Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Meston Excerpts(1 day, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Cass (CB)
My Lords, I was not intending to speak to the amendment, but I also met Ceri this week, and it was a privilege to talk to him. I had not heard that part of his story until my noble friend Lady Grey-Thompson told us about it.
I recently stepped down as a trustee of the children’s hospice Noah’s Ark, in Barnet. When I think about the support that families get there—not just during the course of their child’s illness and while they pass away but support for siblings, and the ability, through the Butterfly Suite, to be with the child they have recently lost for a number of days thereafter, through to follow-up and bereavement support that hospice staff provide, as well as advice on benefits and access, which might be crucial to the well-being of those parents —I am struck by the stark difference. That support is provided by charitable funds. It should not be that way. This is a postcode lottery. We have responsibilities to this group of families, who fight so bravely by themselves but who need our support and that holistic wraparound care.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I strongly support Amendments 99 and 101, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran. These are designed to tackle the sad and difficult problem of successive removals of children and babies from their parents, in particular from their mothers.
When a child is removed permanently under a court order, typically, a number of things can happen, and, indeed, not happen. The court which made the care order and consequent order for placement for adoption will have no further involvement. The local authority which brought the case may well have little or no further engagement with the birth family, who will receive no more attention and support, at least until there is another pregnancy, by which time it can be too late to address the underlying problems.
The mother, probably traumatised, may react to the first removal of a child with a bad decision to have another child, in the hope, rather than the expectation, that things will turn out better next time round, which is unlikely to occur. The mother and the father, if identified, will have become mistrustful of the local authority social workers and feel stigmatised and unwilling to seek or accept help. The mother may become hard to reach and may not reveal the next pregnancy until the last minute. Her underlying problems, by then, will not have been addressed; indeed, they may have become compounded.
Unless there has been some significant and unexpected change, the local authority will have no alternative but to start new care proceedings for the new child, usually with the same bad outcome as before. Speaking as someone who has had to deal with these cases, I know that those representing the mother and the court will struggle to find any real improvement or anything else to distinguish the case from that of the previous child. These are truly the most wretched cases for any court to deal with.
The charitable organisation Pause has considerable expertise in this area and has evolved a model of preventive support to break the cycle of repeated pregnancies and recurrent removals. The Nuffield Family Justice Observatory and others have had valuable input into this problem and highlighted the statistics. One in five care proceedings are repeat proceedings. The repeat proceedings are more likely to involve babies, and almost half of all newborn babies subject to care proceedings are born to mothers who have had a previous child removed. Indeed, it is quite likely that the mother herself will have been in the care system not so long before. The additional financial cost to local authorities for care proceedings and consequential adoption proceedings, and the support required to pay for foster care and adopters, is enormous. The human cost, obviously, is unresolved misery and grief.
Amendment 99 would require local authorities to provide post-removal support where there is a risk of further removal, based on the Pause model of specialist focused and intensive support. Some local authorities do this work, but it should be universal. It has been suggested that, for every £1 spent, £4.50 would be saved in the next four years. However, some local authorities—understandably, given their constraints—are reluctant to look beyond this year’s budget. The Pause model does make a difference, and primary legislation can now make a real difference. That is the basis for Amendment 99.
Amendment 101 would provide for data collection, which would be a valuable aid to local and central government. Ironically, if Amendment 101 was agreed and Amendment 99 did not succeed, it would simply serve to highlight in the data which would be collected the support that should have been provided through Amendment 99. That opportunity should not be missed.
In Committee, the Minister was sympathetic and suggested that one way forward might be by way of family group conferencing, which is part of the structure of the Bill. Quite frankly, that would not be of particular value in these circumstances. The first set of proceedings probably would not have got to where they were if there had been a supportive family in the background, and it would, by then, be too late to prevent what had already become a further pregnancy. Therefore, I do not think that is the answer.
I have tried to avoid repeating points that were made in Committee. I simply quote the late Nicholas Crichton, a pioneering district judge:
“A family justice system that removes the fourth, fifth or sixth child from families without doing anything about the reasons for removal is a failing system”.
I commend Amendments 99 and 101 to the House.
Baroness Tyler of Enfield (LD)
My Lords, I rise briefly to lend my support to all three of these amendments. I was very pleased to add my name to Amendments 99 and 101 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Barran.
Listening to the debate today, I think this group is dealing with some of the most heartbreaking events that children and families ever face. It has really been very harrowing just to listen to the circumstances that some of these families have found themselves in. I was profoundly moved by the way the noble Baroness, Lady Grey-Thompson, introduced her amendment. It is a really important amendment, and I very much hope that the Government will be able to look sympathetically at it.
I will just say a few words in addition to what the noble Lord, Lord Meston, has said, particularly about Amendment 99. As we heard from the noble Lord, almost half of newborns in care proceedings are born to mothers who have already been through proceedings with another child, so far too many children are entering care from parents who have already had at least one child removed from their care.
As we have heard, without support—and that is what this amendment is all about: the support that we want to see local authorities offering after a child is removed—parents, particularly mothers, are often left struggling to cope with all the existing difficulties that led to the child removal in the first place, while facing the additional trauma, grief and stigma of losing a previous child. This leads to further child removals too many times. It is simply a heartbreaking, vicious cycle.
But with the right support, parents can stabilise, overcome that trauma and make lasting change. The reason I feel so passionately about this is that in my time as chair of Cafcass, I was privileged to visit various Pause projects, to talk to the people who were providing the support and to talk to the mothers about the difference that having that support had made and why they now felt they could turn their lives around so that they would not find themselves in a position like that of a mother I was talking to—I think I said this in Committee, so forgive me if I am repeating myself—who had had eight children removed and now it was about the ninth child. We just cannot allow these situations to perpetuate. It is not something that a decent and humane society can do.
At the moment only about half of local authority areas are providing any support at all. This amendment is so critical to ensure that support is available and that this incalculable human suffering that we have heard about can be alleviated. I very much look forward to hearing from the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, and the Minister, and I really hope we can make progress here.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Meston Excerpts(3 days, 7 hours ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I wish to speak in support of Amendment 49, specifically relating to sibling contact, to which I have added my name. In doing so, I do not want to repeat what the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, said, other than to stress, as she did, the importance of maintaining and developing sibling contact.
Where a child has to be separated from his or her parents, temporarily or permanently, the most important viable relationship remaining is often with that child’s siblings or half-siblings. Typically, siblings have shared experience of the parenting they have received, and they have, of course, a relationship which can long outlive the relationship that they have or have had with their parents.
The Children Act created a presumption that children should be placed together, but that is not always possible to arrange or to achieve. Contact between separated siblings, particularly if no longer in the same school or placed at some distance apart, can require commitment not only by their respective carers but by the responsible local authorities. Properly arranged sibling contact typically requires a concrete plan by the local authority and an underlying framework of support. It may, it has to be said, sometimes influence what happens at the next stage after the care proceedings and determine what happens if the children are to be placed for adoption.
Amendment 49 would help, because it would not require or assume that both or all of the children will be in the care of the local authority, and it would thereby sensibly extend the scope of local authority duties towards siblings.
Lord Russell of Liverpool (CB)
My Lords, I rise briefly to speak in support of Amendment 62 in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler.
The case for this is, really, fairly straightforward. Children in care often have quite strong mental health needs and are not in the best of mental health. Care leavers comprise about 1% to 3% of the general youth population, but that translates into them being responsible for one quarter of the homeless population. That group are twice as likely to die prematurely than the general population, and in many cases suicide is the largest reason for that high death rate. That is a fairly strong causal link between children in the care system, or those going into the care system, having fragile mental health, and that not being picked up as early as it should be. This amendment simply asks that we please ensure that, when children have an assessment of the quality of their mental health, the practitioners who are doing that are qualified in mental health. Only in that way can we be sure that we catch those vulnerable young people at that early stage and that they do not become one of the depressing statistics that I have just mentioned.
The Lord Bishop of Manchester
My Lords, I have promoted a number of amendments in this group and signed others, for the reasons that the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, has so elegantly given. I will not waste your Lordships’ time by repeating them. I simply say that, over these last few years, I have become all too familiar with the acronym ACE—adverse childhood experience. We know that any child who has had four or more of those experiences is effectively traumatised, in one way or another, for life. It is a major thing to deprive them of their liberty, so whatever we can do to support these children and ensure it happens as little, for as short a time and with as careful scrutiny as possible will be vital. I therefore urge noble Lords, if these matters are put to a Division, to support them.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I too support these amendments. The debate in Committee threw a light on the working of the deprivation of liberty jurisdiction, which, one could not help noting, was not altogether familiar to many.
Typically, these orders are made when parents cannot provide good enough care and the child concerned needs protection from outside pressures and their own risk-taking behaviour. Before they come to court, the local authority, the guardian and the court have to do their best to provide placement in appropriate settings and to enable the child to maintain significant relationships, both of which are easier said than done. Problems that follow the initial order can include unstable placement and repeated changes of placement. These are not easy to manage. I have read of a child saying that it was pointless to try to build up any relationship in the setting in which she was placed because she knew that she would be moved again or the staff would leave. That is a very unhappy state of affairs.
There can be review hearings by the court, but they are not always satisfactory in my experience. Therefore, sensibly, Amendment 54 would require review by the director of children’s services to ensure proper monitoring and adherence to the objectives of the original authorisation to deprive liberty. Therefore, among this package before us, I strongly support this amendment, which would also comply with the child’s right to regular reviews in accordance with Article 25 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.
Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)
My Lords, I will briefly focus on Amendment 53, on the right to education. I want to bring in the voice of one child who spoke to the Children’s Commissioner in her report on this issue. Talking about the lack of education they were receiving, this child said:
“I don’t think it’s fair that they’re making us miss out on our education because they don’t know where to put us”.
That child understands the situation they are in, and it is just unacceptable. All but two of the children whom the Children’s Commissioner spoke to said they were receiving less education when subjected to deprivation of liberty than they received in their otherwise often very chaotic circumstances. We have to make sure that these children continue with an education.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Meston Excerpts(1 week, 1 day ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Barran (Con)
My Lords, it is good to be back scrutinising the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill after what seems like a long break. But noble Lords will remember that, while I think all sides of the House supported the approach of family group conferencing or a family group decision-making meeting, as described in the Bill, a number of points required clarification. I think those are still outstanding and I hope the Minister will be able to cover them in her response today.
Amendment 1 seeks to clarify what the Government really intend to implement. We have been told that the introduction of family group decision-making is based on the success of the pilot sites in the Families First for Children pathfinders, but the evaluation published in July is clear that family group conferencing, not family group decision-making meetings, was used in the pilot sites when children were on the cusp of care proceedings. Which approach is it and if it is not family group conferencing, what is the evidence base?
I suppose I am concerned that the Government are not actually committed to following the evidence-based family group conferencing model, but a slimmer or stripped-down version that we might call “FGC light”. The evaluation published in July did not have any outcome data and was largely a process evaluation, because of the stage the pilots are at.
Amendment 2 aims to press the Government for a commitment to no dilution of the model. The Bill talks about a meeting while the evaluation talks about the importance of careful preparation, including pre-meetings, and that being followed by funded support through the family network support package. Again, can the Minister be clear that the Government are proposing that the evidence-informed model is followed?
Turning to Amendment 3, we questioned in Committee whether it was necessary to have a duty to offer family group decision-making in statute at all, and in particular at the point of care proceedings, when there is already an expectation set out in the statutory guidance to the Children Act that this should be offered. Our amendments in Committee included a focus on using family group conferencing at different points in the safeguarding process, and it seems that the evaluation published in July agrees with this. On page 58, it recommends that:
“The timing of the offer of”
family group conferences
“needs to be explored in greater detail to establish clarity around the pros and cons of offering it at different phases in the family’s journey”.
Amendment 3 would require family group decision-making or family group conferencing to be offered at the point when a child who has been in care returns to their original family, something that occurs in over a quarter of cases. This is an obvious point at which additional support would be helpful and could avoid a second care placement, as happens all too frequently—in about a third of those cases. It does not take much imagination to appreciate how traumatic and damaging it is for children and their parents for that to happen.
Finally, Amendment 5, in my name and that of the noble Lord, Lord Hampton, who brings great personal experience to this topic, introduces the idea of a kinship support plan. As we will come to in a later group, we believe that the Government need to take action to increase the number of foster and kinship carers beyond what is already proposed. The idea of a kinship support plan is to increase the resilience of a kinship care placement by offering additional support, either from the local authority directly or from wider community resources. I wonder whether the Government are considering anything of this type, which would increase the chances of successful kinship placements.
These are cases where the threshold of significant harm will have been met, and therefore it is reasonable to offer additional support to carers and right-touch oversight of the safety and well-being of the child in their care. I beg to move.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, we should be grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Barran, for returning us to this important topic of family group conferences and for the refined amendments she has now presented, including Amendment 3, to which I have added my name. They would embed what is now established as good practice into legislation. I also welcome the noble Baroness’s request for clarification of what lies behind the differing terminology.
The Government, to their credit, recognise the important role of family group decision-making meetings. The arguments for such conferences are strong, enabling family members to be informed about local authorities’ concerns and proposals, including the wider family members, who may have been kept in the dark or given an incomplete version of the problems from just the parents’ perspective, perhaps coloured by a negative view of the local authority’s intentions. They are a good opportunity to maintain focus on the child or children while listening to and respecting the views of the family, particularly if the family has otherwise been marginalised.
As well as sharing information, conferences allow social workers to explore and assess what family members might have to offer, and what support might assist them to help divert cases away from legal proceedings. There is no doubt that family group conferences secure considerable financial savings for local authorities and for the courts. I emphasise the point that the noble Baroness has made: proper preparation for them is essential.
Ideally, such conferences should take place as early as possible, and at the pre-proceedings stage that we discussed in Committee. However, Amendment 3 would also require such a meeting to be offered when it is planned that the child will be returned to the care of family members. Again, that would be a good opportunity for informed discussion to clarify the expectations of the local authority for the future care of the child, and to discuss any difficulties that may have to be confronted. I hope, therefore, that the Government will use these amendments as an opportunity to build such points into the legal structure.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park (Con)
My Lords, while welcoming the Government’s amendment to ensure that the child’s voice is heard in family group decision-making, I add my support to the amendments in this group in the name of my noble friend Lady Barran.
As we discussed in Committee, family group decision-making is a broad, generic term—without clear principles and standards—about what families can expect. Indeed, the Explanatory Notes for the Bill themselves state that
“FGDM is an umbrella term”.
As a result, concern remains, unsupported by evidence, among charities and organisations supporting vulnerable families that FGDM approaches may proliferate at a local level as a result of the lack of specificity in the Bill. As my noble friend highlighted, that is despite clear evidence, both in the UK and internationally, that family group conferences in particular are a successful and effective model for diverting children from care and supporting them to remain in their family. If the Minister is unable to accept Amendment 2, I hope that in her response she will be able to provide strong reassurance that, in the regulations and statutory guidance, it will be made clear that local authorities will be expected to follow the principles and standards drawn from the robust national and international research findings on the efficacy of the group conference approach.
I turn to Amendment 3. As was highlighted during our discussions in Committee, reunification is the most common way for children to leave care but, sadly, too many reunifications break down due to lack of support. There is currently no strategy by which to support reunifying families, and 78% of local authorities admit that what they provide is inadequate. In winding up our previous debate on this issue, the Minister said that she had some sympathy with the objective of including this measure in the Bill, not least because of the challenges of reunification, and the need to ensure that it is supported. I hope, then, that even at this late stage, the Minister might look favourably on accepting this amendment, as it could make a real difference to the stability of a child’s return home.
Lord Meston
“Child contact centres(1) All child contact centres and child contact organisations that offer child contact services must be accredited in accordance with national standards for safeguarding and preventing domestic abuse.(2) The accreditation in subsection (1) must be granted by the National Association of Child Contact Centres.(3) The Secretary of State must by regulations made by statutory instrument specify the standards and accreditation procedure under subsection (1). (4) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before and approved by a resolution of each House of Parliament.”
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, is unable to be here and has therefore asked me to lead on this amendment. It follows on from that moved by the noble Baroness in Committee on 22 May last year. As I have said, the noble Baroness regrets that she is unavailable, but I want just to take a moment to recognise her dedicated support for the work of child contact centres and her wish to maintain and raise the standards of such centres, standards which are already high if accredited by the national association.
This is a more straightforward amendment than that moved in Committee. It would simply require all contact centres and organisations to be accredited in accordance with national standards for safeguarding and preventing domestic abuse, with such accreditation to be granted by the National Association of Child Contact Centres.
There can be no doubt about the value and effectiveness of child contact centres, as they have evolved, since the first was set up in the late 1980s in Nottingham by a family court magistrate to help those separated parents who could not arrange contact for themselves. The centres allow parents and children to adjust to child contact in a safe and neutral environment.
The use of such centres, when court-directed, has been reinforced since 2000 by judicial protocols, the first of which was endorsed by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, when president of the Family Division, and was later updated and revised by her successors. One of those was Sir James Munby, who sadly died earlier this month. In a speech in 2018, he said:
“Everyone in the family justice system knows just what a vital role is played by Child Contact Centres and the contact centre movement. Child Contact Centres enable contact which otherwise might not occur to take place and they play a central part in maintaining, and if necessary restoring and rebuilding, the child’s relationship with parents, grandparents and other relatives”.
He went on to say:
“NACCC and the whole contact centre movement are a distinguished example of the voluntary sector at its very best and of civic society operating as it should”.
Sir James, for those who knew him, was never given to understatement, but in that he was completely correct.
It is the experience of all of us who work, or have worked, in the family justice system that such centres are now essential in enabling courts, Cafcass and those advising parents, but also unrepresented parents and marginalised grandparents, to manage contact problems and disputes. They facilitate supported contact and, for those cases requiring more vigilance, they can provide supervised contact.
Typically, use of a centre is a fairly short-term measure—a temporary solution on the way to more normalised arrangements. It is certainly the experience of all judges that it is very gratifying to see contact arrangements progress in a way that moves the arrangements away from the centre, perhaps after six months or so, with the use of a well-run centre having reassured, typically, an anxious mother and/or a suspicious and resentful father, that contact can proceed away from the centre and in the community.
The strengths and potential weaknesses of contact centres were shown in the recent report by Cordis Bright, published in 2023. This amendment builds on that. Its emphasis is on the use of
“national standards for safeguarding and preventing domestic abuse”.
Those who refer a family to a centre should already be required to inform the centre of the relevant background history and, in particular, any violence, abusive behaviour or conflict, so that the more profound problems can be screened out and conflict avoided.
Those working in centres need training to identify and deal with the risks. Having accreditation, as proposed in the amendment, which would require all centres to work to the same standard, will be important in helping centres deliver their services. It will underpin the confidence of those using or thinking of using such centres and will further safeguard the children concerned. It is on that basis that I beg to move.
Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I agree with every word of the noble Lord, Lord Meston. One of the rather sad aspects of a minority of families who cannot get on and separate is that they so often do not recognise that the children love both of them. It is all too common for one parent to say, “The child won’t want to see daddy; she can’t stand him”, or for daddy to say, “I know that I won’t be allowed to see her; that woman can’t bear me”. This is, I regret to tell your Lordships, absolutely typical.
Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)
No, and this was the point I was accepting when I said I would ensure that our noble friend Lady Levitt is informed about it from this debate. As I have said, I am sure we will want to give more thought to how the labelling, almost, of the accreditation that does exist for the vast majority of contact centres can perhaps be made more obvious to courts in the sorts of circumstances that my noble friend identified.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I am very grateful for the contributions to the debate on this amendment. It seems to me that the debate has exposed two possible problems. First, there is no sanction for the creation or use of an unregistered contact centre. Secondly, there is a gap in the knowledge of what is available, whether registered or unregistered. The Cordis Bright report was aware of that gap, and I suggest it is a worrying gap. It may well be, as Cordis Bright reported, that there is only limited evidence as to the prevalence of non-accredited centres, but it is still a small number, which could do quite a lot of damage.
That said, I think it is important to understand that the courts, when ordering contact, will always apply the protocols that are laid down by the president of the Family Division. I am also reassured by the Minister’s indication that mediators and indeed, possibly, others who have responsibility for guiding people towards contact centres, will be required to use only accredited centres.
We are not working from a blank page; there is already an excellent network of centres. On that basis, and because of the work that the Minister has been good enough to indicate is being undertaken, particularly by the Ministry of Justice, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Meston Excerpts(4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502G in this group. This amendment would ensure that Part 2 of the Bill complies with Article 2 in Protocol 1 to the European Convention on Human Rights, which the United Kingdom not only signed and ratified but incorporated into UK law by the Human Rights Act 1998.
My amendment is based on the wording of the second sentence of Article 2 of Protocol 1, which provides:
“In the exercise of any functions which it assumes in relation to education and to teaching, the State shall respect the right of parents to ensure such education and teaching is in conformity with their own religious and philosophical convictions”.
Part 2 of the Bill directly engages this article, since the Government will be, in the words of the ECHR, “assuming many new functions in relation to teaching and education”. For example, local authorities will be given sweeping new powers to monitor, register and regulate the independent sector. The Secretary of State will be empowered to regulate proprietors of independent schools, arrange inspections, prescribe standards and suspend registration. He or she will be able to make regulations using Henry VIII powers so as to dictate which educational institutions are covered, and to mandate the national curriculum for academies using yet more Henry VIII powers to regulate the contents of the four key stages, as well as attainment and assessment targets. We are well within the Article 2, Protocol 1 envelope. I know that this Government take their ECHR obligations very seriously.
Without my amendment, these new powers in the Bill would impede the right of parents to ensure an education for their children which accords with their own religious and philosophical convictions. Why is that? It is because Article 2 is about parents having the right to choose which education and teaching is right for their children. As the Strasbourg court said in a Danish case, Article 2 of Protocol 1 aims
“at safeguarding the possibility of pluralism in education which is essential for the preservation of the ‘democratic society’ as conceived by the Convention”.
Our very own Supreme Court recognised this need for plurality in a case in 2020 concerning members of the Orthodox Jewish community. The court stated that their needs are different from those who are not members of that community, and they have a need for their own community facilities, including schools. The same could be said for members of other faiths who choose schools which support their religious and philosophical convictions, such as Christian schools.
This is all about the primacy of parental choice. I repeat: it is about the primacy of parental choice. Whether it is an academy, a single-sex school, a language or music school, a faith school or indeed a maintained school, parents must have the freedom to choose an institution whose ethos accords with their own religious and philosophical beliefs and with what they perceive is best for their children. This may mean choosing a school which has freedom to innovate, without regulation by the state, so as to promote the skills and talents of each pupil, including varying the curriculum or attainment targets and adapting assessment procedures or the daily schedule with a view to bringing out the best in each and every child. All these are the hallmarks of our diverse educational landscape and exemplify the rights which Article 2 of Protocol 1 protects.
As it stands, Part 2 fails to respect such rights. Therefore, my amendment is surely unobjectionable and indeed to be welcomed by all who value maximising the unique talents of our children in an educational environment consistent with the religious and philosophical upbringing their parents have chosen.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I support Amendments 469 and 470 and have added my name to Amendment 502F. However, I suggest that altogether more forthright and comprehensive embedding of the UNCRC into English law is now both appropriate and overdue, even if that cannot be fully achieved under this Bill. That convention was signed by the United Kingdom, among many others, as long ago as 1991. It commands widespread respect. Since then, England has fallen out of step with Wales, where, as we have been told, a measure in 2011 placed an express duty on Ministers to have regard to the rights and obligations in the convention. England is yet more out of step with Scotland, where the convention was fully and directly incorporated into law by statute last year. Amendment 470 would align England with Wales, but not yet with Scotland.
Amendment 502F would impose a duty on public authorities, not just on Ministers, yet both fall short of unqualified incorporation. The convention provides a wide-ranging and valuable list of rights which should be an invaluable checklist for any public authority. Even if some may criticise parts of it as idealistic and aspirational, the convention both sets and raises standards, and specific articles of the convention supplement current gaps in practice and procedure and enhance accountability. Without going into too much detail, significantly, it was the first international convention expressly to recognise and underpin a child’s right to identity, as set out in Articles 7 and 8. This is not unimportant for migrant and unaccompanied children, or in the complexities of modern parental relationships.
Article 12 is widely recognised as important in requiring proper consideration of the views of a child on all matters affecting that child. Any family law practitioner can see the potential general and specific influence of many of the other articles. For example, Article 10.2 could influence disputes over child relocation. More broadly, several topics and problems discussed in the course of this Bill’s progress through Parliament are covered by the convention. Article 24 is relevant to the real problem of the poor take-up of vaccination for children; Article 28 to school attendance; and Article 33 to drugs. Overall, although I submit that these amendments could be more robust, they would be a step along the way to following Scotland.
Although I support Amendment 502F, I suggest that the drafting of proposed subsection (5) could be simplified to remove the double negative. Amendment 470 would require publication of reports every three years, and Amendment 502F would require them every five years. It would probably be better to co-ordinate the timing of any reports with those required under Article 44 of the convention itself, which may have been what was intended. Scrutiny of such reports is important to ensure that they are not selective and altogether uncritical, as can occur.
If we are serious about children’s rights, they should be incorporated into law—irrespective of any future formulation of human rights. These amendments should be accepted. I am glad that Amendment 502G has been added to this group; Governments have to balance children’s rights and parents’ rights with care. All children are entitled to equality of educational opportunity in a way that broadens horizons, rather than narrows potential. Children have rights and parents have rights, but parents also have responsibilities.
Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill
Lord Meston Excerpts(4 months ago)
Lords ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Watch Debate Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Baroness Berridge (Con)
My Lords, I will speak to Amendment 502YG and pass on the apologies of the noble Baroness, Lady Morgan of Cotes, who has had to go but had agreed to introduce the amendment on behalf of the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Prentis, who cannot take part on the Bill. In summary, the amendment is to improve allergy safety in schools, but it marks the culmination of a long campaign in conjunction with the inspirational Helen Blythe, following the tragic death of her son Benedict in 2021, when he was only five. An inquest last month concluded that Benedict’s death was avoidable and caused by the accidental ingestion of cows’ milk after his school failed to follow the processes and procedures in place to protect him.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Ramsey, outlined, almost 20% of all allergic reactions take place in schools and, sadly, we now know that not only do they not necessarily have the EpiPens but they do not necessarily have a plan or training in place. Only putting these protective measures on a statutory footing will ensure that adequate protections are there for the two children in every classroom with allergies. Helen has worked tirelessly to establish the safety measures necessary to ensure that no child is ever lost again in such a tragic and avoidable way. I also pay tribute to the work of Alicia Kearns in the other place, MP for Rutland and Stamford, with which I am connected. Helen Blythe is her constituent.
The current government guidelines do not even mention allergies. There is only one line on food and one link to an anaphylaxis charity. The key aim is of course spare EpiPens, trained staff and a proper policy. The Government would prefer any change to be by way of guidance, but that just does not give the guarantees necessary—hence tonight’s amendment.
Between 1998 and 2018, 66 children died from allergic reactions. There are 680,000 pupils in England’s schools who have allergies—that is one or two per classroom, according to the Benedict Blythe Foundation’s REACT report of March 2024. At a time when the Department for Education is rightly focused on the attendance crisis, children miss half a million days of education due to allergy each year. These adrenaline auto-injections are life-savers, and the Benedict Blythe Foundation estimates that it would cost only £5 million for the rollout in English schools, plus the training. I remember a similar campaign to put defibrillators into every school; that was done, so why not put these EpiPens, and proper training and policy, in place? I welcome the department’s engagement, but the time for action is now.
Lord Meston (CB)
My Lords, I want to underline, in respect of Amendment 462, the importance of the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, about reducing the pressures on CAMHS. The family courts are being frustrated, as I know from recent experience, and impeded in reaching necessary long-term decisions about the future for children. They are told, week by week, that they are waiting for an appointment with CAMHS and then that they are waiting for an assessment report from CAMHS—and then that they are waiting for the recommended treatment to take place. If Amendment 462 serves to help with those tasks, children, their parents and the courts will benefit. The courts are being criticised for the delays in reaching decisions, and certainly the problems with CAMHS contribute to those delays.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I really want to challenge the assumption of some of the amendments in this group that what we need is more dedicated mental health practices and provision in schools. One of the problems is that there is too much emphasis on mental illness and mental health in education at the moment. That awareness is taking up too much time in school life, is over-preoccupying young people and is becoming a real problem.
If you look at what is going on in schools at the moment, there are indeed endless numbers of staff, volunteers and organisations with responsibility for emotional well-being: mental health leads, support teams, emotional literacy support and assistance, mental health first aiders, counsellors, and well-being officers. If you go into any school, the walls are covered in information about mental illness, mental health and so on; it is everywhere you go. Yet despite this booming, school-based mental health industrial complex, almost, the well-being of pupils continues to deteriorate—or that is what we are told.
Mental health problems and diagnoses are rising at the same time as all the awareness initiatives are taking place. Something is going wrong and that at least needs some investigation, but these amendments just assume that we should carry on doing the same and more of the same. Along with the noble Baroness, Lady Spielman, I think that real, critical thinking needs to be done around some of the awareness campaigns.
I want to challenge the idea that schools are the vehicle for tackling the undoubted spiralling crisis of unhappiness among young people. It is also important that we untangle that from the crisis of CAMHS. There is actually a serious problem in NHS mental health support for children, and I would like that to be taken on. That is very different from the kind of discussion we are having here about schools, which is that mental distress becomes such a focus of all the discussions in schools.
I tend to agree—for possibly the only time—with Tony Blair on this. He said,
“you’ve got to be careful of encouraging people to think they’ve got some sort of condition other than simply confronting the challenges of life”.
That is true. Starting with children, we are encouraging the young to internalise the narrative of medicalised and pathologised explanations and the psychological vocabulary of adopting an identity of mental fragility, and that is not doing them any good. That can then create an increasing cohort of young people and parents demanding official diagnosis, more intervention and more support at school.
Dr Alastair Santhouse, a neuropsychiatrist at the Maudsley, argues this in his new book, No More Normal: Mental Health in an Age of Over-Diagnosis. He says that it has become crucial to reassess what constitutes mental illness, so that we can decide who needs to be treated with limited resources and who can be helped in other ways. He is talking about the NHS, and he warns that the NHS has buckled under a tsunami of referrals for some conditions. He also says that other state services such as schools are straining to the point of dysfunction in dealing with this issue, and I tend to agree with him.
I admire the passionate intervention by the noble Lord, Lord O’Donnell, calling for measurement and evidence, but one of the problems is that I am not entirely sure we know what we are measuring. There is no clear definition of well-being to measure. The psychiatric profession is making the point that the definitions of what constitutes mental illness are now contended—there are arguments about them. What are you measuring? This woolliness of definitions is becoming a problem in schools.
The counsellor Lucy Beney, in her excellent recent pamphlet, worries that this means that mental illness in schools is leading to a kind of diagnostic inflation itself, as pupils compare notes on what they have got and go to different professionals to ask what they have got and so on. It can create a sort of social or cultural contagion, enticing the young to see all the ups and downs of life through the prism of mental health, which can be demoralising and counterproductive. There is no doubt that too many children and young people are not thriving mentally and emotionally in the UK today, and I would like to have that discussion, but I do not think that well-being and mental health is necessarily the way to do it. Schools are definitely not the places to solve it.
A lot of the well-being initiatives, counselling and therapeutic interventions encourage young people to look at life through the subjective filter of their own feelings and anxieties. That, in turn, is likely to lead to inward-looking, self-absorbed children. The role of education in schools is to introduce new generations to the wonders of the millennia, of knowledge outside their experience, which takes them outside themselves. That is what schools are for. That is what teachers are good at. It is not just about gaining credentials. In fact, I hate the credentialing aspect of it. But if you get into a brilliant novel, the law of physics, the history of our world or evolution, you forget your troubles. If you are constantly talking to the counsellor about your troubles, yourself and endlessly thinking of your own well-being, it is boring, demoralising and stunting. It is enough to make anybody depressed, including the young. It is important that schools do not get completely obsessed with this issue. I fear that they have, and it has made matters worse.