Children and Social Work Bill [HL]

Lord Storey Excerpts

Monday 4th July 2016 Grand Committee

[Lord Watson of Invergowrie]

My Lords, in speaking to their amendments the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and other noble Lords have outlined the importance of recognising that looked-after children may have unidentified or unmet communication needs, which could prevent children and young people understanding and engaging with the changes that the Bill proposes. For those with communication needs to fully benefit from the Bill’s changes, it is essential that any accompanying regulations and guidance stipulate that, as noble Lords outlined in last week’s Committee session, on entry to the care system the initial health assessment that local authorities are responsible for undertaking should include a mandatory screening for speech, language and communication needs.

The document Putting Children First, which was mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Nash, a few minutes ago and which dropped into our email inboxes about lunchtime today may well meet those concerns. It is a weighty document; not perhaps Chilcot-esque but there is quite a bit in there and it has not yet been possible to examine it in detail. I hope that that document, which I am sure is important, has some of the answers that have been asked for within this debate.

Amendment 32 would at least ensure that speech, language and communication needs are covered appropriately. To ensure that this is as effective as possible, it seems obvious and perhaps logical that people working with, supporting and caring for looked-after and previously looked-after children should receive training in awareness and communication needs, including knowing when to refer someone for speech and language therapy. It would surely be a matter of great concern if such referrals were not made due to the inability of the individual who comes into contact with them when they enter care. In the longer term, looked-after and previously looked-after children should have continuing access to speech and language therapy to help them address their communication needs as their lives progress.

I was surprised to learn that at present many children diagnosed as having speech, language and communication needs receive just one hour of direct intervention from a speech therapist each week and that at the age of seven, in all but the most extreme cases, that help often ends due to financial restrictions. Most then receive no further intervention until they enter secondary school three years later. That gap can surely have an extremely damaging effect on children with speech, language and communication needs. If that is so serious among the school population as a whole, how much more serious it is for children who are in care.

The fact that communication needs to be referenced so often in the various amendments we are considering today, not just in this group, highlights the importance of ensuring that such needs are identified when children and young people enter care and for those already in care to have any such needs identified when they are about to leave it. The importance of providing proper specialist support extends to the need for financial information and to understand relationships. So often, we have heard of young people leaving care being given their own accommodation without any proper planning or experience and with little ability to care for themselves. Debt soon follows, which can lead to accommodation being lost and benefits sanctions contributing to a terrible downward spiral. The difficulties of relationships ought to be another obvious area in which every step is taken to prepare young people as fully as possible for leaving care. Under some of the amendments we will deal with later, we will describe what can happen when people enter relationships without adequate preparation and support.

The amendments span both the corporate parenting principle and the local care offer. They strengthen the Bill and are worthy of our support.

[Lord Storey (LD)]

My Lords, I shall speak briefly to Amendments 30, 32, 38 and 57. I wonder why the issue of personal advisers being trained in speech, language and communication awareness is in this group when we will be discussing their role under a later amendment; however, we are where we are. A number of issues need to be brought together and understood, perhaps after Committee.

I shall give your Lordships a flavour of what I mean. First, let us deal with the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, who rightly said that poor speech, language and communication limit not only children in care but young people generally. Eighty-eight per cent of unemployed men have speech, language and communication needs. They limit employment opportunities, affect their social and emotional well-being and contribute to literacy, behavioural and other social problems. The noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, “Let’s have mandatory screening”. What do we do in schools? Are we not screening there all the time? We are continually assessing and testing, so why do we need another form of mandatory screening? We need to ensure that that information gets passed to the relevant people.

I am sorry that my noble friend Lord McNally has been unable to stay. A year ago, I went to award the local youth offending team a dyslexia awareness certificate, which means that they can identify young offenders who have dyslexia problems. I was horrified to learn that no information is passed to that team on the academic, literacy or communication skills of those young offenders. Is that because of data protection issues? If we are to provide the necessary support for those young people in care, that information needs to be made available. If there is a body of information in schools, it needs to be passed on.

On personal advisers, your Lordships probably remember from Second Reading that I went through as many job adverts as I could find for personal advisers. I was concerned that there was no standard requirement; it was all over the place. Nowhere in any of those advertisements did I see any mention of speech, language and communication skills. The two are linked. If personal advisers are as important as they should be, part of their qualification or awareness must be in this area. How do we make that happen? Currently, there is no legal requirement on what personal advisers do, only suggestions. We need to spend time understanding that so that these people are the best who can be provided.

Finally, the key to this is making sure that the information is available in schools. By the way, this is not just an issue for children in care or care leavers, it is an issue for all children. I am glad that the Government, both in the coalition years and now, are addressing those issues in schools, through the pupil premium. I am a bit concerned—perhaps the Minister in replying could correct me on this—that we say that the pupil premium particularly should go to looked-after children. My experience in many schools is that it just goes into the common pot and the looked-after children, to use the vernacular, do not get a look-in. I want to be sure that perhaps Ofsted, when it is carrying out inspections of schools, makes sure that this pupil premium—where there are looked-after children—is particularly linked to the needs of the looked-after child.

[Baroness Howe of Idlicote (CB)]

My Lords, before I say a word on Amendment 32, it is extremely interesting how, as on the first day in Committee, fascinating bits of information from people’s background and knowledge of the whole of this area comes out, all of which is enormously valuable to those who are responsible for these Bills and this Bill in particular.

I support Amendment 32 in the names of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, and the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, because it states that the,

“guidance given by the Secretary of State must stipulate … the need to screen children … the need for those who work with … children … to receive training in awareness of speech, language and communication needs”,

and refers to,

“the need for appropriate support to be provided for those children and young people with speech, language and communication needs”.

Above all, I stress that there is a need to update regularly all those people who are in this position and working with these children in need. Although I agree that all children need attention and need us to be aware of how they are developing and of what particular skills that will be essential in their future lives they are lacking, nevertheless, it is those who are in this very important position who need to be updated and know exactly what is happening in this area. I am very much in support of everything that has been said on this group and I look forward to what the Minister will say.

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[Lord Storey]

My Lords, I came to this Committee looking at the amendment thinking “No”. Young people themselves should be able to say “No”. Actually, listening to noble Lords, I now think it is absolutely right. These are the most vulnerable young people. For them to try and cut through the bureaucratic enjoyments of social services does not come easily. The onus should be on us to provide that support. This shows the value of a Committee, does it not? You listen to arguments and might change your mind.

[The Earl of Listowel]

I support Amendments 52, 53 and 74A. I was most grateful for the Minister’s encouraging reply on the previous group, which is relevant to this discussion, and for his sympathetic stance towards this. The current discussions about the pressures on local authorities, and the huge and diverse burdens they carry, might be one further reason why the onus should be put more firmly on them in primary legislation. Also, I am a little puzzled why one would wish to treat over-21 year-olds any differently to under-21 year-olds. My puzzlement is that if we are agreed that we should in this Bill make sure that over-21 year-olds receive the same entitlements that under-21 year-olds leaving care have had up till now, why should we not treat them in exactly the same way? I would appreciate some help with that question. If we can, and there is no legal impediment to do so, would we not want to give them exactly the same offer as that for under-21 year-olds?

On the personal adviser role, which was also discussed, I recognise absolutely the wisdom of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in talking about some flexibility in how that role is provided. One of the great successes in policy in this area in reason years has been the introduction by the coalition Government of Staying Put. More and more young people are now choosing to stay with their foster carers past the age of 18. We heard eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Farmer, about the importance of relationships and the continuity of them. Thanks to Staying Put and the Government’s work, more and more children are choosing to stay, from a position where in the past we were not able to encourage them to do that or make it possible. Enabling foster parents to become their young person’s personal adviser may be a very good and appropriate thing. This is someone they already have a relationship with.

My concern is that there also needs to be rigidity in certain ways. My concern about the whole issue of children found in social care is that we have allowed too much flexibility in the social work profession. Until very recently, it was not a requirement that social workers should have a degree to practise what they do. Indeed, later parts of the Bill address this very fact of the overflexibility and a lack of specification of what social workers should do. This personal adviser role is important as well. Reports from right-wing think tanks such as the Centre for Social Justice highlighted the failure to have a consistent personal adviser workforce. There needs to be both flexibility and rigidity in the system. I suggest that there can be assessments and processes to decide whether it is appropriate to devolve responsibility to a foster carer or some extended family, or whether to keep it with a personal adviser. However, we need some rigidity.

It is very much an Anglo-Saxon approach to have a flexible workforce and it has many advantages to it, while the continentals face great challenges because they have a rather rigid way of approaching their workforce. I would argue that for vulnerable children, there have been advantages in the continentals’ rigid approach. It is well documented that they have far higher requirements for social workers. In staff at children’s homes, they have pedagogues who normally have a degree-level qualification and have had very substantial training, which I would argue is very appropriate to working in residential care. I recognise the noble Baroness’s concerns but I share the concerns around the Committee that the personal adviser role needs to be more clearly spelt out and specified. I hope that the Minister can help us with that in his response.

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[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I obviously support what the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said, although I am not going to go through the long list of experiences that I have experienced as a director of social services, as an assistant director and a social worker, and even more so, working with the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which dealt with predatory grooming adults and how they got in touch with children.

I am concerned about how we work through two parts of this. One is how we make absolutely sure that the vetting is solid and absolutely reliable for all the reasons the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has said—and how we set performance standards—but also, at the same time, as having some flexibility in who the young person might see as the person who is going to be their personal adviser. I think this is more complex than it looks on the surface. I think we could set standards of training—we have all done that in our time; we could have a vetting system and place it on a register, although I would say 130 days to get a vetting back from the Met police at the moment seems to me a scandal, and is interfering with the recruitment of appropriate social workers right across the piece. But we have to look at how we have both of those things together, with the young person having some choice about who they want to be their mentor. There may be people in their lives, such as a teacher who stuck with them right through their school or a foster parent who struck right with them. Are they seen as different from personal advisers, who are a sort of profession apart? I have not yet conceptualised who those people are in relation to all the other people who are supporting the young person, and where the standard is set. The one thing that is absolutely clear is that whoever they are, they must be vetted. In my day, we had people called children’s homes visitors, and we learned the hard way what happened if you did not vet appropriately those visitors, when young people disappeared on to the street. I would underline that—it is quite a complex question.

[Lord Storey]

My Lords, this is an important probing amendment. I now understand why it is in this grouping and not in the other groupings, and I apologise to whoever is responsible for that. As the British Association of Social Workers rightly said, it will be important to clarify what qualifications and capabilities will be required for the new personal advisers. Throughout our Committee discussions, we have shown how important personal advisers are and will be, in terms of speech and language and literacy, financial matters, and in putting the pathways plan together. It also is important that these are the right people for that and currently, there is no prescribed professional or occupational qualification determining which person should carry out the personal adviser’s function for any individual care leaver. There are suggestions of what a PA should normally possess. They should,

“be working towards a professional qualification … good practice …for the young person to maintain the same PA from the age of 16”,

et cetera. Presumably, the current personal advisers are DBS-compliant. If they are not, why not? I would have thought that was something that happened straightaway. They are working in a very intimate situation with young and vulnerable children, so if that is not the case, we need to know that straightaway. If it is the case, we need to look at the other suggestions that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, has made. We also need to ensure that the line management of personal advisers is not something that is just put on paper and does not happen but that somebody line-manages those personal advisers and sees them on a regular basis. There is another issue—that if we are not careful, sometimes young people who are emotionally vulnerable can make allegations against personal advisers, and that personal adviser is in a very difficult situation. If an allegation is made against a teacher, at least the teacher is in a setting where there are people around who can support and advise, whereas a personal adviser is acting entirely on their own. As well as any register and making sure that correct procedures have been gone through, there also has to be proper and effective line management of personal advisers.

[The Lord Bishop of Durham]

My Lords, I rise to express not dissimilar concerns to the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth. I firmly support the tenor of what is proposed, but at the same time I go back to Second Reading when the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, raised the question of foster carers. Some foster carers will rail against the professionalisation of advice. If we believe that there needs to be flexibility in the range of personal advisers, we need to beware of the Bill being so constraining that we lose that flexibility. They have to be securely and safely recruited and vetted, and we must ensure that there is ongoing support. The concern just expressed about the vulnerability of an individual personal adviser also needs to be heeded. I wanted to place on record a concern that this is something that must still be wrestled with. We have not got to the bottom of the right answer yet, either with what is in the Bill or in the guidance. This will be another example of where the guidance needs to be seen before Third Reading.

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[Lord O'Shaughnessy (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendment 78, which relates to Clause 4, which inserts, under the heading “Educational achievement of previously looked after children”, a new section into the Children Act 1989 in order to provide information and advice to previously looked-after young people and their parents.

In particular, my amendment affects subsection (3) of the new section, which provides local authorities with a power to do,

“anything else that they consider appropriate”,

to promote the educational achievement of these young people. This is potentially radical wording—whether that is intentional I am not sure—but, as I said at Second Reading, that ambition is very welcome. It is not quite on a par with the power to innovate described in Clauses 15 to 19 but I certainly think that it acts in that direction.

Without wanting to presage the debate that will take place around that part of the Bill, it is already clear that noble Lords will demand that any such powers to innovate will need to be very carefully designed to avoid negative and unintended consequences. It is that spirit which informs this amendment. I am concerned that the subsection does not include the necessary safeguards to avoid negative and unintended consequences for some young people.

Local authorities have a number of duties to several categories of vulnerable children—not simply looked-after children but, for example, children with special educational needs and disabilities. Even as we move towards an academy-led system, local authorities retain direct responsibility for placing children with special educational needs and disabilities who have educational health and care plans. I am sorry for the continued jargon. My worry is that as currently constituted, the subsection gives local authorities permission to provide extraordinary support to previously looked-after children, which is of course welcome on one level, but even if that is at the cost of pupils with SEND, for example, who are much more numerous and may have more challenging needs.

My amendment would add a simple caveat to make it clear that local authorities must take into account the impact of their actions on other children for whom they have a responsibility when considering how to raise attainment for previously looked-after children. I am perfectly willing to accept that it may be unnecessary if I can get the reassurances that I seek from Ministers that it is not intended or that other safeguards exist, perhaps in other legislation.

I turn quickly to Amendment 86, in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Massey. I strongly support the sentiment on the delivery of high-quality PSHE in schools. That is what we do through our character programme in the Floreat schools that I set up. I am also involved in the “Developing Healthy Minds in Teenagers” programme, which is trying to do something similar in secondary schools. I very much support the spirit of the amendment but I am concerned that it might tip us into a statutory PSHE curriculum which, as the noble Baroness knows, I am not ready to support because, as Ofsted has said, PSHE teaching in too many schools is not yet good enough. We need to fix that problem before considering whether it should become a statutory subject.

[Lord Storey]

I shall speak to Amendment 86. The noble Baroness, Lady Massey, has been a worthy champion of PSHE ever since I joined the House of Lords. I thought that the battle was over when in reply to her question the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, said that yes, she thought that it was important that all schools taught PSHE. I raised my hand in the air thinking, “Great, we’ve got that”.

I was interested in the comment of the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy. There is always this debate about whether we have to slim down the curriculum. It is said, “We don’t want to have statutory PSHE; we want schools—academies—to have freedoms”. Yes, I can subscribe to some of that but children are more important than them just having freedoms for curriculum development. There are really important things that need to be taught to all children and we have just heard a catalogue of them. It is hugely important that children have sex and relationship education and that they have financial education, and so on and so forth. I was fascinated by the noble Lord’s comments about the sort of work that he does in his schools. I pay tribute to that, but it should be for all schools.

I am not sure whether saying, “Let’s get the PSHE model right before we make it statutory” is the right approach. It should be the other way round. We should be saying that we will make it statutory for all schools—including free schools as well, incidentally, which I notice that the amendment does not mention—and then we make the resources, drive and determination to make that happen. That is probably one of the most important things that we can do for all children, but particularly for vulnerable and looked-after children.

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

My Lords, Amendments 77 to 79 and 86 concern educational support for formerly looked-after children. The trauma and experiences of children who have suffered from abuse and neglect can have a long-term impact on outcomes and life chances, even once they have left care through a permanence order. The Bill seeks to ensure that everything possible is done to help these children and young people overcome the difficulties that they have faced and to realise their ambitions.

Our intention is to place a duty on local authorities to extend the duties of virtual school heads to support looked-after children who have left care under an adoption, special guardianship or child arrangement order. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that we will consider his Amendment 77. We will be talking to government lawyers about whether the current drafting fully captures special guardianship or child arrangement orders. We think that it does for adopted children but if it does not and the current drafting of the Bill does not achieve that aim, we will consider a government amendment to Clause 4. I thank him for raising that issue.

While I understand the point made by my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy in his Amendment 78, I am not convinced that it is necessary to place a duty on local authorities to consider the impact of what they will do on other groups of children. Local authorities will need to ensure that they do not spend disproportionate time supporting one child or group of children at the expense of others. Virtual school heads must do this now as some looked-after children will require more intensive support than others. I reassure my noble friend that the new duties in the Bill are deliberately light-touch—just providing information and advice—to allow virtual school heads to effectively prioritise their workload.

The role of the virtual school head for formerly looked-after children will be different from their current role. They will not have to monitor each child’s progress as they do for children in care for instance, as the child’s parents and carers will do this. We are confident that with the other specific duties on local authorities to support looked-after children, previously looked-after children will not be disproportionately supported at the expense of others.

On Amendment 79, again I do not think it appropriate to specify in primary legislation that local authorities must ensure virtual school heads have the resources to do the job. Clearly, we will expect all local authorities to do this and we will, via Ofsted inspections, check the quality of the service provided by virtual school heads. I assure the noble Lord, Lord Watson, that a virtual school head will not be an add-on to other duties. Their sole focus will be vulnerable children. Many virtual school heads already respond to requests for advice and information from parents and schools in respect of children who have left care through, for example, adoption. Clause 4 seeks to ensure that all authorities offer this service. However, I have asked officials to ensure that resources for virtual school heads are covered in the statutory guidance we will issue to clarify their role.

Finally, Amendment 86 covers personal, social, health and economic education for formerly looked-after children. We agree that all young people should leave school prepared for life in modern Britain. The Minister and I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, and the noble Lord, Lord Storey, that high-quality PSHE has a vital role to play in giving young people a better understanding of society and supporting them to make informed choices and to stay safe. The majority of schools and teachers already recognise the importance of good-quality PSHE education.

However, as I am afraid the noble Baroness has heard me say before, we believe it is not the availability but the quality of PSHE teaching that is the most pressing issue, as my noble friend Lord O’Shaughnessy highlighted. I say again: we will continue to keep the status of PSHE under review but in the short term we will prioritise working with experts to identify further action we can take to ensure that all pupils receive high-quality, age-appropriate PSHE and sex and relationships education. I am sure that the noble Baroness will continue to push us on this matter and that we will have many further discussions. I hope, on that basis, that the noble Lord will feel able to withdraw his amendment.