Children in Care

Debate between Lord Laming and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Monday 3rd February 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord Laming]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to prevent children in care being placed in unregistered accommodation far away from their home local authority.

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

My Lords, where local authorities place children in independent and semi-independent settings, they must ensure that these are suitable and meet the needs of young people. Ministers have also reminded local authorities of their duty to keep children safe. This is even more important if they are placed out of area. The Secretary of State made this expectation clear in his letter to local authorities last year. We continue to consider where further action is needed.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister. I know that he shares my concern about the increased number of children who are being taken into public care, and the effect that that is having on their well-being and development. It is especially worrying that an increased number of these children are being placed in unregistered accommodation, often many miles from the local authority that is responsible for them, simply to put a roof over their head. Will the Minister assure the House that this new Government will give priority to the well-being, safety, care and education of these very vulnerable children?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I assure the House that this is a priority area for the Government. We committed in our manifesto to a review of the care system, which will cover key issues facing vulnerable children and young people. The Government have invested £5 million from our innovation programme to develop new approaches to care placements. This includes supporting local authorities to increase their capacity in residential care and to improve their commissioning practices.

Children in Public Care: Unregistered Accommodation

Debate between Lord Laming and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Monday 4th November 2019 Lords Chamber

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

My Lords, the Government take unregistered and unregulated provision extremely seriously. I cannot imagine a situation where it is acceptable for a child under the age of 16 to be in an unregistered setting. We are working with Ofsted, local authorities, the Children’s Commissioner and others to tackle this. Ofsted has conducted 150 investigations into unregistered providers this year. Ministers have reminded local authorities of their duty to keep children safe, particularly if they are placed away from their area.

[Lord Laming]

My Lords, I am very grateful to the Minister for that encouraging response. I am sure he will agree that, when a local authority takes a vulnerable child into public care, it has a duty in law to be a good parent to that child. Surely it is little short of outrageous for a child who has not had the best start in life to be placed in a caravan or a narrowboat without proper support. Even worse, these children will have been separated from their wider family, friends and school, as they are often placed miles away from their homes. Surely in this day and age this is unacceptable. Will the Minister do all he can to stop it happening?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I completely agree with the noble Lord. Any cases such as those he has just cited are tragedies. We are doing a great deal to try to help local authorities. We are funding a programme called “staying put”, where a young person continues to live with a former foster carer, and are providing funding for “staying close” to be piloted in eight areas. To date, we have provided over £110 million to local authorities to support them in implementing “staying put”, which has helped thousands of care leavers to transition more smoothly from care to independent living.

Schools: Free School Meals

Debate between Lord Laming and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Wednesday 22nd May 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, compliance with school food standards is mandatory for all maintained schools and has been part of funding agreements for academies and free schools since 2014. We have provided this legislative framework, and we are providing free school meals for a huge number of pupils. As the noble Lord will know, we introduced free school meals for infants, which are now feeding some 1.5 million pupils a year.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, will the Minister take this opportunity to congratulate the charity Family Action, which is running the national school breakfast programme? It is now operating in 1,700 schools, providing a nutritious breakfast for more than 280,000 children who come to school without having had any breakfast.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

The noble Lord is quite correct. Family Action was deployed in March last year on a two-year contract. It has since provided support to improve breakfast clubs in some 1,770 schools with a focus on increasing provision for disadvantaged pupils in opportunity areas.

Knife Crime: First Aid in Schools

Debate between Lord Laming and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Wednesday 13th March 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My noble friend asks a good question. In fact, about a month ago, I wrote to the head of Counter Terrorism Command in London to broker a meeting between him and some heads in London so that schools and police work together. We have introduced a number of initiatives over the past couple of years to support these areas. For example, the Big Lottery Fund invested £80 million towards the #iwill fund and £40 million to the Youth Investment Fund. In addition, in October this year, we announced the new £200 million Youth Endowment Fund to provide support over the next 10 years for young people most at risk of serious violence.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

Does the Minister agree that the reduction in funding for local government of more than 30% during the austerity programme has resulted in all the preventive services being clawed back, and in those services being crisis driven? This has resulted in young people not having the alternative support services that we had become used to providing.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I do not think that is the case. I mention two initiatives that we have introduced in the past couple of years. In terms of education, we are reforming training through the early education framework to make teachers more aware of how to effectively manage behaviour. We have recently changed the guidelines on keeping children safe in education, which again involves training and alerting teachers to be more aware of emotional problems that might arise in children. There is great need for wider awareness.

Sure Start

Debate between Lord Laming and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Thursday 12th July 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, these are important questions, and I respect the noble Lord for his knowledge on this subject. We have adopted a different approach to early years. We have an ecosystem of support for early years; we have the children’s centres, the Sure Start centres, family hubs and the two year-old and three and four year-old offers. We are seeing progress in those areas. For example, in the two year-old offer, 72% of disadvantaged children are now benefiting from up to 15 hours of free early education, and there are nearly 23,000 providers offering funded places for two year-olds, an increase of almost 8,500 providers since 2014.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, I am sure noble Lords agree that the Sure Start centres have provided a great opportunity for assessment and for remedial and preventive work with families going through periods of considerable stress. Without those centres, the downward spiral into crisis will not be reversed. Does the Minister agree that there is probably an association between the closure of these centres and the large increase in children coming into public care?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, no, I cannot accept that correlation. As I mentioned, we have created an ecosystem of support for young children. I mentioned the two year-old offer a moment ago, but we also have a three year-old and four year-old offer of 15 hours’ free childcare a week, which is worth £2,500 in childcare costs to parents. In September 2017, we doubled free childcare for working parents. On the effectiveness of Sure Start centres, while I accept that they have made a valuable contribution, the Audit Commission carried out an in-depth assessment in 2010—I use that relatively old date because it was what I might call “unadulterated” to the specification of the last Government. That report stated:

“Between 1998/99 and 2010/11 we estimate that £10.9 billion (including £7.2 billion for Sure Start, which had dedicated funding for health improvements in the early phase of roll-out) will have been invested in programmes aimed in whole, or in part, at improving the health of the under-fives, but this has not produced widespread improvements in health outcomes. Some health indicators have indeed worsened—for example, obesity and dental health—and the health inequalities gap between rich and poor has barely changed”.


If we look at the impact we are making—

Children: Missed Education

Debate between Lord Laming and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Thursday 15th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, it is important first to differentiate between temporary and permanent exclusions; the ones of concern are, I think, the permanent exclusions. The figures on that have not increased dramatically in the past few years—it has gone up from 0.07% to 0.08%. However, as I mentioned in my earlier Answer to the noble Baroness, we have announced an exclusion review, which will look at many of these issues. The other point I would like to raise is that we have opened a number of alternative provision free schools over the past few years, and they are dealing with some of these issues.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister accept that some of these children will be denied any form of education and, perhaps even more serious, those who are being denied it are also being excluded from the safeguarding arrangements in this country and therefore are exceptionally vulnerable to abuse, neglect and exploitation?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I accept that this is a vulnerable group of children, but local authorities have a number of powers of intervention. The guidance that we will be issuing shortly will clarify that to ensure that they aware of all the tools that they have available to them.

Children: School Attendance

Debate between Lord Laming and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Wednesday 24th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

I agree with the noble Lord. Much home education is very good, and we welcome the dedication of parents who take on that responsibility and do it well. However, we have concerns about unregistered schools. We have provided additional resources to Ofsted, including by creating a new team of dedicated inspectors to inspect suspected unregistered independent schools. They and the DfE have been taking action to make sure that these settings cease to operate unlawfully. We are also creating guidance for local authorities on how to tackle unsuitable out-of-school settings and unregistered independent schools, including on how to use their existing powers. We hope to publish this guidance as soon as possible.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that the number of children who are out of school is increasing? Some may be receiving very good education but we do not know that, and we suspect that quite a substantial number of these children are beyond the reach of either the local authority or the safeguarding arrangements. By definition therefore these children are extremely vulnerable, and it is our responsibility to protect them.

Social Mobility

Debate between Lord Laming and Lord Agnew of Oulton

Wednesday 22nd November 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I can only agree with that comment but let me put a little flesh on the bones. In 2010, we undertook to take on the most failing schools in this country and put them into the sponsored academy programme. Over 1,900 schools were taken on from 150 local authorities. As at the current date, 68% of those that have been inspected are now providing a good or better education. That is 1.8 million more children in good education than in 2010. However, we are not complacent. My main motivator in this job is to ensure that momentum is continued.

[Lord Laming (CB)]

My Lords, does the Minister agree that some of the most disadvantaged children in terms of social mobility are those for whom we have responsibility—that is, the children in public care? Often one of the saddest things about their experience is the number of moves that they have to make, not only in terms of their care but from one school to another. Can the Minister assure the House that the needs of these children will be a priority for the Government?

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I assure the noble Lord that they are a high priority. Indeed, in the next few weeks we will announce some work on alternative provision which captures a lot of these very vulnerable children. He may be aware that we have opened 39 alternative-provision free schools in the last seven years, 82% of which have already been rated as good or outstanding.