Support for Children and Families: Covid-19

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 20th October 2020 Westminster Hall

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I will be uncharacteristically brief, Sir Christopher. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Danny Kruger) for securing a debate on the subject. We have heard so much about the impact of covid on jobs, schools, universities, businesses, the hospitality sector and the NHS. Children—particularly young children—and families are the forgotten element in the whole covid crisis. It is important that we talk about them today, and about the mental health impact on not just school-age children, but parents, for all the reasons my right hon. Friend the Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) mentioned. There has been huge upheaval due to the extra childcare required and the unpredictability of schools.

There is a lack of support networks for new parents in particular. Some 350,000 babies were born during lockdown. Many of them have not seen other babies. Mums have not been able to take babies to the normal post-natal classes and baby groups that they would usually take them to, so we are now seeing examples of babies recoiling when they meet other babies, because they are not used to other human beings like them. They have not had the support network of extended family members; for a new parent, a new mum—particularly a new single mum—that has been a huge challenge. We need to think not just about the catch-up we need for school-age children—the Children’s Commissioner has calculated this week that we have lost 575 million school days since lockdown—but about catch-up for very young children, and babies and infants in particular.

In last week’s debate, I flagged up the importance of health visitors. Before lockdown, we had lost 30% of health visitors. A great triumph of the coalition Government was to create 4,200 additional health visitors. We are virtually back to the numbers we inherited in 2010. Health visitors have had face-to-face contact only with new parents in vulnerable families, but there are over 106,000 children under the age of one living in households in this country where parents suffer from domestic violence, substance abuse or serious mental health issues. These children need those health visitors eyeballing them, providing health support and acting as an early warning system.

I recommend reading the “Babies in Lockdown” report, which was jointly published over the summer by the Parent-Infant Foundation, which I have been proud to chair for the last six years, Home-Start—a fantastic charity—and Best Beginnings. Their report found that 68% of the 5,500 parents interviewed felt that the changes brought about by covid-19 were affecting their unborn baby or young child. Over two thirds of respondents said that overall, their ability to cope with pregnancy or care for their baby had been affected by covid-19, and many families on lower incomes from black, Asian and minority ethnic communities and young parents have been hit harder by the pandemic. This can only have widened the already deep inequalities in the early experiences and life chances of children.

The report therefore recommends that we increase specialised parent-infant relationship teams around the UK, of which there are only 30 at the moment. These teams bring together a range of highly skilled professionals to support and strengthen the important relationships between babies and their parents or carers. The report also recommends a parent-infant premium, which would provide local commissioners with new funding targeted at improving incomes for the most vulnerable children. We need children in schools to catch up, but if we do not help babies and pre-school children catch up, the problem will be even worse when they get to school; that is why this report and this debate are so important.

Education Settings: Autumn Opening

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Thursday 2nd July 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

We have set up a wide-ranging system of support for schools to access through the Edenred scheme. If there are exceptional circumstances where there are no local supermarkets included in the Edenred scheme that a school can access, we are able to look at how we can support the school and reimburse their costs if there are no alternatives.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I reiterate the many calls from Members today and from our heads that they really need clear, unambiguous and timely guidance. Linked to that, is not one of the biggest scandals of recent months how few children on education, health and care plans have been accepted back into school, even when their parents want them to go? For that cohort, catch-up will be crucial, particularly to regularise being back in a school environment after six months out of it. The Secretary of State talked about tutors. Will he also consider the idea that I put forward—to use the cohort of students who are deferring going to university, so that they can come into schools to work alongside those children and give them intensive mentoring, not just academically but to get them back in the habit of being in school and learning again?

[Gavin Williamson]

As my hon. Friend is probably aware, in the first guidance that we issued on school closures, we highlighted that children with EHC plans would have continued access to schools all the way through this. I would be happy to organise a meeting between him and the Education Endowment Foundation, which is working with us to stand up our tutoring programme and looking at a whole range of options to mobilise that.

Children and Young Persons

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 10th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare two interests: first, that in the register; and secondly, given that these regulations go back to 2002, I think that, for the entire time, I was either the shadow Children’s Minister or the Children’s Minister and responsible for making some of these regulations. I am doubly interested in them today.

I am not going to vote against these regulations, but this is the opportunity for some serious questions to be answered. It is unfortunate that, these regulations having been laid before Parliament on 23 April, they came into effect on 24 April. Normal conventions about the 21-day rule simply did not happen, and this is the first time that this House has had the opportunity to scrutinise what are very important regulations.

There are serious question marks, as the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) mentioned, about the consultation that went into this. The Children’s Commissioner was not consulted, and she has made further comments today to say that she has serious concerns about this. The British Association of Social Workers was not consulted. The Association of Directors of Children’s Services was not consulted. The Local Government Association was not consulted. Apparently not even Ofsted was consulted before these regulations became a fait accompli.

There is also the question mark about why the regulations were—

[Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I will not give way because we are short of time. I am sure the hon. Lady will get in later.

There are also question marks about why we had to do this in England but apparently similar moves have not been planned in Scotland or Wales. The Minister might want to comment on that. It would be useful to know what input went into these regulations and why they were chosen to be relaxed or extended in the way they were.

I am not against emergency legislation in these unprecedented circumstances. We are absolutely going to have to adapt across the board; we have become used to that. But this is a particularly sensitive area of policy dealing with some of our most vulnerable children, who are not in a position to provide the challenge and scrutiny that would be readily available in other areas. We have heard, through the commencement of the Domestic Abuse Bill, that there has been a spike in domestic abuse. We have heard from the NSPCC and others about an increase in reporting of suspected child abuse. It is when children are more vulnerable that we need to make sure that the checks and balances are absolutely there and working. There are also the fears about the impact of county lines gangs using the pandemic as a recruitment tool.

So across a whole range of areas, we should be concerned that the service is there to do what it desperately needs to do, particularly at this time. If we look through these regulations, we see that too often the phrases “as soon as is reasonably practicable” and “best endeavours” come up, covering a multitude of sins.

I just want to know the thinking behind the introduction of these regulations. Was it because we were expecting a high incidence of social worker absences? We have had seven weeks of these regulations in practice, so the Minister might be able to give us some examples of what has happened over that time. We need to know how the Government are monitoring this. Was it a capacity issue that led to the regulations? What are the current vacancy rates? Was it a reprioritisation issue, and if so, on the basis of what risk assessment? What has the reprioritisation of those social worker resources, and so on, actually gone to? As a result of what has happened, how many new child vulnerability hotspots are springing up, particularly for the 85% of vulnerable children who have not been in school, as the Chairman of the Education Select Committee, my right hon. Friend the Member for Harlow (Robert Halfon), has pointed out? That was a really useful way of putting them on the radar; teachers were often the early warning sign that something was going wrong at home on a safeguarding issue. They could then pass that information on to social workers and others.

I want to touch briefly on the 10 areas. First, on section 28 and the regulations about visits—which I think I overhauled back in 2010—these are now to take place “as soon as is reasonably practicable”. I am not going to delude myself that it all was working perfectly before. The purpose of the Munro review reforms, which were brought in from 2010, was to get away from some of the arbitrary timescales and from being ruled just by a rulebook, rather than by the expertise of experienced and well trained social workers as well. With only a small number of children in school, those social worker visits are even more important, so if they are not happening practically, why not? Is this a resource issue? Are they happening virtually, and are those virtual visits effective? How are social workers teaming up with teachers trying to teach remotely, with the police and with others to ensure that they are monitoring those children in households with a safeguarding question mark particularly closely?

Secondly, the six-monthly independent review of childcare is important, but that is usually down to the independent reviewing officers. What are the IROs actually doing at the moment? Why can they not carry on as before? Thirdly, I am particularly concerned about adoption panels. Adoption was one of the big campaigns of the coalition Government, and I am proud of my part in getting adoptions up to a peak of 5,360 in 2015. However, adoptions went back down again last year and we are now back down almost to the levels before we started the overhaul of adoption regulations, at around 3,500, so we need more adopters to come forward. We need more children to be adopted. Who is doing that important work in the absence of adoption panels? If social workers are too busy doing things elsewhere, or if there are not enough of them because of the pandemic, who is approving those adopters to come forward? Does the Minister fear that we are going to see a further big decrease in the amount of adoptions happening? How many prospective adopters are coming forward but are unable to be processed and trained? Who is doing the training to ensure that they can take on those really important roles as adoptive parents?

The same goes for fostering panels. It is likely that we will see a big surge in people coming forward to offer foster placements, given the likely job losses that will come out of the pandemic. That is a fact of life in recessions. We need to ensure that local authorities are up and running and able to take on those foster placements and to train people and assess them properly to ensure that they are suitable to take on those children who desperately need a home.

Another area I am really concerned about is the dropping of senior officer approval for out-of-care placement. This has been a scandal for too many years. Over half of children are placed out of their area, against all the regulations. It makes it so much more difficult to look at their progress when we have to monitor them from afar, and they are often placed in cheap property in coastal resorts, particularly on the Kent coast. That has been a case in point. It is really important that when a child is placed out of area, it is as a result of proper scrutiny and a decision made at director level. That is a reform that I brought in. I am really concerned about who is now going to be responsible for that.

Skipping through a few of the other points, senior officer approval for the really important fostering for adoption placements has also been dropped.

I am also concerned about the dropping of Ofsted inspection frequencies, and in any case it seems as though Ofsted will not be doing any inspections until next year. That is really worrying. We need Ofsted inspections for new listings—new care homes—where we desperately need that capacity. We need to prioritise them looking at homes that are deemed to require improvement or that are inadequate to make sure they are not continuing to offer a poor service or that they have improved and therefore can take on more children again. We need to do that because we have serious capacity problem.

I understand the suspicion of others that this is a back-door measure to complete the work from the 2016 Bill. I led a delegation of very experienced noble Lords to see the then Secretary of State, Justine Greening—it was a large part of the reason the regulations were dropped, I am glad to say—so I do not want them reintroduced through this route, and I would like to hear it from the Minister that the measures are only temporary and will not be extended beyond September other than in exceptional circumstances. I would like her to show how they are being monitored where that is actually not required at the moment.

I repeat my invitation to the Minister. The all-party group on children, which I chair, is meeting the children’s charities and others in July to assess how children are faring during the coronavirus pandemic, and it would be great if she could come and give an account of why the regulations are still required and how they are impacting on children. I understand why they were necessary; I do not understand why they were introduced in the way they were. We would all understand better if we had an account of the experience during the seven weeks they have been in operation and some guarantees that the welfare of some of our most vulnerable children is not being compromised and will not be compromised for a week longer than it needs to under the current conditions.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

Education Settings: Wider Opening

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Tuesday 9th June 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I join the hon. Lady in passing on my deep condolences to the families, schools and communities who have lost loved ones, as she highlighted at the start of her question. We will continue to work with teachers’ unions, as well as school representative organisations, as we look to expand the number of children who are able to attend primary schools and have more pupils attending schools, including those in years 10 and 12 and further education colleges, who start next week, the week commencing 15 June.

As we welcome more children into the classroom, with more children having the opportunity to learn in different year groups, we will see the real benefit of children being with their teachers and friends once more. The hon. Lady is right to highlight the fact that we have limitations. The limit of 15 children per class obviously limits the ability to have as many year groups in school as we would like, but as that is changed, we will have the ability to slowly and cautiously move forward and welcome more children back to school when it is the right time.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Every two months represent more than 1% of a child’s childhood. Come September, many children will have been out of school for almost six months, and we fear that it may be even longer. The impact on those from the most deprived backgrounds will be considerable. Will the Secretary of State look at catch-up schemes over the summer, perhaps using National Citizen Service youth workers who have been stood down from the summer programme? Over the next year, will he look at mobilising the many students who are now delaying going to university and will find it hard to travel or get a job, by getting them to work alongside some of these children in a national mentoring scheme modelled on the charity City Year, for example?

[Gavin Williamson]

My hon. Friend makes an important point. We are certainly looking at this, but we are looking at something much wider and more long-term, because we do not believe that purely looking at the summer period is enough to assist children to get the catch-up that they truly need.

Educational Settings

Tim Loughton Excerpts

Wednesday 18th March 2020 Commons Chamber

[Mr Speaker]

May I just advise the House that I expect to run this statement until about 6.45 pm?

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

Several heads have contacted me to say that they wanted their schools to remain open at all costs, so this will be a great upheaval for them, but I respect that schools are being kept open for certain people. What is crucial is where the definition of “key workers” comes in, so may I stress that giving some discretion to heads is essential, as is whether school premises can remain open for outside groups that use their facilities? Inevitably, informal childcare groups and arrangements will spring up and there are safeguarding considerations in that regard. So will the Department make sure guidance is given so that workers who continue to go to work and are able to have childcare arrangements are doing it in the safest way for them and for their children?