Young People in Care

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 27th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Mr Stuart) and the members of the Select Committee on Education on their excellent report into care provision for young people over 16, and I particularly welcome the opportunity they gave to young people to speak to them directly. It is also a great privilege to follow my hon. Friend the Member for North West Durham (Pat Glass), who made a powerful speech. It was very moving to listen to her acknowledgment of the importance of social care in giving educational opportunities to young people. The two are not separate; one is very dependent on the other. If a child or young person is emotionally damaged, it is very difficult to educate that child.

Children in care are three times more likely to run away than other young people, with an estimated 10,000 going missing every year. The Missing Persons Bureau reports that running-away incidents of children aged between 15 and 17 make up the biggest number in the missing persons statistics. Some 45,000 incidents relating to this group were recorded in 36 police forces in 2012-13. The vulnerability of such children because of their age and the nature of the accommodation in which they are placed may offer an explanation for that high incidence. I have no breakdown of the number of over-16s in this statistic. However, the Children’s Society reports that a significant percentage of its advocacy cases with care leavers focus on the accommodation needs of the young person, because children feel that they are forced to leave too early or that they are not offered the right type of accommodation, or because they are placed outside the boundaries of their authorities and there are disputes about who should provide support.

As the Education Committee highlighted, not all accommodation for care leavers is of good quality or suitable for young people. Examples provided to me by the Children’s Society include young people living in fear of being robbed by other tenants, young women at risk of suicide living in an all-male house with other young people who are known to be involved in drug dealing, young vulnerable women who are regularly being placed in accommodation targeted by individuals seeking to exploit vulnerable young people, and accommodation provided in areas with high crime rates.

We know that 22% of looked-after 16 and 17-year-olds live in neither residential homes nor foster care, but in what is termed “other arrangements”. Unlike foster and residential care, these places are not regulated under the Care Standards Act 2000 and as a result will not be inspected by Ofsted. Accommodation provided is often of poor quality and not safe for young people, and yet it is not inspected. The examples the Education Committee gave provide strong evidence that these are common, not isolated, situations. The Committee rightly said that such accommodation needs to be regulated and inspected properly. Care provision for 16 to 17-year-olds should be registered and inspected. The Government said it would be very expensive to introduce a regulatory framework—both for Government and for providers—and that it was better to maintain the flexibility of the current arrangements.

Last year, the Government introduced new regulations requiring a safety check to be carried out before a children’s home could be registered. The June 2012 inquiry by the all-party parliamentary group for looked after children and care leavers, and the all-party parliamentary group for runaway and missing children and adults, identified the high proportion of children being placed away from their local area—sometimes hundreds of miles away—in locations where there was also a high number of registered sex offenders. The new safety checks will ensure that the home is in a safe environment that will not increase the risk of sexual exploitation for already vulnerable children.

However, children’s vulnerability to sexual exploitation does not stop when they reach 16, and nor does our responsibility to ensure that they are in a safe environment. As the Education Committee report shows, children over 16 are being placed in a variety of provision. That is all the more reason to require a safety check, just as one is required of children’s homes, to ensure that the accommodation that such children are being placed in is safe. If the Government are not willing to consider regulating to require accommodation for over 16-year-olds to be registered and inspected in the same way as that for children under 16, I hope the Minister will consider introducing a requirement for a basic safety check. That would ensure that consultation takes place with the police, and that young people are not placed in environments where they are exposed to harm.

Where vulnerable children are placed in supported accommodation, they are often not reported missing and are not always offered the return home interviews that all missing children are entitled to when they go missing. That means that we do not know what is happening to them and what harm they have been exposed to. Sometimes, those children do not return and nobody knows what happens to them. One reason is that those employed to provide them with support do not have relevant training on their vulnerabilities, or do not know what help they are entitled to advocate on their behalf, as the Chairman of the Education Committee pointed out. Although the law states that someone is a child until they are 18, we often treat children aged 16 to 17 as adults and force them to fend for themselves. We then often blame them if they do not take care of themselves properly and fall prey to sexual predators.

Recently, I visited a girl living in a secure unit who had been sexually abused from an early age and had started to take drugs regularly. This was the fourth time she had been placed in a secure unit because of going missing and the sexual exploitation she has suffered while missing. As the head of the unit said to me, the secure unit could offer only temporary refuge. She strongly expressed her concern about what would happen to the girl—and others like her—when she turned 16 because of the lack of quality provision available. It could be argued that 16 to 17-year-olds are the most unprotected of all children in Britain. We are asking many of them to fend for themselves; we would not ask our own children to do that.

I congratulate the Minister on introducing the “Staying Put” scheme, recognising that young people in care often need extra support beyond 18. However, as has been said, it throws into stark contrast the poor level of provision for other children in the care system after 16 who have not been placed in foster homes. The Minister has demonstrated his huge commitment to improving the lives of children in care, and has brought in new regulations and guidance to drive up standards.

The all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults is holding a round table meeting next week, on 2 February, to discuss with practitioners and experts how support can be improved for 16 and 17-year-olds, including those in care. We are particularly looking at the position of children and young people who go missing, because we are concerned that the risk to them is not fully recognised. We will be exploring what 16 and 17-year-olds are running away from and what they are running to, the factors that lead to them going missing and the risks to which they are being exposed when they go missing. I hope this will add to our understanding of how we can better support the most vulnerable of those 16 and 17-year-olds.