate, who are incredibly alive to the essential role good relationships play in rehabilitation. One told me, “I don’t want more prison officers, I want social workers and family engagement workers”. As parenting difficulties and other family factors are not addressed in the community, she often sees the third generation of offenders come through her gate.
The family engagement worker model evaluated by Cambridge University’s Institute of Criminology is highly effective in improving the quality of ties and resolving tensions between prisoners and family members. These workers can also help women reconnect, where necessary, with their families or friends. Much of their caseload involves supporting prisoners with ongoing children’s care proceedings, but they can struggle even to get hold of the community social worker who has a prisoner’s child on her caseload. They, and therefore the women they represent, are at a disadvantage because they do not have the same professional status. If every women’s prison had its own resident social worker, she or he could represent the interests of these women in professional dialogue with community-based social workers. In the sadly commonplace battles over custody of prisoners’ children, such equality of arms is incredibly important to ensure a just outcome.
Other noble Lords might describe the difficulties women face accessing housing on release—the desperate insecurity of those who have in some ways been kept safe in prison but are then turned out with nothing. Again, information captured in the personal circumstances file might enable contact to be made with someone who can provide a roof over her head until she gets back on her feet and, I hope, avoid the harrowing scenario of her ending up in a tent outside the prison perimeter.
A particularly pernicious Catch-22 is faced by women with children who cannot secure suitable accommodation until the family is living together, but whose children cannot join them until appropriate housing has been found. I recommended that the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government change allocation guidance for local housing authorities to recognise the prospective housing needs of women leaving prison in a parallel way to families seeking large enough properties to house future foster and adoptive children. Every department of government, not just the Ministry of Justice, has a role to play in meeting the needs of women in the criminal justice system.
The Government’s implementation team, with whom I have already met, understand that the body of recommendations in the report is not a ceiling of good practice to aspire to, but a basic floor of provision. The goal is cultural change, in the criminal justice system and more widely in government.
I wanted to emphasise at the outset of this debate that meeting the relational needs of women in the criminal justice system is of fundamental importance. Without the unconditional support of at least one other human being, any talk of rehabilitation risks being empty rhetoric. Only once good foundations have been laid, can we start to rebuild damaged lives. I beg to move.
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, the timings in today’s debate are very tight, so I think the House would appreciate it if all noble Lord speaking could keep to the time limits on the Order Paper.