Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of having absent fathers on young people who are involved in knife and gun crime.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford
The Serious Violence Strategy sets out our analysis of the drivers of serious violence and risk factors of involvement in violent crime. There are a range of complex factors behind the recent increases in serious violence, and the analysis in the strategy sets out that a major factor has been changes in the drugs market.
The strategy also sets out the key risk factors which may mean a young person may have a greater propensity to get involved in crime than would otherwise be the case such as school absence, peer pressure and family circumstances.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the effects of cuts to the budgets for youth and community services on rates of knife and violent crime.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford
The Serious Violence Strategy sets out our analysis of the drivers of serious violence and risk factors of involvement in violent crime. There are a range of complex factors behind the recent increases in serious violence, and the analysis in the strategy sets out that a major factor has been changes in the drugs market.
The strategy also sets out the key risk factors which may mean a young person may have a greater propensity to get involved in crime than would otherwise be the case such as school absence, peer pressure and family circumstances.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they plan to allocate additional resources for local youth and community services provision to reduce knife crime and other violent crimes; and if so how those resources will be allocated.
Answered by Baroness Williams of Trafford
Our Serious Violence Strategy sets out the Government response to violent crime and includes a number of commitments to provide support to young people and communities to help prevent them being drawn into violent crime in the first place including providing £1.5m through our (anti-knife crime) Community Fund and £17.7m to 29 projects through our Early Intervention Youth Fund.
In addition, we recently announced a new £200m youth endowment fund which will provide support over the next 10 years for those young people most at risk of serious violence. This is in addition to resources the Government has already committed through the Troubled Families programme, the National Citizens programme, and the Trusted Relationship Fund.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the quality of available residential care for vulnerable children; and what effect, if any, the withdrawal of grants to local authorities by 2020 will have on the quality of provision.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Ofsted, as the independent regulator, undertake regular inspections of all children’s homes in England to make sure homes are complying with statutory requirements. In 2017, 82% of all children’s homes were rated good or outstanding following their inspection, while only 3% received a judgement of inadequate. Homes that are judged to be inadequate are subject to twice-yearly inspections; if there is no improvement, the home may be removed from Ofsted’s register and required to close.
Local authorities have access to council tax, business rates and other funding to deliver their local services. Over the five-year period from 2015-16 to 2019-20, local authorities will have access to more than £200 billion to deliver these services, including children’s residential care.
Autumn Budget 2018 made an additional £410 million available to be spent on adult and children’s social care, and a further £84 million in targeted, evidence-based interventions to transform local services. These interventions will reduce demand, save money for councils, and most importantly, improve the quality of services for vulnerable children.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what education programmes (1) are in place, and (2) they intend to put in place, to enable schools and families to engage with children to prevent their becoming involved in criminality, gangs and violent behaviour.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
On 9 April 2018, the Home Office published a new ‘Serious Violence Strategy’, available in the Libraries of both Houses, including 61 recommendations spanning cross government departments to take action to address serious violence, and in particular, the recent increases in knife crime, gun crime and homicide. The strategy puts a stronger emphasis on steering young people away from violence, helping them to change their behaviour and actions before they reach the stage where they are at risk of entering the criminal justice system.
The Department for Education is making relationships education compulsory in all primary schools, relationships and sex education compulsory in all secondary schools and health education compulsory in all state-funded schools. Under the new reforms, the draft guidance, attached, sets out that pupils should develop positive, respectful relationships, including with their peers; and that violence is never acceptable. The draft guidance also covers awareness of violence and exploitation by gangs, as well as criminal exploitation, for example through gang involvement or ‘county lines’ drugs operations.
Citizenship education also helps to provide pupils with knowledge, skills and understanding to prepare them to play a full and active part in society – including an understanding of the role of law and the justice system in our society and how laws are shaped and enforced.
In addition, the ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ statutory guidance, attached, sets out the legal duties that all schools must have regard to when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord O'Shaughnessy on 29 October (HL10675), whether they intend to take steps to reverse the 26 per cent increase in referrals to children's mental health services in England over the past five years; and if so, what steps they intend to take.
Answered by Lord O'Shaughnessy
The Government is committed to widening access to children and young people’s mental health services to address unmet need and ensure that more children and young people get the support they need, at the right time.
Through the Five Year Forward View for Mental Health, we have made an additional £1.4 billion available for children’s mental health service transformation. Overall investment in children and young people’s mental health services was £1.05 billion in 2017/18. We are on track to meet the commitment to ensure that an additional 70,000 children and young people access community mental health services annually by 2020/21.
In addition, the Government has announced further plans to improve early intervention for mild to moderate mental health conditions, through better join up with schools and colleges, to address rising needs and ensure that referrals to specialist services are appropriate. To deliver the key proposal to improve access to services, we are creating a new workforce of Mental Health Support Teams, working in and near schools and colleges, with trained staff to deliver interventions to young people to support their mental health.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the number of children entering local authority care is increasing; what assessment they have made of the causes of any such increase; and what steps they are taking to reduce that number.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
We monitor the number of children entering the care system on an ongoing basis and information showing the change in the number of children entering the care system for the period since 2010 is provided in the table below:
Children who started to be looked after1,2,3 for years ending 31 March 2010 to 2017.
Coverage: England.
Source: SSDA903
2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 |
28,090 | 27,520 | 28,390 | 28,980 | 30,730 | 31,360 | 32,160 | 32,810 |
Further breakdowns of children who started to be looked after can be found in Table C1 of the statistical first release ‘Children Looked After in England including Adoption: 2016 to 2017’ at https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/children-looked-after-in-england-including-adoption-2016-to-2017.
The government wants every child to be in a stable, loving home that is right for them. One of the key principles of the legislation which underpins the UK’s child protection system, is that children are best looked after within their families. In July 2018, we revised the attached statutory guidance, ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’, to make this clear to practitioners. However, that is not always possible and, as a last resort, local authorities may apply to the independent courts for a decision about removing a child from his or her family – where there are concerns that the child is at risk of significant harm.
Our reform programme, Putting Children First, aims to ensure that all vulnerable children and families receive the highest quality care and support as soon as a need is identified. We have invested up to £200 million through the Children’s Social Care Innovation Programme to test and develop better practice, including testing approaches to help vulnerable children to remain safely at home. We have also established the What Works Centre, which is pressing ahead with its research programme, including what works in safely reducing the need for children to enter care.
At the Budget, on 29 October 2018, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the government is also investing £84 million of targeted funding, for a number of local authorities, to improve their social work practice and decision-making. This is to enable these local authorities to support vulnerable children to stay safely at home, thriving in stable family circumstances, where that is in their best interests.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what consideration they are giving to the provision of additional resources to local authorities for specialist support for children with special educational needs and disabilities.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
We want children with special educational needs and disabilities to be able to reach their full potential. That is why we have reformed the funding for children and young people with high needs to make it fairer. High needs funding across England has risen by £1 billion since 2013, and will be over £6 billion next year.
Previously underfunded local authorities are seeing significant increases to their high needs funding, up to six per cent per head of the 2 to 18 population in 2019 to 2020 compared to what they planned to spend in 2017 to 2018. The provisional allocations for 2019 to 2020 that we announced in July can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pre-16-schools-funding-guidance-for-2019-to-2020. These will be updated with the latest pupil number data in December.
We are monitoring the impact of our national funding formula for high needs on local authority spending decisions and keeping the overall level of funding available under review. Funding for 2020 to 2021 and beyond will be determined in the context of the next spending review.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the findings in the advance pre-publication draft report by the Equalities and Human Rights Commission, Is Britain Fairer?, published on 25 October, that “in England, the long-term trend towards inclusion of children with SEND in mainstream schools has been reversed” and that this is “at odds with the UK’s commitment to progressively achieve inclusive education for all under the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities".
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
We are currently considering the findings of the report. We remain committed to inclusive education of disabled children and young people and progressively removing the barriers to learning and participation in mainstream education. The Children and Families Act (2014) secures the general presumption in law of mainstream education in relation to decisions about where children and young people with special educational needs (SEN) should be educated; and the Equality Act (2010) provides protection from discrimination for disabled people.
We have very high expectations of our mainstream schools, where 98.3% of pupils are educated. As my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State said in his speech to the Association of Directors of Children’s Services earlier this year: ‘Every school is a school for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND); and every teacher is a teacher of SEND pupils'.
While many parents of disabled children choose mainstream education, others will want a specialist setting. Some children have complex SEN that mean that the best educational experience for them is in a school that specialises in meeting those needs. For them, a special school is a positive choice.
Asked by: Lord Ouseley (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what are the health and well-being consequences for children who were not accepted for treatment last year despite being referred for specialist mental health care.
Answered by Lord O'Shaughnessy
Some children and young people might find self-help or accessing support in schools more beneficial than a course of treatment in a specialist National Health Service mental health service and there are a range of reasons why children and young people may not access NHS services. A significant proportion of children and young people who seek help are legitimately signposted to other sources of help.
For example, a child displaying signs of anxiety due to a troubled home environment might need a social care response. We know that some children and young people or their parents might prefer to receive help from voluntary sector services.