Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Butler-Sloss (CB)
My Lords, I, too, support the amendments tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes. When I was chancellor of a former polytechnic, which became a very successful university, we had a worrying number of undergraduates who left at the end of the first year, or sometimes the second year. We did not know whether or not they had been in care. There was a very good support service at the university which could have been used to help them if they had been identified as needing extra help. These two amendments are very helpful.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, we support all these amendments. In speaking to Amendments 88A and 88B, I simply echo the remarks of my noble friend Lady Hughes of Stretford. This would be a very important addition to the Bill. As regards the other amendments, we welcome the commitment to ensure that academies and maintained schools are held to the same standards of educational achievement for relevant children, and the requirement to consult upon, and publish, a local care offer for care leavers. This would allow best practice to be shared throughout the sector and ensure full accountability and informed choices for children and young people.
The post of designated lead for looked-after children already exists in all schools, so the extension to previously looked-after children is welcome, but in reality these duties in a school are often overlaid on top of existing responsibilities. For instance, the duty regarding looked-after children is often added to the SEN co-ordinator’s role or to that of a senior manager. Therefore, the implications could be significant in terms of time allocation for the member of staff concerned.
We also believe that academy trusts should be required to designate a lead person, and that somebody at a senior level should be involved, such as an executive member within the trust. An individual member of staff may be the designated staff member, but he or she should report to someone at executive level to ensure that the executive member assumes ultimate responsibility for the interests of looked-after and previously looked-after children, and that the designated staff member is allocated the requisite time and resources to do his or her job properly.
“Sibling contact for looked after children
(1) In section 34(1) of the Children Act 1989, after paragraph (d) insert—“(e) his siblings (whether of the whole or half blood).”(2) In paragraph 15 of Schedule 2 to the Children Act 1989, after paragraph (c) insert—“(d) his siblings (whether of the whole or half blood).””
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, like Amendment 90, moved by my noble friend Lord Hunt, Amendments 91, 94, 96, 97 and 98, which are in my name and that of my noble friend, seek to strengthen the permanence provisions of care orders.
Amendment 91 aims to require local authorities to allow children in care reasonable contact with their siblings. The law currently requires local authorities to allow a looked-after child reasonable contact with their parents, and this amendment would extend that duty to siblings, a step that would reflect the important role of sibling relationships in the lives of children in care. The amendment would also provide a sound foundation for ensuring the recognition of the importance of sibling relationships for young people who have left care. For those young people leaving care who are also expectant parents, siblings can often prove an important source of emotional and practical support.
In January 2015, the Family Rights Group published its report into the current experience of siblings in the care system, looking at whether some placement types are more likely than others to enable siblings to be raised together when it is assessed as being in their interests. The report revealed that children in unrelated foster and residential care are overrepresented among those separated from their siblings, compared to the overall numbers in the care population. Only 1% of sibling groups who were all placed together were living in residential care. By contrast, children in kindship foster care were less likely to be separated from their siblings.
The report highlighted research showing the benefits that siblings can gain from being raised together. For many, it is the closest relationship they ever experience. They are able to share information and feelings and develop a shared sense of identity. Last year, a report by the Centre for Social Justice said:
“One of our greatest concerns is that the bonds between siblings in care, which can lead to greatly valued lifelong relationships, are being broken”.
Other studies have shown that young people overwhelmingly say they want siblings to be kept together. On average, 86% of all children in care thought it important to keep all siblings together in care, while more than three-quarters thought that councils should help children and young people to keep in touch with their brothers and sisters.
As the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said in the debate on the previous group of amendments, and as noble Lords have said on numerous occasions during our deliberations on the Bill, we should listen to what children in care are saying. They know better than anyone what life in care is like and speak from experience—much of it, perhaps, not particularly pleasant. Government guidance recognises that maintaining contact with siblings is reported by children to be one of their highest priorities. It acknowledges the value of sibling contact for continuity, stability and promoting self-esteem and a sense of identity at a time of change or unfamiliarity. Further guidance emphasises the importance of sibling contact, where children can be placed together.
I shall not speak to Amendments 94, 96, 97 and 98 in such detail. Amendment 94 deals with pre-proceedings work with families and would ensure that effective work is undertaken with the family, so that all safe family options are explored if a child needs to become looked-after. The importance of family in this situation cannot be overstated. Amendment 96 would insert a new clause entitled, “Promoting the educational achievement of children who are living permanently away from their parents”. It would apply the provisions set out in Clauses 4, 5 and 6 for promoting the educational achievement of previously looked-after children to children who are living permanently away from their parents, including those being cared for by a relative or a wider family member, those under a special guardianship order or those who have been adopted.
Amendment 97 inserts a new clause entitled, “Support for family and friends carers where children are not looked after children”. It would ensure provision through local authorities appointing,
“a designated lead for family and friends care”,
carrying out assessments of,
“needs for family and friends care support services”,
and making arrangements for “counselling, advice and information”.
Amendment 98 states that a local authority must report,
“must report to the Secretary of State each year on outcomes for children in need; children subject to child protection plans; children who are the subject of care proceedings; looked after children; and care leavers”.
The amendment covers the headings contained in the local offer in Clause 2. It is important that the Secretary of State not only reports on these areas but lays a copy of the report before Parliament each year so that both Houses can measure progress and comment on it. The Minister may say in reply that that is an administrative burden or a burden in some other way, but it would be appropriate for the Government to accept this amendment. It would underline their commitment to children and young people in care by allowing access to reports to the Secretary of State for the Secretary of State and Members of both Houses to comment on. I beg to move.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville
My Lords, I support the amendments in this group tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Watson of Invergowrie, and shall speak specifically to my Amendment 92. Grandparents play among the most important roles in a child life. The Children Act 2004 removed the right of grandparents to have access to their grandchildren. While this may be necessary in some cases, I believe that it was a retrograde step. In recent weeks, we saw the tragic case of Ellie Butler who, after five happy years with her grandparents, was returned to the care of her parents, with disastrous results. Her loving grandparents had been in the process of adopting Ellie legally. All was going well with the support of the local council, when the adoption was blocked by a social worker. As we all know, the decision to disregard the grandparents led to Ellie’s early death. We have already debated the need to listen to the views of the child and for communication with the child. It is essential that children’s wishes, including staying with supportive grandparents, while still having some access to their parents, are adhered to wherever possible. I am firmly of the opinion that now is the time to reinstate the importance of grandparents in a child’s life and would like to see this amendment in the Bill. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Baroness Evans of Bowes Park
For children who have left care and are now with a family, the noble Baroness is right, because obviously those children will have that family playing a role in a way that children in care would not. The virtual head and the designated teacher will be liaising with the family, but the family will obviously be playing a role, and a child in care will not have that family. This was covered in a group of amendments that we discussed in the previous session in Committee, so perhaps the noble Baroness would like to have a look at what I said then. If she has any further questions, I would be very happy to answer them.
Amendment 98 seeks to introduce a new clause that would place a requirement on local authorities to report on various outcomes for vulnerable children, such as those in need, looked-after children and others. It also asks the Secretary of State to publish an annual report on these outcomes. I hope noble Lords will be reassured to hear that the importance of reporting on outcomes is recognised by the Government. We have already placed a duty on local authorities to report information about children in need and looked-after children and their outcomes. Annual reports and statistical tables are produced and published by the Department for Education. These show a range of information about the outcomes of looked-after children and care leavers. Last year, for the first time, the national children in need census data also published factors identified by social workers in assessments of children. These included parental and child risk factors such as drug and alcohol misuse, mental health and domestic violence, among others. However, I am happy to inform the Committee that we will be reviewing our national data collections across government to make sure they are joined up and consistent and to make use of technological advances to ensure that we collect more timely data. I hope that these explanations and reassurances will allow the noble Lord to feel able to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, this has been a stimulating debate with a number of excellent contributions. I should say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, that we are very much in agreement with her comments in speaking to her amendment, and also with those of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. We would be more than happy to accept Amendment 92. The noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, quoting from her vast experience, made the case for Amendment 91 more effectively than I was able to do, and I am grateful to her for that. She spoke eloquently about the need to put siblings in the Bill. I think the remarks of the Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, were helpful in that regard and may have drawn some of the sting from some of the contributions. I do not doubt the Government’s intentions here, but there has to be something more than exists at the moment because, while I am delighted to hear that meetings are to take place with both the organisations she mentioned, the Family Rights Group and the Kinship Care Alliance, they are dealing with these issues on a day-to-day basis and so would not be as concerned if the issue of siblings was not a problem. We will be looking to see what comes out from what the Minister said about strengthening the statutory guidance. We will want to see that. I doubt that will be coming out before Report but, given that Report may be some time away, there may be some option. We perhaps could discuss it again on Report because it is an important issue, as the number of contributions suggested.
It is the same concerning grandparents. The Minister said that grandparents should not be considered in every case. I suppose that is right, but at the same time it may or may not be appropriate for them to be considered. Questions at least should be asked about whether there are grandparents, what the situation is and whether they can make a contribution to situations when the children are in need of care from a family member. This is just one of the groups that would be included in terms of the Bill, and it may be appropriate to return to this as well on Report, because the number of comments by noble Lords suggests that it is an issue that is seen as important.
On the other issues, briefly, I hear what the Minister says. We think they are important. She pointed to some areas where these issues are being covered to some extent but, in terms of the annual report, local authorities make annual reports to the Secretary of State. Maybe they are published, maybe they are just there, we cannot find them or we do not look for them, but it would be helpful to have that information made available. It would be helpful, if not every year, at least from time to time, to get a debate in either the House of Lords or in another place so that the figures could be placed year by year, side by side to see what progress is being made. That was the thinking behind the amendment; it was no more than that. We want to have the ability to see what is there, to question and to debate it. This has been a very good debate on a number of issues, and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, clearly there are other organisations that undertake work on behalf of the local authority in some of these areas. They are usually not-for-profit organisations, such as Barnardo’s, the Children’s Society and others. They will wish to continue to work with local authorities in these areas. However, it is interesting that Article 39, an organisation which looks at the legal position of children, stated:
“Research on the first five social work practice pilots (one of which was run for profit) … found mixed views on whether looked after children and care leavers received a better service”.
But the telling point was that:
“Three of the five local authorities involved said the practices had cost more than equivalent in-house services and evaluators noted, ‘Interviews held with local authority commissioners in 2011 made it clear that SWPs were not judged to have been financially advantageous’”.
So if the Government are looking for a way of delivering services that offers value for money, clearly “for profit” services are not necessarily the best way forward.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I think it is fair to say that this is the most contentious issue to have arisen in our consideration of the Bill so far. We will discuss Clause 15 next week. In passing, I have to say that I am not quite sure why this measure is being discussed at this point. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has stated his views on that, but I wondered why the Clerks did not direct it elsewhere. However, as I say, we will discuss Clause 15 next week. That clause will allow local authorities to opt out of providing some children’s social services. Many people fear that that could pave the way for the privatisation of those and—perhaps, later—other services, in ways outlined by noble Lords in this group of amendments.
The Bill refers to “different ways of working”, which I think most of us understand is code for exempting local authorities from requirements hitherto imposed by children’s social care legislation. Certainly, Labour holds strongly to the view that child protection and wider social care should not be run by an organisation seeking to make a profit. That is why we have joined with Lib Dem and Cross-Bench Peers, as well as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham, demonstrating the breadth of support for that requirement to appear on the face of the Bill.
We do not object per se to outside organisations working with, or for, local authorities in delivering children’s social services functions, but do so where a company or organisation designed to make a profit, as opposed to a surplus, takes on such functions that would expose the local authority—and, by definition, the children under its care—to the danger that the company might for whatever reason fail, and fall into receivership. Unfortunately, there is no shortage of examples of such occurrences since local authorities began to outsource various services.
Equally, if profit were the motive, the company or organisation may conclude after a period of time that the margins were insufficient in delivering those services and other avenues offered better prospects, and as a result end the contract. In either case, the local authority, which would have handed over the role of providing those services, would be faced with having to find another partner to deliver them or to bring them back in-house. Meanwhile, the quality of services provided for social care or child protection would be, at best, jeopardised. That is not a situation that any of us would wish to see. It is, therefore, a situation that should be ruled out.
At Second Reading, the Minister relied on the fact that in 2014 the Government had introduced legislation that prevented profit-making where local authorities delegate child protection functions. However, there remains the possibility of profit-making companies setting up their own non-profit subsidiaries to take over the critical and sensitive function of deciding how best to protect vulnerable children There is a serious risk that the likes of Serco and G4S could create these subsidiaries as part of their wider businesses and, in that manner, these companies could indeed profit from the care of vulnerable children and their families, even if only indirectly.
There will be an obvious conflict of interest because some of these companies will also run children’s homes. That will make it difficult to know how funds might flow between the profit-making and non-profit-making arms. That is why the changes outlined in Clause 15 have caused such concern in the sector, and they could undermine public confidence in the services provided to children and young people. It cannot be stressed too much that effective child protection relies on public trust. The public need to be able to trust local child protection teams so that they feel sufficiently confident to report concerns they may have about a child and to have faith that if they raise a concern the service will act in the best interests of that child.
I invite the Minister to provide answers on two aspects of this crucial matter. First, the provisions of the 2014 legislation notwithstanding, can he guarantee that funds will not be transferred between profit and non-profit arms of a company where the latter is delivering services? Secondly, will the purpose and culture of companies or organisations bidding for the right to deliver child protection and social care services be taken into consideration when decisions are made about delivery partners? When an organisation’s primary aim and main business has nothing to do with children, would it be considered a suitable partner for a local authority?
Nothing can be more important than the safeguarding and protection of children, especially those who are at greatest risk or are the most vulnerable. Organisations prominent in the social care and child protection sectors have registered their anxiety over the exemption proposals in the Bill. At Second Reading, I asked the Minister whether the Government had made any assessment of the risk to children in allowing local authorities exemption from some key duties for keeping children safe. I hope he will now be in a position to let me have his response.
Lord Warner
Will the Minister clarify the position of social enterprise companies which often have to make a surplus or a profit, depending on where you come from? The Minister and I have been having a flourishing series of exchanges through Written Questions and Answers on what happens when Ofsted regards children’s services as inadequate. The outgoing Prime Minister seems to think that two strikes and you are out is a good idea. I have been asking the Minister for a lot of information about the cost of setting up these trusts, which are quite considerable, and what the Government’s policy on this is. The Government’s policy, most recently exemplified in relation to Birmingham, seems to be that where there are two inadequate reports from Ofsted the local authority could well be required to put its services into what is sometimes called a voluntary trust. On further, closer inspection, a voluntary trust can also be a social enterprise company, and social enterprise companies need to generate surpluses or profits in order to invest in continuing improvements in the services they are running. Since Ofsted has said that one-quarter of children’s social care services are inadequate, will the Minister clarify where this agenda is going? Does it mean that in five or six years’ time we will see a very large number of local authorities’ children’s social care services placed under contract with a number of bodies separate from the local authority, with the local authority still held accountable? Those separate entities, I understand from the Answers I have been receiving, could include all social care services, including child protection. Where are the Government taking this agenda? Have they thought through their position on surpluses or profits from the kinds of organisations that would be under contract with local authorities in which Ofsted determined that social services were inadequate?
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I, too, support the amendment. The noble Baroness speaks so eloquently from her experience and makes a strong case. She takes me back to research that was discussed at the Thomas Coram Research Unit about eight years ago. That unit has carried out comparative research into residential care and foster care in France, Denmark and Germany. It is a long time ago but what stood out for me was that in those continental countries, many more teachers and social workers were recruited into foster care.
Professor Jackson, one of the leading academics on the educational attainment of looked-after children, has raised concerns that many foster carers have themselves had difficult experiences at school. That is another reason why we need to support them very well. The issue of professionalisation comes into this debate. Do we want professional foster carers? My recollection suggests that they are better paid on the continent. That may be why one can recruit from the middle classes there. There is an argument on the other side that we should not pay foster carers a lot of money, as they should be doing this out of love. I have sympathy with that argument as well. However, the very least we can do is to pay them child benefit. I hope that helps the noble Baroness’s argument. I look forward to the Minister’s response, which I am sure will be sympathetic. I hope that we will see some action.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I support the amendment tabled by my noble friend Lady King. Noble Lords recognise when they hear an outstanding contribution. My experience is that such a contribution tends to have three elements. First, it must have a strong and convincing narrative. Secondly, it must be delivered with emotion—but controlled emotion—often based on personal experience. Thirdly, it must be powerfully delivered in a way that carries other noble Lords with it. All those elements were contained in my noble friend’s notable contribution. We are happy to support the amendment. This is indeed an issue to which we will come back on Report if the Minister, as I suspect, is unable to give the answers that are sought today. This is an important issue and it has to be put right.
“(2) The Secretary of State may by regulations made by statutory instrument make arrangements for the establishment of the Panel in accordance with this section.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 Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, Amendments 101 and 102 are in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hunt. The Bill establishes a national Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel. Concerns have been raised about a potential diminution of local accountability and about the panel being rather too closely linked to the Secretary of State, which could undermine the independence of the reviews undertaken and limit the ability to suggest meaningful change at national level.
We hope that these issues can be appropriately dealt with, but in general we welcome the introduction of the panel and the Government’s decision to adopt some of the recommendations in the Wood review on local safeguarding children boards and serious case reviews. At their best, serious case reviews offer an opportunity to review current practice, alter systems that are ineffective and provide insight into some of the problems that face the wide range of professionals responsible for the safety of vulnerable children. A system that adds weight to the process and encourages the development of expertise in this area is therefore welcome.
Part of our concern with the Bill as a whole relates to the large extent to which it relies on secondary legislation. The establishment of the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel does not even have that fig-leaf, because the Bill allows the Secretary of State to make any arrangements she thinks fit when establishing the panel. We believe that is not good enough. The panel will consider serious child safeguarding cases and form an important part of the landscape in the months and years ahead. It is an important part of the Bill, and therefore requires oversight. The arrangements for establishing the panel should be for affirmative regulations, offering your Lordships’ House the opportunity to consider the draft regulations and express its opinion.
As for Amendment 102, the appointment of the chair of the panel will be important, particularly in the first instance. There is no reason why the Secretary of State should not have enough confidence in the person whom she decides to appoint to that position for him or her to face a pre-appointment hearing with the Education Select Committee. The committee contains considerable experience, and a public hearing will provide the wider sector the opportunity to get an understanding of the potential strengths of the Secretary of State’s candidate. I beg to move.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I will respond to what the noble Lord, Lord Watson, has said. I totally agree with him that the proposals in the Bill are so important that they ought to be subject to the statutory instrument procedure that he defined. In particular, the chair of this safeguarding review panel should be appointed after a public hearing with the Education Select Committee has taken place. The noble Lord has our support.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for their amendments relating to the arrangements for the new child safeguarding practice review panel set out in Clause 11, and for the observations of the noble Baronesses, Lady Pinnock and Lady Howarth.
Amendment 101 raises an important issue, which is that both Houses should have an opportunity to scrutinise regulations in secondary legislation where it is appropriate to do so. Noble Lords will be aware that the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee has issued its report on the clauses within the Bill. I hope that noble Lords can be reassured that while the DPRRC commented on other clauses, it raised no concerns about this one. The arrangements that will be made in respect of the establishment of the panel set out high-level matters that relate to the processes, arrangements and administration of the panel rather than matters of substance that the Houses would need to debate. This clause covers processes and arrangements. I will turn to the question of regulations in a later discussion on the functions of the panel. This clause provides for the making of arrangements that are necessary to enable the functioning of the panel which may include clarity around such matters as reporting and its day-to-day operation.
Amendment 102 seeks to involve the Education Select Committee in the appointment of the chair. I would expect the appointment of the chair to be subject to a full and open Cabinet Office public appointments process involving advertisements for the position, applications and formal interviewing. Panel members could also be subject to this process if that were deemed necessary. I would expect the number of panel members to be sufficient to enable the effective operation of the panel and for the chair to be able to draw on the expertise that he or she considers necessary for the right decisions to be made about individual cases. We would of course welcome any views that the Education Select Committee may have, but we do not believe that we should prescribe a pre-appointment hearing. In view of this, I hope that the noble Lord will feel sufficiently reassured to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
I thank the Minister for that response, predictable though it was. I take his point about someone who is appointed being subject to the full appointments process; that is understood. However, I feel that there is room for the affirmative resolution procedure that I mentioned earlier, but clearly that is not going to happen. I think also that it would have been appropriate to involve the Education Select Committee at least in the initial appointment of the first chair of the panel. However, no other Members of the Committee have insisted on this, so on that basis I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Baroness Pinnock
My Lords, I think there was some confusion over which of us was going to speak. The noble Baroness, Lady Meacher, who gave notice of her intention to oppose the Question that Clause 11 should stand part, is not present, so with the Minister’s permission I will speak to that element in the group.
There is a fundamental concern about the proposal in Clause 11. It does not have anything to do with the establishment of a national safeguarding review panel, which is appropriate, but what it contains and the way it is defined in the Bill are of concern because apparently it will remove local responsibility and accountability for the most serious of child abuse and harm incidents. The current situation is that local safeguarding children boards follow statutory guidance for conducting a serious case review. The LSCB itself is chaired by an independent expert and includes representatives from local NHS organisations, the local authority, probation, housing, the voluntary sector and so on.
Following a serious case of harm to a child, the LSCB must notify the national panel of independent experts and Ofsted. It will then appoint one or more reviewers to lead the serious case review. The lead reviewer must be independent of the LSCB and any other organisations which are involved in the case. The LSCB should also submit the names of the reviewers to the national panel of independent experts. The key factors in the existing process are that the chair is independent and formally agreed to by a national panel of independent experts and that, crucially, representations can be made in the same geographical area by individuals who were involved with the child and the family and thus have an understanding of the local context.
None of this is to deny the positive contribution that potentially can be made by establishing a national panel to improve national learning from these serious case reviews. What is unfortunate is that local knowledge and understanding may be lost and, worse still, that a national panel would take away local responsibility from those who are charged with safeguarding children. A national hearing can seem remote. It will lose the local context and therefore the nuances of understanding in these most complex of situations. It would be most helpful if the Minister would be willing to set up a meeting for those of us who are concerned about the implications of these proposals so that we can discuss these matters. It is not because we oppose them, but because we are concerned about how they will be implemented.
I shall refer again to the review document which I think was published yesterday. Paragraph 118 on page 55 refers to Alan Wood on the role and functions of the local safeguarding children boards. He wants to set up a stronger statutory framework that will introduce greater accountability for the three key agencies involved in safeguarding children; namely local authorities, local police and the local health service. That is why I was willing to oppose the question that Clause 11 should stand part so that these issues can be explored further before we make a decision to move to a national safeguarding review panel for the most important and serious cases, thus eliminating local involvement, responsibility and accountability. I think that that is very important if we are to make progress in preventing, if possible, some of these serious incidents. But certainly we should get national learning from the local example.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
The noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, has raised some important points and the name of my noble friend Lord Hunt is also on the clause stand part debate. We do not propose to do that just now; we think the broad principles can be transferred to the debate that we shall have on Monday on the next section or group. We shall say no more at this stage.
Lord Nash
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for Amendment 103. This raises important issues, which I welcome the opportunity to discuss. My exchanges with my noble friend Lord Lang of Monkton and the noble Baroness, Lady Dean, at Second Reading followed the helpful report of the Select Committee on the Constitution. This report cogently raised the question of how the panel will handle information subject to legal or medical privilege. I explained at that time that the Bill does not prevent those whom the panel asks for information asserting legal or medical privilege, where applicable. The panel would need to consider any such assertion against the need for the information. This amendment would add a specific provision for the Secretary of State to include, in her arrangements for the panel, information about the panel’s powers to secure the submission of material, subject to legal or medical privilege. I agree that it will be important for the Secretary of State to specify clearly to the panel the considerations which it should bring to bear in respect of the information which it requests. I agree that this should include specific reference not only to the question of legal and medical privilege but also to the way in which it handles this information, once requested and received. This is particularly important in respect of the information which is included in final published reports. The panel will be expected to handle all the information it receives with due care. Much of the information which it gathers will be highly sensitive, including information which is privileged in the way the noble Lord has set out.
As far as the issues arising from the very sad case of Ellie Butler are concerned, the independence of the judiciary is a constitutional matter and enforcement provisions will not apply, although there is scope to appeal judges’ decisions. I do not believe, however, that it is essential to say anything more in the Bill. It will not add anything to the powers of the panel to request this information, which are clearly set out in Clause 14. In view of this, I hope the noble Lord will feel reassured enough to withdraw his amendment.
Clause 11 requires the Secretary of State to establish a child safeguarding practice review panel and is central to this discussion. I will speak at a little length on this topic and in doing so, I hope to address some of the concerns expressed by noble Lords during the Second Reading of the Bill. The Government first announced their intention to decentralise the serious case review process in December last year. The background to the decision to seek to legislate to introduce the panel was set out in response to Alan Woods’s review of local safeguarding children boards. Alan Woods suggested that the body which supports the centralised review process should be one that is independent of government and the key agencies and operates in a transparent and objective fashion. The intention is to establish the panel as an expert committee, defined by the Cabinet Office as a committee of independent specialists who are politically and operationally independent. The panel is clearly set up to make its own decisions. We have just discussed arrangements for the appointment of panel members.
The Secretary of State will also be responsible for removing members, if satisfied they are no longer able to fulfil their duties—for example, due to ill-health, or if they are adjudged to have behaved in a way incompatible with their role. The clause also makes provision for the Secretary of State to provide whatever assistance is required to enable the panel to carry out its functions, including staff, facilities or other assistance. The Secretary of State may also pay remuneration of expenses to the chair and members of the panel. This will be commensurate with the level of time and commitment required. The clause further provides that the Secretary of State may make further arrangements to support the functioning of the panel, including, for example, the production of an annual report. This will serve to enhance the transparency of proceedings and in addition—although this is not specified in the Bill—I am able to say that the panel will be free to offer advice to the Secretary of State on such matters as it sees fit, and to make any such advice public.
The establishment of a strong, independently-operating national panel is an essential component, along with the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, in taking forward the Government’s plans to develop a better understanding of the factors which give rise to serious cases, in order to inform policy and practice nationally, and to support local agencies in improving the quality of the services that they provide to vulnerable children and families.
Teachers’ Strike
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord for repeating the Statement in which it was said that today’s strike was politically motivated. Frankly, that is beyond irony from a Government who in March launched a White Paper that was driven first and foremost by political ideology aimed at forcing children into an educational straitjacket while excluding parents, governors and local authorities from the process, so I do not think that we need any lessons on our political motivation.
An hour ago outside Parliament, I met some of the teachers, who feel that they had no alternative but to take strike action because they are faced with a Government who will not acknowledge their concerns, such as teaching posts being cut or not filled when staff leave, growing class sizes and an ever-increasing workload that is contributing to major problems with staff retention. The Secretary of State herself said that there will be no real-terms cuts in school budgets, yet the Institute for Fiscal Studies has calculated that there will, in fact, be an 8% cut per pupil in the year ahead. When will the Minister address these existential issues that are threatening the quality of the education that is so essential to our children’s future?
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord McNally (LD)
My Lords, I can see that the Minister is straining at the leash to answer this amendment. I make only two points, partly from my experience as chair of the Youth Justice Board for England and Wales and partly as a member of the committee of inquiry chaired by the noble Lord, Lord Laming, into looked-after children in the criminal justice system.
What attracts me to this amendment is that it approaches a very real problem from two directions, both in a constructive way. What has struck me over the past few years in considering the problems of looked-after children and the response of various bodies to their needs is that there is still a silo mentality in the operation of some of those bodies, as well as a chronic lack of exchange of information. Those dealing with a child at any point in its journey through the system should have the most comprehensive picture possible of that child’s vulnerabilities and needs. In the best of practices, that happens but, all too often, it does not happen.
On the other side of the same penny, the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, deals with the lack of awareness of the children themselves, and those who care for them, of their full range of entitlements. Having a responsibility to make children, or those with responsibility for them, aware of those entitlements, can do nothing but good in getting them the care they need at any particular point in their lives.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
I thank noble Lords who have contributed to this short debate. I am happy to signify my support for the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, which is a common-sense amendment. Let me just express the hope at the outset that the Minister will find it in him to make a clean sweep of all our contributions—we shall see.
In moving Amendment 4 in Committee last week, I mentioned some of the arguments in favour of broadening the scope of the corporate parenting principles outlined in Clause 1. It is logical to adopt as comprehensive an approach as possible to corporate parenting and ensure that all those who can improve outcomes for looked-after children and care leavers have a role to play in parenting those children. In his reply on day one, the Minister stressed that the principles applied to all local authorities in England and that they apply to all parts of the local authority and not just to children’s services. That is important. He went on to highlight the fact that other bodies—such as central government, the National Health Service or housing organisations—are not corporate parents and therefore do not fall within the remit of the Bill, or this part of the Bill. He pointed out that NHS clinical commissioning groups had specific responsibilities for looked-after children, who were also specifically mentioned in NHS England’s mandate. That was certainly welcome to those who were unaware of it.
This amendment goes rather wider and includes the police but, given the proportion of looked-after children and recently looked-after children who have become involved with the youth justice system, that also has some relevance. That being the case, I hope the Government will accept the amendment proposed by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, which seeks only to formalise the relationship between local authorities and other organisations, not least housing services, which increasingly are not found within the responsibilities of local authorities. What is of paramount importance is that there is joined-up thinking and working, leading to an outcome whereby all agencies, to use that umbrella term, ensure the most productive relationships on behalf of looked-after children.
Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 includes a duty on local authorities to co-operate with “relevant parties”. However, if that mechanism were working effectively, noble Lords would not have been contacted by various organisations working with or for looked-after children seeking to have the relationship tightened up to provide better outcomes across all agencies. They clearly believe that more needs to be done and we should listen to them, as they are involved on a day-to-day basis with the children the Bill is designed to help.
The Minister mentioned last week that the Government would look at the lessons that might be learned from Scotland. I hope he will note that there the widest possible range of organisations is given the role of corporate parents. Whatever potential obstacles appeared north of the border were clearly overcome. The Minister also stated:
“I would expect partners such as police and health bodies to consider how they can contribute to supporting care leavers. I also hope that many organisations in the private and voluntary sectors will commit to supporting young people leaving care through the care-leaver covenant”.—[Official Report, 29/6/16; col. GC 52.].
I submit that expecting and hoping sounds more like a recipe for disappointment than anything else. Such sentiments are by no means firm enough and the Minister should look to the Bill as a means of ensuring that those things happen. That is what young people leaving care, as well as those assisting them in doing so, have a right to expect.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, before I respond, I am sure noble Lords will be interested in the documents that my department has published today relating to children in the social care system. The first is a policy paper entitled, Putting Children First: Delivering Our Vision for Excellent Children’s Social Care. It sets out our programme of reform to children’s social care for the next four years. The second is an independent report on children’s residential care by Sir Martin Narey, the former chief executive of Barnardo’s, who is an independent social care adviser to the Department for Education. Sir Martin paints a positive vision for the future role of residential care and we are grateful for his report. I am sure noble Lords will be interested in both publications, which we have today emailed to all noble Lords who were present on the first day in Committee. They will be available in the Library of the House.
I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, for this amendment. I fully appreciate the intention behind it. However, what he seeks to achieve is already encompassed within the corporate parenting principles and existing legislation, which I will explain.
The fourth corporate parenting principle is designed to ensure that the local authority, as a whole, acts as a corporate parent, and helps looked-after children and care leavers to gain access to the services and support they need, including those provided by other relevant partners—to avoid the silo mentality that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, referred to, and, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, to ensure that all those who can help are involved. On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, about Section 10, I apologise for the confusion. I am sorry to have created so much homework for him. Perhaps in future he can send me a short note and I could save him some time. After all, that is what officials are for. As the noble Lord, Lord Watson, said, we are talking about the Children Act 2004, and I will write to the noble Lord with the relevant section and an explanation.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Watson, to make this section and duty more effective, for the first time we are bringing in the principle of corporate parenting. I am happy to discuss that with him further and, to take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, to hold a meeting to clarify amendments and ensure, as the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, says, that we get a sensible Bill without imposing too many new duties that are not really necessary on local authorities.
Local authorities are already under a duty under Section 10 of the Children Act 2004 to make arrangements to promote co-operation between the local authority and each of its relevant partners, including health bodies, schools, local policing bodies, probation boards and youth offending teams, as well as the voluntary and community sector. On the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Pinnock, I know she would always like to have more money, but this does not impose any more responsibilities on local authorities. The intention of the existing duty is to improve the well-being of children in the local area and the corporate parenting principles are matters that the local authority must consider under the existing legislation. They do not add further functions.
Therefore, it seems inconceivable that under the existing legal framework relevant local agencies would not be aware of the needs of looked-after children and care leavers in the area. If that is the case, the issue must be with how well the local authority is putting its existing responsibilities into practice rather than it being a problem with the law. Therefore, I see no need to add to the seven principles in the way the noble Lord suggests.
The approach used in the existing legislation is broadly similar to the way the duty to co-operate works in the Care Act 2014, which the noble Lord, Lord Warner, referred to during the Committee’s first sitting. The local offer for care leavers will take us further than ever before in helping to ensure that the needs of care leavers are in the minds of services related to health, housing, education, police and employment. In developing their local offer, local authorities will need to talk to those services about what they intend to bring to the table based on what care leavers have told them they need.
For too long care leavers have told us that they do not always have the information they need about the services they need to access and about what they are entitled to. We expect the local offer to set out in one place the full range of relevant services, any additional facilities or entitlements that are on offer, and information about how to access them.
The care leaver covenant, which I have mentioned previously, provides a truly exciting opportunity to build the offer of services and support from a wide range of agencies and individuals. There is no reason why there should be a limit on this. We would like local communities to be as inventive as possible in finding ways of supporting and helping their children in care and care leavers.
I appreciate the very positive intentions behind the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Warner. However, I do not think it is necessary, given the requirements of the existing legislation and the enhanced focus on children in care and care leavers which the corporate parenting principles and the covenant will bring about. I therefore ask him to withdraw his amendment.
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.
Lord Wills
My Lords, all the amendments in my name in this group aim to fulfil the ambitions of the Bill by extending support for care leavers. The reasons for most of them were extensively debated at Second Reading, when widespread concern was expressed about the onus being placed on young people to request a personal adviser, and I do not intend to rehearse those arguments now. They seem self-evident. If the Bill is to deliver on its objective of better support for care leavers, the duties under Clause 3 should not be dependent in this way. In response to those concerns, the Minister said at Second Reading:
“This is an extremely good point which I would like to go away and reflect on”.—[Official Report, 14/6/16; col. 1204.]
I hope that he has now done so and will feel able to accept these amendments, which address that point.
I also speak briefly to Amendments 60, 72 and 74 in my name. Amendment 60 provides that all care leavers with a personal adviser should have a full needs assessment to ensure that they receive all the support they need. A young person may seek help from their local authority for a small problem, which can easily be resolved, but may also have more complex problems that only a full needs assessment will identify, so it is important that their needs continue to be monitored throughout their pathway plan and they retain their personal adviser even if the care leaver is referred to external services for their needs to be met. The amendment would secure that.
Amendment 72 is a probing amendment. As the role of the personal adviser is so critical to the content of Part 1—we have already heard noble Lords discuss this at some length and the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, earlier talked about the need for them to deliver services of an appropriately professional standard—it is clearly important that there should be clarity about what exactly that role is. The amendment is designed to encourage the Government to make clear whether they have any plans to change the role of the personal adviser and, if so, what they might be.
Finally, Amendment 74 would extend the duty on virtual school heads to care leavers. The creation of this role is a potentially valuable innovation, but those who have left care before their 18th birthday are not covered. Moreover, the role excludes a focus on care leavers over the age of 18, while local authorities have continuing duties to support care leavers in education up to the age of 25. There is clearly a need for better joint working between local authorities and further and higher education providers. The amendment would extend the role to cover further education and higher education providers. I hope that the Government will look sympathetically on all those amendments.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, the Bill as drafted places responsibility on the young person to request advice and support. No one in this Room or reading the Bill would be in any doubt that we are talking about vulnerable young people, so the question has to be asked: what support will be offered so that young people know about all their entitlements; and what systems will be in place to help a child make that request, remembering that many of these children will have literacy difficulties? It is one thing for a young person to turn down advice and support that they have been offered. There are two ways of looking at that if it happens. One is that that the individual does not lack a certain amount of confidence, which is a good thing. The other is that they may not have thought the thing through or may lack the requisite amount of common sense, turning away from what is clearly valuable and important information.
Confidence is a big issue for many children who are leaving—or young people who have recently left—care. That lack of confidence is simply because of their life experiences up to that point. They are moving into a world of their own, taking many important steps in a way not experienced by children fortunate enough to live within a family, who have that family as a safety net after they have left home, should things not go entirely to plan. A young person leaving care may not have been informed that they can ask for advice and support. Even if they have been informed and have had that support, it could depend on how that was done. The young person may not always grasp what is available to them.
The question must be asked: why take that risk? Why leave it up to the young person? Much better surely that the duty falls directly on the local authority, not the person himself or herself. We have to have a sense, as we debate issues like this, that we have a duty of care in terms of framing legislation that affords the maximum amount of support to young people. I think Amendments 52 and 53, to which I am speaking at the moment, do that. I mentioned earlier—as did the Minister—that his department has today published the policy paper entitled, Putting Children First: Our Vision for Children’s Social Care. If that means anything at all, I suggest the Minister should live up to it by accepting Amendments 52 and 53 and making sure that the onus is firmly on the local authority to be proactive rather than reactive.
Lord Warner
My Lords, I briefly support Amendments 52, 53 and 54. These have echoes of the debate we had on my Amendment 29, in which I argued—with support from other Members of the Committee—that the onus should be on the local authority to take the initiative in offering help. I ask the Minister to think about the circumstances in which many of us are placed as parents, where the Government are trying to get the principles of corporate parenting as close as they can to the responsibilities of parents looking after children who are not part of the responsibility of a local authority. We as parents—I can speak from personal experience—do not watch our children walking over a cliff and wait for them to request us to do something. If we see that they do not understand something or they are going to take some ill-advised action, we do not wait for them to ask us: we intervene. We try to intervene in a sensitive manner but we do try to intervene to give them the information they require to make better decisions. Why are the Government asking a group of people who, on their own acknowledgement, are vulnerable, who often find it difficult to interact with public bureaucracies, to make a well-informed request for help? Indeed, if they are capable of making that well-informed request for help, there is a large chance that they do not need it in the first place. What the Minster has set up looks like a gesture, but the “on request” totally minimises the effectiveness of that gesture. I ask the Minister to reconsider the Government’s position on this, in the light of the moderate way that the noble Lord, Lord Wills, and others have argued for the amendments.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I thank the noble Lords, Lord Wills, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, for tabling this group of amendments. Let me begin with those amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Wills, which would replace “former relevant child” with “care leaver” throughout Clause 3. I understand that the noble Lord’s intention is to apply provisions to all care leavers. I offer reassurance that the issue is already addressed in existing legislation. Different groups of care leavers and looked-after children are defined in legislation and I will set out how Clause 3 applies to them.
“Eligible children” are looked-after children aged 16 to 17 who are subject to the care planning process and the regular review that this brings. They are entitled to receive advice and support from a local authority personal adviser. “Relevant children” are aged 16 to 17 and have ceased to be looked after. They too are entitled to receive support and advice from a personal adviser. “Former relevant children” currently receive support from a local authority personal adviser up to the age of 21. If they pursue education or training they can retain that support until they are 25. Clause 3 will now address the gap and provide a personal adviser to all “former relevant children” up to the age of 25, where they want one. Whether they are in education will no longer be a qualifying factor.
In Amendment 52 the noble Lords, Lord Watson and Lord Hunt, propose that personal adviser support should be provided whether requested or not. I have already spoken at some length on an earlier group about the practical issues involved in providing support up to age 25 even if care leavers no longer want a service. I will therefore not repeat the arguments.
The noble Lord, Lord Wills, referred to my reflecting on certain matters in relation to the role of personal advisers. I was going to come to this later in group 6, in relation to the amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, but I will deal with it now.
We want to learn from those areas where the personal adviser service is provided effectively and make sure that that becomes the standard of support that care leavers across the country can expect. We also need to make sure that the purpose of the role is clear, that the right people are recruited to take on the role and that they have the right opportunities to learn and develop so that they can better respond to new challenges that care leavers face. That is why we are reviewing the personal adviser role. The first phase of that review is already under way. My officials are carrying out a series of eight deep-dive reviews to local authorities. They are meeting with leaving care managers, personal advisers and care leavers so they can better understand: first, what support personal advisers currently provide; secondly, which issues care leavers most need support on; and, thirdly, how personal advisers provide the mentoring and befriending support which can be so critical to care leavers’ well-being and which we know they value so highly.
The second phase of the review will build on and be informed by the first phase, but will focus on wider issues such as: whether we have done enough to articulate the key purpose of the personal adviser role, as currently articulated in secondary legislation in the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010; how we can best raise the status of the role; and what opportunities exist for personal advisers to access continuing professional development. In conducting this review, I would like to offer reassurance that we will consult all relevant parties. I will also ensure that noble Lords have the opportunity to comment and contribute.
On Amendment 60, I can provide reassurance that local authorities will continue to develop and review pathway plans. As corporate parents, they will do this irrespective of other partners and the support that they bring. Local authority-appointed personal advisers will work with the care leavers to review plans on a regular basis. Local authorities are already required by law to manage these obligations as the corporate parent. Amendment 72 is unnecessary, as the functions of the personal adviser role are set out not in statute but in secondary legislation—the Care Leavers (England) Regulations 2010 and the Care Planning, Placement and Case Review (England) Regulations 2010. If any changes are made to the functions of personal advisers, an amending statutory instrument would need to be laid before Parliament, which would provide an opportunity, through the negative resolution procedure, to make any objections if needed.
To turn to Amendment 74, let me clarify why the Bill extends the role of the virtual school head to children who leave care through adoption, child arrangements or special guardianship orders but not to older children. In practice, virtual school heads and designated teachers do not suddenly turn a blind eye to the children in care whom they have been looking out for and supporting just because they have reached the age of 18. The arrangements in place will continue up to the time they leave school unless, of course, their circumstances have changed. In many local authorities, the virtual head plays a role in relation to care leavers. For example, in Hertfordshire, the virtual school head has included within it the post of a personal adviser for students at university. For care leavers, the main support in relation to education is from the personal adviser.
For older care leavers, a range of alternative support is already in place. Pathway plans for care leavers should include information about support for education and career aspirations. Care leavers are also a priority for the 16 to 19 bursary, worth £1,200 annually, and they receive a one-off bursary of £2,000 if they progress to higher education. I hope that this provides noble Lords with sufficient reassurance not to press their amendments.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
The Minister rather peremptorily dismissed the arguments advanced by other noble Lords and me on Amendments 52 and 53. He said that he had answered them in respect of some other amendment, but he uttered the words so quickly that I could not identify what he was talking about. Is he quite content that what he is proposing—he talked of practicalities—means that no young person who would benefit from the information and support that he or she needs will slip through the net simply because they either did not know or did not understand that they could ask for that information? Would it not be far better to ensure that people who do not need the information have it rather than that those who need the information do not have it?
Lord Nash
I do not think that we are arguing about anything here. It seems to me obvious that, to take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, we cannot just leave young people to ask for help; they have to know about it. The minimal expectations in the local offer from the local authority have to be absolutely clear, including, in my view, that children should have some financial education training and some domestic skills and that they should know what they are entitled to once they leave care.
That should be absolutely clearly spelt out in the local offer. As has been said, it seems to me that although a child or young person has rejected the need for a personal adviser at the age of 21, by the age of 23 they may well have changed their mind. They should be regularly reminded by the local authority of this right. I do not argue with that and we will set out our expectations of local authorities in relation to the local offer and what they will do to make care leavers aware of their rights and entitlements not just once but regularly until they are 25.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, these amendments, in the name of myself and my noble friend Lord Hunt, are to the clause relating to educational achievement. It is surely self-evident that educational achievement is absolutely crucial to the hopes of young people in or leaving care in building a life that offers opportunities to raise their own family and pursue a career. So everything that can be done should be done to maximise those educational opportunities.
Amendment 77 would expand the provision that states that the advice and information should be available to the child’s parents for the purpose of promoting the child’s educational achievements. The term “parent” is unnecessarily narrow because, by definition, many of the young people we are talking about will not have parents. Perhaps the Minister will come back and say that it is a legal term and it is not necessary, but children could be with foster carers, they could be under special guardianship orders or they could be in care homes. The main point is to make sure that they are provided with the necessary advice that they need and to which they are entitled.
Could the Minister clarify whether the provision of information about education is to be provided to the child’s parents alone? It is obvious, as I have said before, that it has to be broader than that. There is not a lot more to say on that amendment, and I hope that I can get a fairly straight response.
On Amendment 79, there is an issue here with simply saying that a local authority,
“must appoint at least one person for the purpose of discharging the duty imposed by subsection (1)”.
I hope that it would be more than one person—but even if it is only one person it is important to ensure that that person, whoever he or she may be, allocates not just the resources but the time to do the job properly. There are many examples in schools, obviously at a more local level—for instance, the special educational needs co-ordinator. In my experience, that person is in some cases just the person who is willing to come forward and take it on; they may or may not have the training initially—they may be the only person willing to do it, on top of his or her other duties. On a bigger scale, within a local authority, it is important that the person who is appointed to look after the educational achievements of children in care is not just given another duty to add to his or her job description and is expected to do that within the time available to them. Can the Minister clarify that the people given the job will be able to do that?
It has already emerged as a recurring theme, even in the two Committee days that we have had on this Bill, that more and more duties are being given to local authorities. In some cases, that is quite appropriate, if they have been properly resourced. I shall not rehearse the arguments about the stresses and strains on the finances of local authorities, because everyone is only too well aware of that but if more and more duties are laid on them, local authorities must have commensurate resources transferred to them to enable them to carry out the duties properly. I accept that that is a small aspect, but it is an important part of the Bill. As I said earlier, the educational achievements of looked-after children and children leaving care is crucial to their adult lives. I ask the Minister for those kinds of assurances and whether we can look with confidence at this part of the Bill, so that the person appointed to fill the post will have the ability, time and resources to do the job properly. I beg to move.
Baroness Massey of Darwen
My Lords, I speak to Amendment 86, which seeks to ensure that formerly looked-after children receive in their school,
“appropriate education in personal, social, health and economic skills, and citizenship”.
I find it really not that surprising that so many noble Lords have referred today to issues such as relationships, financial education, independent living, self-confidence and self-esteem. The amendment just backs up the need for us to consider those really very essential skills. All children should receive such personal development and economic education, as well as citizenship skills. Amendment 86 seeks to take account of the trauma and vulnerability that some children have experienced. Again, I include migrant children, although I am very aware that other children will have experienced varying degrees of loss, trauma and pain.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I thank everyone who has participated in the debate and the Minister for her largely positive response. I certainly welcome that she is considering what we said in Amendment 77 and will come back on that. I welcome also the fact that virtual school heads will have a sole responsibility, so presumably other resources will have to be made available to make sure nothing is taken away from existing budgets. I want to make sure that the individual appointed—mentioned in Clause 4(4)—is not being taken away from doing anything else that he or she was doing, as has often been the case with other new appointments. This is not the time to discuss the PSHE argument and I would say only one other thing to the noble Lord, Lord O’Shaughnessy. I do not know him well enough to make this accusation to him personally, but there always will be some people who will say we are not yet ready for PSHE being a statutory requirement in schools. Some of the statistics on young people’s exposure, particularly to sexual activity, be it in real life or virtually—online or whatever—suggest that they have to get as much information as early as possible, and we need to find ways of doing that. There is nothing more for me to say on that. Again, I welcome the Minister’s response and I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Baroness Redfern (Con)
My Lords, as another corporate parent from a local authority, I am pleased to join in this discussion today. It is our duty and our responsibility as a corporate parent to do what we would do not only for our children but for other children. We should focus totally on that.
I want to focus on care leavers, in particular, and the importance of working with partners to enhance their life chances, enabling a continuous celebration of their achievements and talents—and there are achievements and talents in children in care and care leavers. We have a responsibility to work even harder to create a positive narrative about what children in care and care leavers can achieve.
As a snapshot, in north Lincolnshire we have a corporate parenting pledge which incorporates our ambitions for care leavers. We have made a specific commitment in regard to staying put. This includes a children’s campus and a children’s home with four self-contained staying-close suites, where children who move on from the home can live under the same roof and, importantly, have the safety and protection of trusted adults. As one young person said, “Being invited next door for a Sunday lunch is something we treasure”. Care leavers are encouraged to stay in touch and, for our part, our children in care council works with them into early adulthood.
I look forward to the opportunity to innovate, practise and implement new ideas to support and protect children. This includes supporting children and families at the earliest point to prevent the potential need for statutory intervention.
I shall focus, too, on the disengagement of young people and the variety of factors and vulnerabilities that we know may cause it. In the first instance, it could be because of welfare issues, special education needs, additional needs with ill health and school refusal.
It is vital that we look at bespoke alternative education packages for young people who may be outside mainstream education. The Children and Adolescent Medical Needs Education Team, CAMNET, provides direct tutoring and mentoring for children unable to access education due to acute health needs, supports young people who are NEET and provides independent careers advice and guidance. In all cases the aim is to support the child to achieve their hopes, dreams and aspirations. This is fundamentally what this Bill addresses. There is particular emphasis also on the transition to adult plans for disabled children, with mentoring for independent living through progression of education and work. We simply cannot do this alone, so it is about working with schools, colleges and other providers to establish fair access to ensure continuity of education for young people excluded from school in some instances but at risk of permanent exclusion and of disengagement post 16.
I am encouraged that the Bill will address and strengthen the role of local authorities in promoting and defending the interests of care leavers. We do all we can to defend the interests of those care leavers and all who want that support up to the age of 25. The Bill addresses and promotes high aspirations. That is what we need to focus on to help these young children secure the best outcomes, taking account of their views, wishes and feelings. We need to make sure that they feel safe and have stability as we prepare them for adulthood and independent living. I also welcome further support for innovation in children’s social care by allowing local authorities such as mine to pilot new, innovative approaches. We must embrace and learn from other areas where it works well.
Finally, we will help every child in care to build a better life. I welcome the Bill, particularly the steps to help strengthen our social work profession to make social workers feel valued and supported, as well as delivering a valued and personalised service. We should also test different ways of working to achieve better outcomes, and also the same outcomes more effectively.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, when I first studied the raft of amendments tabled to this important Bill it seemed likely that we would have a high quality of debate and of argument. Certainly, what we have heard in the last 36 minutes bears that out. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, for moving the amendment. I shall speak to Amendment 7 in my name and that of my noble friend Lord Hunt.
Some noble Lords may have been present in the Chamber about an hour ago when the Minister responded to a Question on care leavers and my noble friend Lady Kennedy of The Shaws asked—I paraphrase her remark—what life had come to when we had to have corporate parents. I certainly echo the view that it is unfortunate that there has to be such a term, but the Minister answered the point well when he established that the term “in loco parentis” is very important in these situations. I believe that corporate parents have a duty to do no less for children in their care than do birth parents for their children. That is a very important role indeed—perhaps one of the most important roles of a local authority. I know from experience that elected councillors take their responsibility in this regard very seriously. Corporate parenting should mean the full and active involvement of the formal and local partnerships needed between local authority departments and services and associated agencies responsible for working together to meet the needs of looked-after children and young people as well as care leavers. Recognising that different component parts each have a contribution to make is critical to success.
One challenge of being a good corporate parent is to help each individual child. In many cases it is not recognised that every child is an individual. Often the only thing that they have in common is that life has not been easy for them and that perhaps at some stage a local authority or a court has decided that compulsory intervention was necessary. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, also made the important point that whenever possible, corporate parents should prevent children coming into contact with youth justice. The Government have recognised many of these sentiments in the seven corporate parenting principles outlined in Clause 1, but principles must reflect duties established by existing legislation and it seems that, in some instances, the principles in Clause 1 actually confer fewer responsibilities on local authorities than currently exist in social care legislation.
I sit somewhat in awe when I hear noble and learned Members of your Lordships’ House pronounce on legal matters, and I would not for one moment seek to question them, so I was very pleased when the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay of Clashfern, talked about the “having regard to” in Amendment 7, to which I am speaking. If I picked him up correctly, he said at one stage that it would be difficult if a local authority decided to set aside those responsibilities in full. I would be more concerned if there were situations where a local authority concluded—there could be reasons many why—that it could not or would not meet those responsibilities in full. Anything less than that would potentially steer that local authority into difficult waters in terms of the service it was providing as a corporate parent.
I am not going to comment on the detailed legal principle of that, but there seems to be further ground to be tilled in that respect. I am sure that we shall do that and perhaps the Minister can respond, having taken appropriate advice. Just talking about “having regard to” seems rather weak. That is why I hope the Government will recognise that Amendment 7 is put forward in a positive and constructive manner. It seeks to strengthen the Bill and the support provided by making it a requirement that local authorities must ensure that these principles are met in full.
There were other notable contributions, in particular that of my noble friend Lady Armstrong, who talked from experience not just in her own working life but as a Minister in this important sector. I would be very concerned if there were situations where, as she suggested, corporate parenting was used as an excuse for not trying to achieve what should in many cases be the desired outcome: settling the child with his or her family, if that is at all possible. When children and young people become looked after, it is essential from the outset that there is robust and flexible planning for their future. Certainly stability is crucial to a child’s development and happiness, as the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, said. The system should support stability through minimising moves and seeking permanent solutions wherever possible.
For that reason, I believe that the wording in Clause 1 needs to be strengthened in order to demonstrate that we all want our children and young people to have successful and productive lives—and, to ensure that that happens, that we will provide the services and support in every form which will help them succeed, particularly when they have problems to overcome. The amendments in this group offer considerable opportunities to contribute to that and I would not take issue with any of them. I hope that the Minister will respond in a positive manner.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe, Lady Walmsley and Lady Pinnock, and to the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Bichard, Lord Hunt and Lord Watson, for their amendments relating to the corporate parenting principle set out in Clause 1. The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, commented on timing and I can assure him that the usual channels, as he so comprehensively described them, will be made aware of his point.
In designing the seven principles, the Government have set out the key decisions that young people tell us are of fundamental importance to being a good corporate parent. Given their importance, it is absolutely right that we should debate the principles to ensure that when they are enacted, they do what is intended—namely, to change the culture within local authorities so that they take into account the needs of looked-after children and care leavers when discharging their functions.
At the outset, I want to be clear that the Government intend that the corporate parenting principles will have a life beyond the statute book. My honourable friend the Minister for Children and Families tells me that he wants every social worker, housing chief, leaving care adviser and council leader to have those principles on the wall of his or her office. He wants them to be discussed at council meetings, at looked-after children review meetings, and by foster carers when they talk to their children’s teachers. In short, he wants to drive a culture of good corporate parenting across the whole local authority and not just through the children’s services team. We cannot change culture through legislation alone, but we can legislate to influence how people talk about their responsibilities and how they discharge those responsibilities in relation to looked-after children and care leavers.
Baroness Lister of Burtersett
To add to that, the danger is that government policy will undermine what local authorities are trying to do. That is why we need government policies that will work with and support local authorities in their corporate parenting, rather than working against them.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 4 and 31 in this group. Clause 1(1)(d) refers to “relevant partners” but, as the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, stated, that is too vague. I want to emphasise some of the benefits of explicitly including health and housing services in that framework of support.
As my noble friend Lady Lister said, looked-after children, young people and care leavers historically experience poorer health than their peers and are also more likely to need specialist health services than the general population—whether that be mental health services, help with addictions or sexual health advice. Looked-after children, surely, must have access to mental health services and the speech, language and communications support that they need.
None the less, as the Local Government Association has pointed out in briefings sent to noble Lords, children’s services are already overstretched and any new duties must be fully funded so that they do not have an unintended detrimental impact on other services for vulnerable children and young people. Expansion of corporate parenting duties took place in Scotland in 2014 and, for the most part, has been a success without requiring any additional investment from central government. Perhaps there are lessons to be learned there.
Currently, looked-after children are supported by a social worker, an independent reviewing officer, a carer and a personal adviser who advocate for their interests. The most important thing is to ensure that there are good outcomes, and for that to happen there should be a focus on continuity and building strong relationships, not simply adding an additional member of care staff to the structure.
For the NHS to contribute effectively to the corporate family, health services must be able to identify looked-after children and young people accurately, and local authorities must help it to do this. The NHS provides services to assess individual need and provides access to therapeutic services resourced to meet those needs.
Where children are not within mainstream education provision, access should be co-ordinated to make sure that they receive health promotion advice and appropriate health checks, including, most importantly, mental health checks. A lead clinician could be appointed to co-ordinate mental health support in each local authority area.
The days when social housing was provided mainly by local authorities is long gone. Housing services provided directly by councils or in partnership with housing associations remain an integral part of the corporate family. Throughout the country there are many housing associations with close links to local authorities in terms of providing housing for groups of people with specific needs, and care leavers are clearly one of those groups. Homeless people are another and, without proper support, young people in the first of those categories can easily slide into the second one. Care leavers are particularly vulnerable to homelessness, and preventing homelessness among care leavers should be recognised in local strategies and plans.
Moving into independence involves more than simply finding a roof. Corporate parents should satisfy themselves that young people leaving care have the necessary life skills and confidence to cope with independent living. Some young people will need more support than others, and that is why a range of services needs to be made available—and this should include the type of tenancy offered. A single person’s tenancy may not be the best option for a young care leaver striking out into the big, and possibly bad, world for the first time.
The noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, talked about this transitional period. She urged us not to talk about people leaving care but to people moving on. That is a very apt description. Health services as well as housing services must support people as they make the difficult and inevitably demanding move into independent life.
The local offer made to care leavers will lack both authority and effectiveness if it is restricted to the list appearing in Clause 1. Given the debate that we have had within this group, that is unlikely to remain the case. If the corporate parenting principles were applied to health agencies, it would encourage them to take greater responsibility. The same would be true of housing.
In closing, I will say that the call of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for consistency is important. He suggested that that could be achieved through some kind of tick list of what agencies are required to be involved. I hope that I do not do them a disservice by saying that my noble friends Lady Lister and Lord Warner support the principle of extending the agencies involved—and so do I.
I hope that the Minister, having heard the various comments in this debate, will accept the amendments in principle and come back on Report with an amendment that broadens the scope of Clause 1.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
I was just suggesting that that should be looked at and that lessons could be learned.
Lord Nash
The noble Lord makes a good point: we should look at it and see what lessons can be learned, as Scotland is at least a year ahead of us on this.
To focus on England, we absolutely acknowledge that there is a role for central government—but it is a different role. Central government departments are not the corporate parents of the children taken into care or accommodated by local authorities. The role of government is to set the broader policy framework.
That is not to say that government departments across Whitehall do not recognise that looked-after children and care leavers need more support and assistance. That is why, if we take health services as an example, the NHS Constitution for England makes clear the responsibilities of clinical commissioning groups and NHS England to looked-after children and, by extension, care leavers. It is also why looked-after children are mentioned specifically in the mandate to NHS England.
The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, made a point about CAMHS not being willing to treat children not in a stable placement. Child and adolescent mental health services should treat children according to level of need, irrespective of the stability of their placements. The expert group set up to look at care pathways for looked-after children will specifically address this point, with a view to ensuring that access to treatment is according to clinical need and in line with existing statutory guidance.
There are other examples where central government in England has championed looked-after children and care leavers. That is why they now attract pupil premium at a rate of £1,900 per pupil—higher than for other eligible pupils. That is why they also get priority in school admission arrangements.
In 2013, the first cross-government Care Leaver Strategy was published. It recognised the need to work coherently across government to address the needs of care leavers in the round. As a result, a number of changes were made, including measures to better identify care leavers so that they got tailored support—for instance, through the introduction of a “marker” by Jobcentre Plus so that care leavers could be identified and offered additional help. This work continues. We are now working on a refreshed strategy, and have been working closely with seven other government departments in England. The development of the strategy, which will be published shortly, has the backing of the Social Justice Cabinet Committee.
Amendments 36 and 37 seek to require government departments to publish information about services that will help care leavers prepare for adulthood and independent living. As with Clause 1, Clause 2 is about local authority services. The local offer is a manifestation of what it means for each local authority to be a good corporate parent. I agree that central government has responsibilities to looked-after children and care leavers alongside local government. The work we have been doing with each government department at both ministerial level and involving senior officials meeting regularly to discuss what more can be done to support care leavers at the level of national policy represents a significant step forward in increasing the understanding of and commitment to care leavers across Whitehall. Guidance of course is incredibly useful and we shall be consulting fully on what the guidance on corporate parenting should include. But although—quite rightly—central government can and is setting the framework for good corporate parenting, the biggest impact on the lives of looked-after children and care leavers will be made at local level.
We have not extended the principles beyond local authorities in England because it is their duty to both looked-after children and care leavers—and I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Bybrook, for her remarks in this regard. These principles will guide local authorities in how they should exercise their existing functions and duties in relation to these vulnerable children and young people. As I have said, through these high-level principles we want to embed a corporate parenting culture across the whole local authority.
I recognise that looked-after children and care leavers need more support and assistance from a variety of public bodies. They will need to be able to make best use of services provided by other bodies, including clinical commissioning groups, NHS England, schools, housing and sometimes youth offending teams. That is why the fourth principle sets out a requirement to have regard to the need to help looked-after children and care leavers gain access to and make best use of services provided by the local authority and its relevant partners.
Of course, one could seek to apply these principles to a whole range of other public bodies. However, I believe that in doing so we would risk creating an overly bureaucratic tick-box approach that would do little to improve the life chances of looked-after children and care leavers. Instead, we need to embed a cultural shift. As I have said, the duty to co-operate with the relevant parties is already on the statute book in Section 10 of the Children Act 2004, where there is a duty to co-operate to improve the well-being of children and care leavers.
I emphasise that though we do not believe that extending the principles in law to other bodies is the way forward, we recognise that there is more to do to raise the awareness of these young people. Indeed, the consultation which local authorities will undertake with their local practitioners on developing the local offer being introduced under Clause 2 will ensure that access to NHS services and housing is inevitably brought into the process without the need for further prescription. To reinforce this, the department will also set out in statutory guidance how the corporate parenting principles should be applied in practice. Partnership working and commitment to care leavers is at the heart of the sea change that is needed to transform their lives.
Last month the Prime Minister signalled the Government’s intention to create a care-leaver covenant. This will provide a means through which public, private and voluntary sector organisations will be able to demonstrate how they support these young people and improve their lives. I would expect partners such as police and health bodies to consider how they can contribute to supporting care leavers. I also hope that many organisations in the private and voluntary sectors will commit to supporting young people leaving care through the care-leaver covenant.
I hope that noble Lords are reassured and that the noble Lord can be persuaded to withdraw his amendment.
Baroness Howarth of Breckland
My Lords, nothing has been said during this debate that one could reasonably disagree with. My only question is: would it help if we had it all in the Bill? I would draw attention to the Local Government Association’s concern, which is that if all these things are in a Bill they restrict the capacity to think through the targeting of where there is greatest need. In some communities, the greatest need may not be for the in-care community.
We know, as I said this afternoon during Questions, although I was rather interrupted, that the children who are on the list of those in greatest need are likely to have a greater need for intervention than some of the children in care. We should not do anything that inhibits local authorities and their partners from making proper assessments and being able to direct those services. I know, having talked at length to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and to other people who have been in poor authorities, that there is some despair about whether some local authorities will ever reach that point of being able to make good assessments. I also know from work that I am doing with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Children that some remarkable work and turnaround is happening in other local authorities. We should try to work with the best towards the best and enable a local authority to do that.
I am interested that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, is so sanguine about the suggestion of the noble and learned Lord, Lord Mackay. I can see a million difficulties in having his suggestion on the statute book. Again, much as the bit of me that was a director of social services would have liked to have had that, the other bit would know how impossible it is to get one person. What is the role now of the independent reviewing officer, for example? We know that IROs have not been particularly successful, yet those are the people who we have identified as the ones to focus on the children. There must be alternative ways.
This is where the two parts of the Bill come together. If we are able to get the social work bit of it right and develop really good social work, it seems that the other issues will not be so pressing—apart from the ones raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler. The mental health issues of children in care are of particular concern and I would support her. This is because CAMHS is in such disarray, probably in greater disarray than some other areas in local authorities, and although I think that the Government have good intentions to put money into the service, we know how hard it is to get that funding properly directed. However, we could make a real difference to young people’s progress if we ensure that their therapeutic needs are met early on, not when they are developing serious mental disorders and personality conditions. We know that behavioural work with children at an early stage works very well. While I am finding it difficult to support a wide range of the amendments, again because I want to keep the Bill as simple and implementable as possible, we should look seriously at these mental health issues.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, undoubtedly many telling points have been made on these wide-ranging amendments. I cannot offer my support for all of them, but I certainly can in respect of those tabled by my noble friend Lady Massey and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler of Enfield, concerning mental health. My noble friend urged the promotion of mental health, something that we might imagine was not necessary but unfortunately it is. Current statutory guidance requires that children entering care should receive a physical health assessment by a trained clinician, yet mental health and emotional well-being are assessed only through a strengths and difficulties questionnaire. That is not an alternative to a full assessment conducted by someone with the appropriate qualifications in mental health, which should be instituted as a matter of urgency. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, sets it out clearly in her Amendment 87. This is not a new demand. I can recall asking for it on several occasions during our consideration last year of the Education and Adoption Bill, and I was not alone. Noble Lords from all sides of the House expressed the same call.
It is now well past the point when Ministers should get it, by which I mean the fact that 45% of children entering care have a diagnosable mental health condition. Their needs should be identified early and clearly. The noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, referred to the plans that form part of the implementation of Future in Mind, and I hope that I am quoting her accurately when she said that only 14% of children entering care receive proper mental health assessments despite the proposals in the document. I would suggest that the time for that situation to change dramatically is now long overdue. We missed the opportunity in last year’s legislation, so I hope that will not be allowed to happen again.
Lord Nash
My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 10, 16, 17, 21 to 25, 28, 33 and 34, 80A and 81A, 84A and 87 regarding the promotion of the mental, physical, emotional and social health and well-being of looked-after children and care leavers, as well as their educational outcomes, along with the educational outcomes of children who leave care and return to their parents. I fully agree that promoting the mental health and social and emotional well-being of looked-after children and care leavers and promoting positive educational outcomes for these groups is critically important, and I shall deal with each of the amendments in turn.
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, for her Amendment 10 and the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, for her Amendment 34. The Government have made clear in Section 1 of the Health and Social Care Act 2012 that a comprehensive health service is one that addresses mental as well as physical illness. The Government’s intention is to ensure that the first corporate parenting principle, which refers to promoting the health and well-being of looked-after children and care leavers, is interpreted as covering both the physical and mental aspects. We think that this is clear in the Bill as currently drafted, but we will clarify the position in associated statutory guidance.
“( ) to promote early intervention in meeting the current and future needs of those children and young people.”
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
I thank the noble Baroness for that clarification. In moving Amendment 26, I wish to speak also to Amendment 50.
We on these Benches believe that the Bill as a whole would be much strengthened by adding another corporate parenting principle: early intervention. Prevention is of course better than cure, but the earlier that children at risk of harm or in need of additional support can be identified, and the earlier that those children can access services, surely the better their chances of overcoming the challenges they face, having a healthy life and forging a more positive future.
Many of the 10,000 young people leaving care in England each year have poorer outcomes than their peers in terms of education, work, mental health and well-being. Early intervention is crucial in addressing this and should include, for example: support at school and beyond to help children in care overcome barriers that can prevent them progressing in education; financial education; careers advice; and an introduction to the workplace and familiarisation with the world of work to help to build a successful transition into employment, so preventing debt and poverty. Perhaps most important of all is the need to identify and overcome trauma and past harm to prevent more significant mental health needs developing later on, a subject that was referred to in depth on the last group of amendments.
It would be wrong to suggest that local authorities and social workers are unaware of these issues or do not attempt to address them but, for whatever reasons, not enough is being achieved in terms of outcomes for looked-after children, young people and care leavers. An additional corporate parenting principle promoting early intervention would highlight the imperative of meeting these needs, and I hope that the Minister will accept that important principle.
Amendment 50 focuses on the need to even up the provisions for young people in care up to the age of 21. The staying put offer makes provision for children to stay with their foster parents; this amendment would make provision for other care leavers also to have suitable accommodation. We believe that there should be comparability of provision in place for all types of care.
Many young people these days stay at home long after they turn 18, often indeed into their thirties. This is usually for financial reasons but it also reflects the support that comes with being in a stable home. How ironic it is that care leavers do not have a home to fall back on, yet are even more likely to need one. The problem is that, like so many aspects of care leaver policy that we are debating, it benefits only a proportion of those who need it. Many of the most vulnerable young people in care will not be in a stable foster placement, meaning that they will not benefit from staying put. Instead, they are often expected to live independently without appropriate support and without any experience of doing so. We all remember leaving home for the first time and what a dramatic change that involved. Most of us will have been fortunate enough to have had a stable family home to fall back on if things got too difficult. Care leavers have no such cushion and have to deal with situations that can be stressful at best and dangerous at worst.
At present, there is no central funding and no requirement on local authorities to provide accommodation that meets their needs. We know that care leavers are much more likely than their peers to become homeless. Accommodation is at the heart of improving life chances for this group. Without a safe and stable home, how can we expect young people to go to college, gain skills, get a job or even in some cases attend healthcare appointments? Indeed, why should we expect these young people, many of whom are vulnerable and recovering from past abuse or neglect, to know how to live on their own? They often require a supported form of accommodation to give them the basic foundation they need to cope with other challenges.
The Children and Families Act 2014 introduced a special duty on local authorities to support some young people to remain with their foster parents up to the age of 21. This is welcome but it creates a disparity between those young people and others in care who cannot benefit from these arrangements. There are many reasons for providing accommodation up to the age of 21 but, critically, it must be appropriate to the young person’s needs and requirements. It could be residential or supported accommodation; it could be foster care as well. There are course costs to this but the Government should accept that funding needs to be provided to local authorities to meet the cost of this important provision.
In recent years, there has been political consensus that early intervention is key but the austerity Budgets imposed by the Government since 2010 have created an economic climate that has made that difficult to take forward. The Bill offers a real opportunity to send a clear message from government that early intervention should be a guiding principle in everything done to support children and young people in care, and care leavers. I beg to move.
Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)
My Lords, I shall speak in particular to Amendments 27, 49 and 88. I spoke at Second Reading about these issues and referred to the Children’s Society report, The Cost of Being Care Free. As we have heard today, young people in the care system suffer inadequate preparation for the financial implications of independent living. Care leavers are already vulnerable and deserve proper support to prevent them falling into poverty. Rent, council tax, electricity, gas, food and general household bills are all a black art and a mystery to them.
The key findings in The Cost of Being Care Free included that young people leaving care alone and with no family to support them are falling into debt and financial difficulty, due to insufficient financial education from local authorities. Almost half of local authorities in England failed to offer care leavers financial education, support and debt advice, leaving vulnerable young people unprepared for the realities of adult life and at risk of falling into dangerous financial situations. Many care leavers receive financial advice only once the situation has reached crisis point. Such dangerous financial situations could be prevented through financial education and advice, so it is important that we should do everything we can to make sure that this happens.
Young care leavers who have spoken to the Children’s Society stress that they would have welcomed more financial education and support prior to leaving care. They said that due to insufficient preparation on the part of the local authority, they had to figure out what bills needed to be paid and what their responsibilities were when they turned 18. Many young care leavers become destitute and homeless, as we have already heard.
On access to the benefits system, out of 4,390 decisions taken by jobcentres to apply for sanctions on care leavers, only 16% challenged them and 62% of those challenges were overturned, which means that 3,960 sanctions were applied to care leavers, meaning that there was one sanction for every 13 care leavers. It is simply unacceptable that care leavers should be sanctioned in this way.
I turn now to Amendment 88. I should say that I have tabled it on behalf of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, which is extremely concerned about the life chances of young people leaving care—in fact, it is more about the lack of life chances. All the information and advice that could be made available to care leavers should be made available, and I fully support these amendments.
The Earl of Listowel
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his helpful replies. They give us plenty of food for thought. I am clear that he has given very careful thought to these issues and I am grateful to him for that. It was very encouraging to hear that half of those young people eligible for Staying Put have taken up the offer. Of course, we both want it to go further, but it is encouraging. Staying Put is a very important step forward. I am glad that the Minister is listening to young people in care. We talked about that earlier. Listening to young people with experience of Staying Put is a very salutary, encouraging experience.
There is a concern about ISAs. The Minister may correct me, but I think that they represent a large sum of money being given to very young people. There is a risk that they may not use it well and that they will not be supported in using it. There is also a concern about the sums given by local authorities to care leavers. Some social workers will insist on receipts and manage the money carefully while others will just give them the money. At best the young people may waste that money, but some may use it to their own detriment. Perhaps the Minister could write to me to clarify what support there is for young people leaving care to manage those sums well. I would much appreciate that. I also thank him for his response.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, I do not share the enthusiasm of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, for the Minister’s response, because he seemed to say that this is all down to councils. These are the same organisations which have had their resources cut and cut and that are going to face more cuts. There would be no concerns if councils were able to deal with the problems, but that is not the case. I am sure that we will return to these issues on other days, but for the moment I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Children and Social Work Bill [HL]
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(7 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie
At end to insert “but that this House regrets that clauses 20 to 40 of the Bill contain only delegations of powers in contrast to the recommendations of the Constitution, Secondary Legislation and Delegated Powers Committees in relation to skeleton bills; regrets that without draft regulations published in good time the ability of this House to perform its core scrutiny function is seriously diminished; and calls on the Government to publish those draft regulations before the House considers those clauses in committee.”
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for his remarks in moving the Bill. For too many children in care, the state does not carry out its parenting functions adequately. Life chances for children in care are poorer than for their peers, and too often time spent in care is a prelude to a life of mental health problems, unemployment and time spent in the criminal justice system. The role of the state as a corporate parent is vitally important. We must ensure the highest standards of support for children in care, the best opportunities and access to the services which will reduce the inequalities they face and set them on a positive path for the future.
In some respects, this Bill is due a welcome, focusing as it does on improving the outcomes and support for looked-after children. The introduction of detailed principles of corporate parenting provides much-needed recognition of the need to reconsider the support offered to the most vulnerable children in our society, and the extension of the personal adviser role to care leavers up to the age of 25 is a step forward. But, mirroring the Government’s track record with education, where teacher shortages continue to be denied, here we have a Bill that fails to tackle the fundamental issues facing children’s social work: case load levels that are too high, high staff turnover rates, a reliance on agency workers, and unqualified social work assistants taking on the role of social workers. When framing the Bill, the Government’s eye was not fully on the ball.
In social work, the Government are on course to repeat the mistakes they made with the teaching profession. Social workers play a vital role in society, yet under this Government many are demoralised through a narrative which blames them for failings in the system. Six in 10 English regions have seen a fall in the number of social workers working in children’s services, while there has been a 50% increase in the amount spent on agency social workers.
As with the Education and Adoption Bill last year, adoption is once more the only destination from care that, it seems, the Government value. Only one in 20 children in the care system is adopted. Where are the measures to cater for those in foster care, special guardianship and kinship care? Although there is a brief allusion to kinship care in Clause 8, no other forms of care merit even a mention there or in Clause 9. I mentioned this issue on the previous Bill and was given assurances by the noble Baroness, Lady Evans, that all forms of care were equally valued and would be treated as such. I have to say that there is scant evidence in this Bill that the Government take that view. I invite Ministers to explain why the warm words offered from the Government Front Bench last year have not been translated into action in this Bill.
Three-quarters of children in the care system are in foster care and the Government have failed to champion, support and focus on this group. Three months ago the Government published a paper entitled Adoption: A Vision for Change. When can we expect the publication of Foster Care: A Vision for Change? From the Prime Minister down, Ministers have made things harder for foster carers, by doing down their role and contrasting it unfavourably with adoption. I believe that the Government should be setting out a reform programme which takes a long-term, holistic view of the entire care system and ensures that adequate support is provided to every child. This Bill could have done that but fails to do so.
The seven corporate parenting principles are certainly welcome but they should, we believe, be a duty, as happens in Scotland, and they should cover all relevant public services. If I heard the Minister correctly, he said that other agencies were to be added to the corporate principles. For the avoidance of doubt, we believe that health—including clinical commissioning groups and NHS England—the criminal justice system and police and housing services should all play their full part in delivering the best for looked-after children. We will press the Government to strengthen this clause significantly, so as to encourage joined-up thinking and action on the needs of children in care and care leavers.
The local offer outlined in Clause 2 is welcome, although local authorities need only publish this information. There is a clear need for the emphasis to shift from reactive to proactive, with information given to care leavers, and the information should be given to them up to a year before they are due to leave care, allowing them to prepare and to gain most from the offer. There is no virtue in waiting until they are about to move out the door. Labour would like to see the introduction of a national gold standard for the services care leavers should receive, with government sharing best practice to drive up support for care leavers everywhere. What is needed is a national offer delivered locally, so as to learn from and avoid repeating the vagaries of the postcode lottery that is the SEND local offer established under the Children and Families Act.
The main question posed by Clause 15 is surely, what is the problem it is designed to address? We recognise that the children’s social care landscape has changed significantly since the last major legislative reform brought about by the Children Act 2004. We support innovation if it drives up outcomes for children and standards in local authorities, but innovation can take place very effectively within local authorities, as Leeds has recently demonstrated. We strongly believe that child protection services and, indeed, wider children’s social care should not be run for profit and we are concerned that this clause could be a Trojan horse. The Government have failed to justify such a wide-ranging and wholesale change. Many sensible voices in the sector are very concerned about this and we will press the Government, in Committee, to come forward with a detailed explanation as to why it is necessary. As it stands, the proposals are too wide ranging and without adequate safeguards to protect children and young people if plans to innovate go wrong.
Also, the introduction of a power to become exempt from statutory duties will be seen by some local authorities as an opportunity to drop certain provision at a time when financial pressures may make it difficult for them to meet all their statutory commitments. So it is crucial that where local authorities delegate their services or responsibilities for children in care and/or care leavers, the same principles that apply to local authorities will apply to those now running those services.
Clause 15 raises a number of questions, but at this stage I will ask Minister just two. Have the Government made any assessment of the risk to children of proposals to exempt local authorities from some key duties for keeping children safe? Secondly, if outsourced services are not subject to Ofsted inspections, how will it be known whether outcomes for children are improving?
Part 2 of the Bill covers social work, including, crucially, regulation. However, what is meant by Clauses 20 to 40 is just not known, because that is where the Bill disappears off into the mist. From that point it is a skeleton Bill, despite recent comments by the Minister. What do these clauses mean? Ask 10 people and you might get 10 different answers. In addition, since the Bill was published the Government have already submitted 14 amendments: none, it has to be said, within the area of Clauses 20 to 40. I think I picked the Minister up correctly when I said that he has announced another one, at least, today.
This is no way to legislate. Were this a one-off occurrence, we on these Benches would not perhaps make too much of it. I think it fair to say that, although we were critical of the Government’s Education and Adoption Bill a year ago, at least that came fairly soon after the general election—an election the Government themselves did not expect to win—and could not have been fully prepared. That has to be accepted, at least to some extent. But we are now well down the line and there is no cover for the Government regarding the Bill we are considering today. This has become an all too familiar pattern with not just this Bill and the Education and Adoption Bill, but other Bills in your Lordships’ House over the last year. That is a completely unacceptable development. That is why we submitted the amendment standing in my name: to draw attention to the fact that the Government are treating Parliament with contempt.
Just five days ago, the noble Baroness the Leader of the House was challenged in exchanges in your Lordships’ House over what she called “skeleton Bills”. She said:
“I want to ensure that as Parliament proceeds, it has the information it needs to do its job. Having gone through one Session, I feel that I have learned lessons that I want to ensure are properly applied by the Government ... I can assure noble Lords that I am taking very seriously my responsibilities to ensure that legislation is brought forward in as complete a fashion as possible.—[Official Report, 9/6/16; col. 898.]
It surely goes without saying that we are not there yet. Noble Lords do not need to take just my word for it. Yesterday, the Constitution Select Committee in your Lordships’ House published its report on this Bill. I am sure that both Ministers will have read it with interest. Inter alia, it said:
“The Bill grants extensive powers to the Secretary of State—in particular in relation to … Clause 11 … and … Clause 20 … these provisions appear to continue the trend we noted in several reports last session—the introduction of legislation that leaves much to the subsequent discretion of ministers. We regret that, despite the concerns expressed in the past by this and other committees, the Government continues to introduce legislation that depends so heavily on an array of … delegated powers”.
These words may be couched in moderate terms but they are none the less hard-hitting. I hope the Minister, on behalf of the Government, feels chastised, because I believe that he should. He should also explain to noble Lords why the Government continue to introduce Bills that deny opposition parties and Cross-Benchers the ability to scrutinise legislation effectively. We cannot scrutinise that which we cannot see.
I think that the Minister pointed to only two lots of regulations that appear in Clauses 20 to 40. I have asked my noble friend Lord Hunt to have a quick look at the Bill while I have been speaking. He has come up with 29 lots of regulations and powers within those clauses, so there is a considerable difference. That emphasises why we felt it necessary to bring forward the amendment before your Lordships today.
What little we can discern from the second half of the Bill is that it contains no detail on the proposed new statutory regulator, not even a framework. It is unclear why the Government wish to commit to the considerable cost of setting up a new regulator—as happened with the General Social Care Council around 10 years ago—at a time when council social care budgets continue to suffer as a result of reductions in central government funding.
Another document that I am sure the Ministers have read is the Bill’s impact assessment. On page 5, the conclusion the Department for Education reaches regarding social work regulation is that the Bill simply enables the making of secondary legislation and does not itself have any regulatory impact. Well, well—who would have thought it? That is repeated at least twice more in the impact assessment, which means that that assessment has not been able to be carried out effectively. That in itself is a matter for concern.
We on these Benches are greatly concerned that, as things stand, the system outlined in the Bill places regulation of the profession under direct government control, removing the independence necessary to win the trust of social workers and the public. Even if the Secretary of State could become the regulator—we know that will not happen—even a government-appointed body would risk professional standards being subject to the political priorities of government, rather than a professional evidence base. These proposals will make social work the only health or social care profession to be directly regulated by government, and the Bill must be amended to create greater independence for any regulatory body established.
Labour does not oppose new ideas in social work training and practice, as hinted at in Clause 25. The expansion of, and support for, Frontline as a means of training new social workers was part of our manifesto last year. However, the intention was not to deny universities a major role, and student places must not be capped, as has happened with some teacher training. We know that the Government target for 2020 is for one in four arrivals to social work to be via Frontline or Step Up, the masters course for bringing in new social workers. That is not a matter for concern at the moment, but the Bill allows the Government to direct the content of training for social workers, which raises concerns of a drift towards a two-tier social work system for those on fast-track courses, with non-university providers being favoured for funding.
Social work is among the most important work in our society. Social workers make an amazing contribution to the country. We intend to improve the Bill to enable it to support that. Great social workers combine skill and knowledge with care and compassion to help transform the lives of the most vulnerable young people and families. We need to attract more life-changing social workers, and to do that we need to treat them with respect. If we do that, we will enable them to deliver what every child deserves: the best possible childhood, free from abuse and neglect. I beg to move.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie
My Lords, earlier in the debate, the noble Baroness, Lady Shephard of Northwold, expressed the hope that the amendment standing in my name on the Order Paper would not dominate the debate. I cannot speak for her, but I think she would agree with me that that has not been the case; nor was that ever the intention of these Benches in tabling the amendment. Many noble Lords have referred to it. In his recent contribution, the noble Lord, Lord Warner, to some extent alluded to the consequences of the paucity of information in Clauses 20 to 40. It is slightly disingenuous of the Minister, although I do not propose to get into a tennis match with him over what is and is not in those clauses—but if we did so, we might call on the services of an umpire. On this occasion, we have an umpire in the form of the Constitution Committee, and I shall repeat a small part of what it said about this Bill. It said that,
“the government continues to introduce legislation that depends so heavily on an array of broad delegated powers”.
That seems unequivocal to me and to my colleagues on these Benches, and that is why the amendment was tabled.
It is inappropriate for the Government to continue to ride roughshod over the views of committees of your Lordships’ House—the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee will give us its views in due course—and the views clearly expressed in this debate by noble Lords. Although it is not my intention to test the opinion of the House on this amendment, if this continues in future and further Bills come forward in a similar form, the Government should expect the Opposition to come forward with a similar amendment, and on that occasion we may not be as accommodating. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Queen’s Speech
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(7 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, several noble Lords have suggested today that the Government’s legislative programme is rather thin and even timid. I have to say that I find it interesting to read some political journalists describing the gracious Speech as a small “l” liberal programme while others see it as a series of social reforms designed to reunite the Conservative Party in the aftermath of the referendum— I say to the Prime Minister, “Good luck with that”, especially should the separatists prevail. I hope very much that they do not, although I know from today’s debate that the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, will not agree with me.
The Government’s education policies remain obsessed with structures rather than what matters most, which is what works in terms of educational outcomes. Under this Government, school budgets are falling, there are chronic teacher shortages about which the Department for Education remains in denial, inhabiting a world of its own, and not enough good places are available. Despite being forced to make a tactical shift—I believe that it was tactical rather than strategic—the Government are continuing to force good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes. As I have said many times in your Lordships’ House, there is simply no evidence that academy status automatically raises school performance; in fact much of the evidence points in the opposite direction, as highlighted by my noble friends Lord Griffiths and Lord Murphy. Yet the Government plough on regardless.
My noble friend Lady Massey spoke eloquently on the question of academisation, but it has been widely reported that the Government have retreated from the mass academisation programme in the face of widespread and vociferous opposition. They have not fooled many in the education community with their apparent U-turn. The notes that accompanied the education for all Bill said that the Government would:
“Convert schools to academies in the worst performing local authorities and those that can no longer viably support their remaining schools, so that a new system led by good and outstanding schools can take their place”.
There already is a system led by good and outstanding schools—the local authority system. Is there room for improvement there? Of course: there always is, just as there is room for improvement in the academy and free school sectors. Is there any basis for binning the entire local authority sector in favour of the other two sectors? Absolutely not.
Just yesterday I visited Tollgate Primary School in east London, a teaching school that leads an alliance of 30 schools across seven London boroughs. It was already an outstanding school, and in 2013 its executive head also took on that role in nearby Cleves Primary, which had a “requires improvement” rating from Ofsted. Within just 18 months, Cleves joined Tollgate in being judged as outstanding in all areas. To achieve that in 18 months is very rare, and it was made possible by the schools working jointly in a federation. But the Government have effectively outlawed any new federations of maintained schools and Tollgate is now considering becoming an academy because, if it does not, it will be unable to progress from its current position as a teaching school.
That is an example of the covert pressure applied to outstanding maintained schools to make them bend to the will of the Government. I suspect that we can expect more underhand tactics when the Bill announced yesterday is rolled out. The Minister did not spell out how it would define local authority “viability” or a “minimum performance threshold” for local authorities, but it is to be hoped that there will be consultation on these definitions.
The independent think tank CentreForum has done some calculations on this. Working on the basis that a local authority is “unviable” if less than half of pupils in the area attend local authority maintained schools, and a local authority is “underperforming” if its maintained schools at either key stage 2 or key stage 4 are below the current national average, CentreForum has calculated that as many as 122 local authorities responsible for 12,000 maintained schools meet these not unreasonably assumed criteria for defining “unviable”. Forcibly converting those 12,000 schools to academy status would result in around 85% of all schools being academies, which, along with those converting voluntarily, would in turn render most remaining local authorities unviable.
Hey presto: the Government are within touching distance of their wish for all schools to become academies and so, by smoke and mirrors, the apparent pulling back from mass-academisation is not what it seems at all—not so much a U-turn, more a Z-turn. If I am wrong or this analysis is overly pessimistic, I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Nash, will write to me pointing this out. At a cost of around £1 billion the mass conversion of schools is simply not good use of public money, particularly at a time of huge funding pressures on schools.
We welcome the improvements to support for care leavers outlined in the Children and Social Work Bill. I listened closely to the wise words of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, who regularly demonstrates his knowledge of and commitment to issues associated with children in care. Approximately 10,000 young people leave care in England every year, in many cases before they turn 18. Research shows that they are more likely than their peers to have poor outcomes later in life. This includes education and work, homelessness, contact with the criminal justice system and mental health problems.
It will also be important for this Bill to make up for the missed opportunity in the Education and Adoption Act by ensuring that, this time, provisions are introduced to ensure that children’s mental health is properly assessed on entry into care and then throughout their time in the care system. As the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham said, leaving care is often traumatic, yet the Government have failed to provide adequate adoption support, and cuts to services are putting pressure on the system. Measures that will increase adoption are welcome, but it is vital that action is taken that is in the best interests of the individual child. It is unacceptable that the Government have not yet developed a strategy for the wholesale improvement of the care system that delivers for all, not just those children being considered for adoption. As the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, told noble Lords, social work should be seen as an honourable profession, yet often it is not. It is certainly a vital one. It is essential that other forms of care, such as kinship care and fostering, are not marginalised, because that will prevent the step change we need to see in outcomes for looked-after children. This Bill invites more than a few questions for the Government, but rather than list them now I will wait until 14 June when the Bill will have its Second Reading.
We believe that the digital economy Bill should detail a comprehensive approach to address the digital skills challenge in the UK and improve digital inclusion, improve the communications infrastructure and connectivity and make the UK the best place to start and scale up a high-growth tech business. As my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn said what seems a very long time ago now, the Government are letting down millions of households and businesses over the rollout of high-speed broadband. Six years after abandoning Labour’s fully-funded commitment to universal broadband, the Government’s superfast broadband rollout is still suffering delays. Many noble Lords have either outlined problems that they have experienced personally or talked about it in general terms. As the noble Baroness, Lady Burt, said, they simply must do better because the economy as a whole is suffering.
We welcome the focus on the age verification of websites containing pornographic material. However, in the knowledge that children’s digital lives play out across various social media platforms as well as websites, we remain concerned that unless we extend age verification measures to these platforms, children will continue to be exposed to pornographic and age-inappropriate material online.
Despite not meriting a mention in the gracious Speech, the elephant in the room throughout this debate has been the BBC, and understandably so. In fact, the elephant trumpeted loudly on many occasions, to the extent that it would be simpler to list noble Lords who did not mention the BBC than those who did. If I mention in particular the noble Baroness, Lady Bonham-Carter, the noble Lords, Lord Fowler and Lord Addington, and my noble friends Lord Macdonald of Tradeston, Lord Cashman and Lord Stevenson, I hope other noble Lords who spoke on the BBC’s behalf will forgive me. Although the proposals published in the White Paper last week do not require legislation, it is, of course, very much a hot topic. Noble Lords who spoke warned of the need to be wary of the Government undermining, underfunding or otherwise weakening the great institution that is the BBC. I echo the view of the noble Lord, Lord Foster, that the BBC’s independence and impartiality must be upheld and decisions as to who will form the new unitary board should be the preserve of the Commissioner for Public Appointments. It is also essential that the licence fee should be protected, if the BBC is to continue to serve the whole country, which I and many people believe it does very effectively.
The Higher Education and Research Bill marks a sharp turn away from the established university system and on the face of it will empower more people than ever to access higher education in their local area through a college. So it was perhaps appropriate that it was the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, who outlined with great clarity some of the issues that will arise. It is to be welcomed that the new regime will provide a wider choice of courses linked to employment, but there are two buts. First, as my noble friend Lord Murphy told the House, under this Government and the previous one tuition fees have already trebled to £9,000 and we could see them climb even higher, saddling young people who want to go to university with tens of thousands of pounds of debt. That is likely to act as a disincentive to many would-be applicants and is an issue that the Government must address if they genuinely want to expand the social background from which students are drawn.
Secondly, what the noble Lord, Lord Nash, called a “wide range of providers” sounds like a free-market free-for-all, very much like the US model. As my noble friend Lord Stevenson, said, that is a matter for real concern because any brief examination of that system reveals the dangers, with many degrees next to worthless and students often left no more employable at the end of their course than when they started it. It would be encouraging to hear the Minister tell us that that will not be the case, although I suspect that the detail of the Bill is not yet complete.
On an NHS overseas visitors charging Bill, we will support any moves that are about ensuring fairness in the system and getting a better deal for taxpayers. However, we need to avoid turning NHS staff into border guards and the key test of these proposals will be whether they can be effectively enforced and whether it will cost the NHS more to administer the charges than it ends up receiving. We will also be seeking a guarantee that certain exemptions will remain in place, such as those for asylum seekers and people with infectious diseases.
Since the gracious Speech we have learned of agreement being reached between the Government and the BMA on junior doctors’ hours. The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, highlighted some of the contract conditions apparently withdrawn by the Secretary of State, enabling agreement to be reached. That is, of course, most welcome, but it demonstrates what many have believed for some time—that Mr Hunt wanted this dispute, he planned it and he prolonged it. The agreement reached yesterday could have been achieved weeks ago, obviating the need for industrial action. Very few employees in any sector go on strike unless it is the last resort. That was particularly true of the junior doctors. Yet, the Secretary of State’s intransigence left them with little choice because media coverage of cancelled operations and picket lines outside hospitals served his purpose. That is shameful. Now we are at an end point, it should be understood that it is despite the approach adopted by Mr Hunt, not because of it. The priority for Ministers now must be to repair the damage the dispute has done to staff morale and begin the process of rebuilding the trust of the very people who keep our NHS running.
In the weeks and months ahead, the detail of the 21 Bills announced yesterday will emerge. It is to be hoped that, unlike last Session, we are not presented with skeleton or framework Bills which are not even fleshed out fully during consideration in both Houses but are left for Government to fill through secondary legislation at a later date. This is not an acceptable or even responsible manner in which to legislate. As my noble friend Lord Murphy suggested, in perhaps the most perceptive speech of what has been a debate of genuine quality, the Government need to give more thought to the implications and practicalities of proposals that they bring forward. I echo that plea. Will Ministers heed it? We shall see.
Education: Academies
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(7 years, 12 months ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. In it there was mention of people crowing at the Government’s climbdown. I am not going to adopt that approach, although I have to say that I can understand why many would. U-turns are becoming a regular feature of this Government’s attempts to initiate or see through legislation, and the number of times that we have witnessed the brakes being applied soon after bold statements of intent suggests that a little more than bad luck is at play here. Bad judgment is more likely, I think, and that is certainly the case with forced academisation. Before I leave the issue of crowing, I find it rather depressing to hear the Statement say that people are crowing about a victory in their “battle against raising standards”. Is that really what Ministers believe? Nobody is against raising standards. The Minister and the Secretary of State should realise that they and the whiz-kids at the No. 10 Policy Unit do not always know better than those who, day in and day out, are at the sharp end of things, delivering education for our children. Of course there are examples of where schools are underperforming, and they must be helped to improve, but that does not justify the conclusion that academisation is the only answer.
The opposition to the White Paper proposals encompassed a broad alliance, including head teachers—I hardly need to remind the Ministers here this evening that head teachers made their collective voice very clear to the Secretary of State when she spoke to their conference—and also parents, governors, teachers, local government leaders from all parties and Members of Parliament, more than a few from their own party. Although the Secretary of State has conceded on the ideologically driven idea of forcing good and outstanding schools to become academies against their wishes, she still apparently holds the ambition that all schools will become academies, though still without advancing a single convincing reason as to why this aim is sensible in the first place.
The Statement today is certainly welcome, but it none the less leaves questions, one of which is whether high-performing schools will be forced to become academies. At one point, the Statement says:
“We will therefore seek provisions to convert schools in the lowest-performing and unviable local authorities to academy status. This may involve in some circumstances conversion of good and outstanding schools when they have not chosen to do so themselves”.
Yet later it says:
“While we want every school to become an academy, we will not compel successful schools to join multi-academy trusts”.
I say to the Minister: which is it? The Government clearly cannot have it both ways.
There is also the issue of autonomy. Do the Government really believe that that is the outcome when a school becomes part of a multi-academy trust? They claim that academisation devolves power to the front line, but that is a myth. Schools and academy chains actually lose most of their autonomy because the chain controls their premises, their budget, their staffing and their curriculum. The ultimate irony is that chains have far more power over schools than local authorities currently do.
Last week, I asked the Minister in your Lordships’ House whether there was any evidence that academies automatically performed better than local authority maintained schools, particularly those that are already categorised as high performing. The Minister avoided answering the question, perhaps for the good reason that the honest answer was no. What he did do was to pray in aid what he thought was a supportive comment from the Sutton Trust. But what he did not tell the House was that the research by the Sutton Trust found that there is a very mixed picture in the performance of academy chains and no evidence at all that academisation in and of itself leads to school improvement.
The White Paper promotes academy chains as the preferred model, yet many chains are performing badly and significantly worse than many local authorities—a point recognised by the head of Ofsted, Sir Michael Wilshaw. There have been too many examples of financial mismanagement verging on corruption in academy chains and—perhaps it is a debate for another day—the Education Funding Agency is widely recognised as not being up to the job of supervising even the number of academies that we now have. So I again ask the Minister what evidence the Government have that only academisation leads to school improvement. Where is the choice and autonomy that the Government are so fond of emphasising despite advancing a one-size-fits-all approach? Is there sufficient capacity and accountability in the academy system to ensure that it is best practice, not poor practice, which is being spread?
These questions remain as the Government seek further powers to speed up the pace of academisation. Your Lordships might like to ask why this has been deemed necessary so soon after the Education and Adoption Act was in your Lordships’ House. We spent many days and hours going through the fine detail of that Bill; but were the White Paper proposals to be adopted, it would mean that we had effectively wasted our time on it. If the Government were so convinced that only forced academisation would do, why did they not amend the then Education and Adoption Bill appropriately? That would have been the honest approach instead of leading noble Lords and MPs down what is effectively a false path, knowing that the Bill was merely a stop-gap measure.
It is surely self-evident that we all want to see educational excellence everywhere, but at a time when schools are facing huge challenges from falling budgets and teacher shortages, top-down reorganisation of the school system will remove even more money, time and effort from where the focus should be. It is high time the Government recognised that further structural changes are at best a distraction and, at worst, could damage standards. Will the Minister now accept that, when it comes to change in education, the Government need to carry the professionals with them if such change is to be successfully delivered?
Lord Storey (LD)
I thank the Minister for repeating the Statement. It is actually good to listen; it is good to hear what other people have to say rather than immediately jump to conclusions, and I welcome the fact that the Government have listened to people who have considerable experience in these matters and adjusted the likely content of the forthcoming Bill.
The Minister said in the Statement that the Government wanted to,
“deliver a great education to every single child”.
But don’t we all? I suppose that the difference is that some of us do not believe that the blind concentration on structures and types of school is really the answer. We think that, more importantly, it is about the quality of leadership of those schools. It is about the teachers—who are highly trained, highly respected and given proper continuing professional development. It is about a broad national curriculum which every pupil takes, and includes, as some of the Minister’s colleagues believe, PSHE and good careers advice. It is about parents being involved in the education of their child, not divorced from it; and it is about a curriculum which celebrates technical, vocational and creative education.
There is no evidence that turning a school into an academy will improve standards. In fact, academies tend to perform less well in Ofsted inspections than local authority schools do. I hope that we will see, once and for all, the end of the ideological obsession with pushing aside the role of local authorities in community schools. They need to be cherished, nurtured and given the resources to do the job.
I am very pleased with what the Minister said in the Statement about rural schools, which have been neglected for far too long and need special attention. But putting them into multi-academy trusts is not always the best solution. If they have to go into a multi-academy trust, the trust has to have a relationship with the community that the school is in, because the community is hugely important to the rural school.
I have two questions for the Minister. So far, he has resisted publishing tables to compare trusts’ overall performance. Will he now agree that that should happen? Secondly, he has refused to let Ofsted conduct full inspections of academy chains. Will he now agree that this should happen as well?
Schools: Academies
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Watson of Invergowrie
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether there is any evidence that academies automatically perform better than local authority maintained schools, particularly those that are already categorised as high-performing.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, schools that have chosen to convert to academies—that is, those that are high-performing—are obtaining better results, improving their results and more likely to be rated good or outstanding by Ofsted. Secondary converter academies are performing seven percentage points above the national average and continue to improve. Primary converter academies improved by one percentage point in 2015, and those open for two years or more by four percentage points since either 2012 or their last results as an LA-maintained school.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. Academy status is appropriate for some schools, but there is simply no evidence that mere conversion in itself guarantees success, as the Education Select Committee reported last year. What counts is hard work and a clear plan for improvement, both of which can be achieved without conversion. The Government need to accept that they have failed to win the argument on mass academisation. They have, however, achieved a remarkable feat: since the publication of the White Paper we have seen the emergence of a broad alliance involving parents, head teachers, trade unions, local government leaders, both Labour and Conservative, and MPs, more of a few of whom are Conservatives—all implacably opposed to forced academisation. Can the Minister tell the House who, apart from existing academy chains, has come out in favour of the White Paper’s proposals?
Lord Nash
A great many people have come out in favour of the White Paper’s proposals. I am glad the noble Lord got to a question eventually; I think I answered his original point in my first Answer. There has been lot of international research. The Sutton Trust has told us that sponsored academies are doing better at closing the gap. Ofsted has said that attainment in sponsored academies has increased over time, with the longest-standing academies having the strongest performance. The NFER has told us that the attainment gap between pupils eligible for FSM and those not is narrower in converter academies than in similar maintained schools.
Schools: Parent Governors
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Nash
I agree that we should encourage parents to stand for governing bodies, but we have been very clear over the past few years about focusing governance on skills. It is a skills-based function and that is why we have continually focused on skills. Anyone sitting on a governing body must have those skills, or certainly be able to develop them in relatively short order.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, the Government have announced that academies will be required to have parent councils. I think that this is a good idea, but if it is, why was it not included in the White Paper? The truth is that it was rushed out in response to a reaction to the White Paper about the marginalisation of parents from school governance. Is it not the case that the White Paper on the forced academisation of schools is actually the back-door privatisation of the education system, and that the Government are not willing to tolerate opposition from parents or anyone who opposes that ideology?
Lord Nash
Actually, it was made absolutely clear in the White Paper that we would create a new expectation that every academy would put in place meaningful arrangements for engagement with all parents. We do not want to be prescriptive about the precise nature of that engagement, but of course a parent council may well be a good way of doing that. So far as privatisation is concerned, it is interesting to note that anyone involved in an academy or in a governance relationship with an academy cannot profit from their arrangement in that, whereas of course that is possible in a local authority-maintained school.
Regional Schools Commissioners
Lord Watson of Invergowrie Excerpts(8 years ago)
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Lord Nash
As I think everybody knows, we are not planning to abolish parent governors. We greatly value the role of parent governors in schools, and I pay tribute to the many thousands of parent governors that we have. Indeed, we want to increase the role and involvement of parents in their children’s education. We will exert a new expectation on every academy to put in place meaningful engagement arrangements for all parents, but we must focus governance on skills. On the localism point made by the noble Lord, four members of every head teacher board are elected. They are local professionals who are well steeped in their local communities and local issues.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, we should not lose sight of the fact that we are talking about public education here, paid for from public funds. That should mean that public accountability is a given—real accountability, not just accountability to the Secretary of State. In its report published in January, the Education Select Committee, which has a Tory majority and a Tory chair, called for greater transparency and accountability for regional schools commissioners. Will the Minister say what action he intends to take in light of that recommendation, particularly since the White Paper was published?
Lord Nash
The noble Lord makes a very good point. We will publish the following information on the GOV.UK website this month: a high-level outline of the regional schools decision-making framework; each regional schools commissioner’s regional vision; a description of the national schools commissioner’s role; and the terms of reference for head teacher boards.