Timpson Review of School Exclusion

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 7th May 2019 Commons Chamber

[Damian Hinds]

Of course, schools must have fair admissions policies, and that is absolutely right. It is also right that we at the Department for Education and local authorities, working together, need to make sure that the support is there for schools to be able to do their very best for the children concerned. The hon. Lady has my continued commitment to that.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Change UK)]

Edward Timpson’s report identifies that moving from primary to secondary school can be a difficult time for children, leading to a rise in exclusions during the transition period. Stockport has a programme that identifies children in primary school who need extra support at that time. Without this support, which includes working with families, schools and mentors, vulnerable children are likely to fail or be excluded. The lack of funding limits the number of children who can be helped. What extra funding will local authorities receive from the new practice improvement fund to help with the primary-to-secondary transition?

[Damian Hinds]

I do not know the specific answer on the practice improvement fund. There are parts of the country where we are looking at this if it is a long-standing issue. The primary-to-secondary-phase transition manifests itself in a number of different ways. It can be a very daunting prospect for a child moving sometimes from quite a small, manageable school where they know most people to the much bigger and, in some senses, scarier environment of secondary school. Summer learning loss is another feature of this. I will take care to look at the example in Stockport that the hon. Lady mentions.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 11th March 2019 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

The purpose of the national funding formula is not to give every school across the country the same amount of funding per pupil. It must be right that schools with lots of children with additional needs—for example, coming from disadvantaged backgrounds, with English as an additional language or with low prior attainment—do need to receive more money to help to ensure that those children’s needs are met. It is also right that schools in areas of high costs receive extra money to reflect those costs. That is what our fairer funding system delivers, and my hon. Friend’s county will have benefited from the national funding formula.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Ind)]

Tithe Barn Primary School in my constituency is a low-funded school in a low-funded authority with an above average percentage of special educational needs children. The Minister has said that he will be gathering evidence on the adequacy of special educational needs funding. Is he able to give us any more information about when he will start to gather evidence, how he will gather it and who will be invited to contribute?

Children Missing from Care Homes

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 8th May 2018 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered children missing from care homes.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. One of the first Adjournment debates I initiated in this House in 1995 was on the subject of children’s homes. I am pleased to say that since that time, there have been many improvements in regulation and inspection. In 2012, the all-party parliamentary group for runaway and missing children and adults, which I chair, held an inquiry into the risks faced by children missing from care homes. The inquiry expressed serious concerns about the high numbers of vulnerable children living away from their home town, some at a considerable distance. We heard evidence that children living in distant placements in children’s homes were more likely to go missing and therefore at higher risk of physical and sexual abuse, criminality and homelessness. I must make it clear that I of course accept that placing a child in another area can sometimes be in that child’s interest. My concern is that children are being placed in children’s homes out of their local area because there is no choice in provision.

Ministers responded positively to our report and introduced a number of changes in 2013 to try to reduce the number of out-of-area placements, but despite repeated pledges the latest Department for Education figures show that the numbers in placements subject to children’s homes regulations have soared from 2,250 in March 2012 to 3,680 in March 2017—a rise of 64%. They now account for 61% of all children in children’s homes.

At the same time, the number of children going missing from children’s homes out of their area increased by 110% between 2015 and 2017. That compares with a 68% increase in children going missing from children’s homes in their own area. Some 10,700 children went missing from all care placements last year, initiating 60,720 reports, of which 12,200 missing episodes, or one in five, were from placements 20 miles or more from their home address.

On average, children go missing from all care placements six times per year. About 40% of all missing incidents involved a child from a children’s home, despite the fact that they only account for 8% of all looked-after children. It is extremely concerning that nationally about 500 children were missing for more than one month in 2017, and 4,770 were missing for between three and seven days. Children who go missing are at risk of coming to harm and falling prey to grooming by paedophiles for sexual exploitation and by organised crime gangs exploiting them to carry and supply illegal drugs in county lines operations.

Figures for my own area of Stockport show that 53% of children reported as missing in April this year were at risk of child sexual exploitation and 65% of children who went missing from Stockport care homes were placed from other authorities. The report of the expert group on the quality of children’s homes set up by the Department for Education in 2012 said that,

“being placed a long way from family and friends is often a factor in causing children to run away.”

Those children are also more likely to be targeted for sexual exploitation, as has been highlighted in cases in Rotherham, Derby, Torbay, Rochdale and Oxfordshire.

The last Labour Government placed a duty on local authorities to secure sufficient accommodation for looked-after children in the local authority area, so far as is “reasonably practicable”. The intention was to ensure local provision for looked-after children, so that they could be placed nearer to home, with access to friends, family and support services. Local authorities are required to publish a local sufficiency plan detailing how they are meeting that duty. However, despite the existence of these plans, the number of children being sent to live away from their home area remains stubbornly high.

One of the main conclusions of our 2012 inquiry into children missing from care was that the unequal geographical distribution of children’s homes meant that large numbers of vulnerable children were placed away from their home area. We found that many placement decisions were made at the last minute, driven by what was available at the time, and in some cases by cost, rather than by the needs of the child. Children told our inquiry that they felt dumped in children’s homes many miles away from home, which increases their propensity to go missing.

One of the expert group’s conclusions was that local authorities must improve the planning, management and monitoring of placements for looked-after children. Introducing the Children and Families Bill in February 2013, the then Children’s Minister, Edward Timpson, called for an end to the out of sight, out of mind culture, which he asserted had led to the high number of children being placed many miles from their home communities.

In January 2014, new statutory guidance on children who run away or go missing from home or care stated:

“Any decision to place a child at distance should be based on an assessment of the child’s needs including their need to be effectively safeguarded. Evidence suggests that distance from home, family and friends is a key factor for looked after children running away.”

An April 2014 Ofsted report, “From a distance: Looked after children living away from their home area”, said these children were more likely to go missing and to submit to the serious risks associated with going missing. The research showed that, in far too many cases, local authorities failed to pay appropriate attention to the quality of care provided, leaving too many children without the support and help that they needed. The most common shortfall was that decisions to place children out of area were driven by a shortage of placements close to home, rather than by individual need.

In 2016, the all-party group produced a report on safeguarding absent children. The inquiry obtained data from local authorities that suggested that—in the areas that responded to information requests—an average of 50% of missing looked-after children were children who went missing from placements outside their home area.

The National Crime Agency’s 2017 report into county lines drug operations said that gangs were deliberately targeting vulnerable children and young people in care. It said:

“Children assessed as vulnerable due to missing episodes do appear to be more regularly linked directly or through association to drug networks operating in the areas they reside.”

I recently surveyed all 45 police forces about the use of vulnerable children by drug gangs with county lines operations. Many forces, including Humberside and Essex, cited evidence of the targeting of vulnerable children in care—especially those living away from their home areas.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady both on the great work she has done in this area over many years and on securing the debate. Does she agree that the one thing that children in care need most is stability? In instances in which children have to be removed from their parents, we should attempt to preserve stability in as many other facets of their life as possible. If we leave them isolated, they can fall prey to exactly the sort of malign influences that she describes.

[Ann Coffey]

I absolutely agree. The hon. Gentleman has put his finger on it: children need stability. They need it when they live in families and also when we take them into our care. We should remember that and plan a care a system that responds to that need for stability, taking into account what children say they need as well.

The other aspect I am concerned about, which I highlighted during a previous Adjournment debate on children’s homes in April 2016, is the continuing unequal distribution of children’s homes. Some 54% of all children’s homes are concentrated in just three regions. Nearly a quarter of all care homes, but only 18% of the children’s home population, are in the north-west of England. Conversely, London has only 5% of children’s homes, but 14% of the children’s home population.

The choice of placements for children is constrained by the uneven distribution of children’s homes. Children can be placed only where there are children’s homes. The care market does not seem to be working for children: an increasing number are being placed outside their home area, and consequently an increasing number are going missing and are at risk of harm from those who seek to exploit their vulnerability.

The unequal distribution of children’s homes demonstrates a continuing catastrophic failure of the care market for some children. The system seems to work for the providers, but not for the children. The failure of the care market can be demonstrated vividly by the 2017 north-west placements census. Placements Northwest is a regional children’s service that assists the 22 local authorities in the north-west that make out-of-authority placements. It said in its recent report:

“There remain many young people from the North West placed outside the region, in part because of the 693 beds located here taken up by young people from the rest of the country.”

There has been a significant and unprecedented increase in the number of externally purchased residential placements, which have risen to 836 active placements, up from 646 in 2016. This has resulted in an estimated increase in spend of £45 million between 2016 and 2017, from £95.5 million to £145 million—

“a very significant and unsustainable increase in the spend on residential services driven by increased consumption and increased unit cost of individual placements”.

For the first time, the cost of some homes has hit £5,000 per week per child, which now applies in 9% of placements. Placements Northwest maintains that the increased mismatch between demand and supply is a driver in the increased costs. It adds that the costs of residential placements seem inconsistent between providers and purchasing decisions, and that they are often led by available capacity rather than clinical social work decisions about what is best for the young person.

In his independent review of children’s residential care in England, which was published in 2016, Sir Martin Narey said:

“Certainly, too much of what I saw and heard was really about buying places in children’s homes, not about commissioning them.”

That is an important statement, because commissioning is about ensuring that there are places where they are needed, not simply placing children randomly where there happens to be a place.

Edward Timpson, the former Minister for Children and Families, said in his response to the debate on children’s homes in 2016 that he shared concerns about uneven distribution of children’s homes and that he wanted to see more regional commissioning. He said:

“there are still instances where the supply of places distorts too many decisions.”—[Official Report, 19 April 2016; Vol. 608, c. 131WH.]

I welcome the setting up of the new residential care leadership board under the chairmanship of Sir Alan Wood. Sir Martin Narey said that it could improve commissioning and obtain better value for money for local authorities, and will look into out-of-borough placements. I hope the Minister will give the House some information about its progress.

We also need a better understanding of the relationship between out-of-borough placements and children going missing. For example, a child could be placed more than 20 miles away from their home but could still be inside their local authority’s boundary, whereas a child could be placed five miles away but be in another local authority’s area. Is the problem distance, or the fact that it is more difficult to support a child who lives in another council’s area? What matters to children? Is the quality of placement a mitigating factor? I do not know the answer, but it is alarming that nobody else seems to, either.

This is a complex area. Each child’s needs are unique. Of course, it is not always possible to find the perfect placement, but if the evidence collected over the years is correct that distance and being placed away from home are factors in children’s going missing from care homes, it cannot be right that in spite of that evidence, concerns about such placements and an increasing understanding of the risks of harm to children when they go missing, more children are being placed out of their home area than in 2012.

The Department for Education collects data about the number of children’s homes, children placed in them, and out-of-borough and distance placements, and it collects a lot of comprehensive data about children going missing from children’s homes. The situation is much improved, compared with 2012. However, it would be helpful if the Department could bring that data together in a more accessible form—perhaps in a yearly datapack.

Ofsted also collects data about children missing from children’s homes at each full inspection to inform its lines of inquiry for that specific inspection, which include whether the child was living out of borough. Although that information is not published, it is a potential source for understanding the patterns of children going missing.

It is very difficult for individual local authorities to be commissioners of children’s homes because they simply do not have the financial clout. Of course, they can be direct providers, which would give them much more ability to provide the care needed by their looked-after children. Devolution offers Greater Manchester combined authority an opportunity to commission on a regional basis. However, the DFE needs to offer support to regional commissioners to help them to develop a framework for commissioning the provision of children’s home places where they work best for children. Perhaps the Minister could tell us more about that work.

The innovative “Achieving Change Together” project in Rochdale and Wigan, which was funded by the Department for Education, demonstrated a successful alternative approach. It invested in social workers and worked with young people on the edge of care to keep them in their communities and families, which is much better than placing them in distant children’s homes and secure units. Perhaps that is a way forward—there has to be one.

If we take on responsibility for the care of the most vulnerable children and young people, we have a responsibility to keep them safe. The evidence suggests that that is not happening: an increasing number are being placed in children’s homes outside their home area, and an increasing number are going missing from those homes and coming to harm. Children’s homes need to meet the needs of children. If locality is an issue for children, local authorities and Government need to respond to that need proactively to ensure that change happens and their needs are met.

Statutory Sex and Relationships Education

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 31st January 2017 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Thank you very much, Sir Edward, for calling me to speak.

I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull North (Diana Johnson) on securing this important debate and on her excellent speech calling for statutory sex and relationships education, for which she has campaigned in Parliament with dogged determination for many years.

Across Greater Manchester, there are many excellent projects organised by children and young people to raise awareness in schools and workplaces. They are particularly valuable, as young people listen to each other. There are some great examples of children creating videos and other materials, including a YouTube video about being groomed via text, which was made by Stockport Young Partnership. There has also been a good response to materials such as “Real Love Rocks” by Barnardo’s and GW Theatre Company’s “Somebody’s Sister, Somebody’s Daughter”.

My hon. Friend is also right about the need to inform children starting at primary school. This week, we learned that almost 100,000 eight-year-olds have a mobile phone, and that more than 20,000 were given a handset from the age of six. We need to be concerned about the potential access that allows predators to our children. As Simon Bailey, the National Police Chiefs Council’s lead for child protection, has said, once the police become aware that a child has been abused, “it is too late”. They have already been harmed. Prevention is the key to protecting children.

Talking to children for my 2014 report, “Real Voices: Child Sexual Exploitation in Greater Manchester”, and again this year for some new research, I was struck by how just many children said they thought sex and relationship education must start in primary schools. They felt it was too late to leave it until secondary school to talk about healthy relationships. They also talked about the difficult transition from primary to secondary school and how vulnerable children in particular needed more support. One girl said that teaching about relationships in primary school

“would help people who are younger and naive not to get into dangerous situations”.

She also said:

“In primary schools, they do not teach much about relationships. When you move to secondary school you do not know the rules or how the other years will act above you and so your actions can be altered because you just want to fit in with what the other kids who are older than you are doing.”

That shows the importance of information being given to primary schoolchildren, because it is important that they start secondary school armed with that knowledge.

We are getting much better at recognising children who are vulnerable to exploitation because of difficult relationships at home. However, what we are not so good at doing is recognising children who do not come from those backgrounds but who for whatever reason are isolated or outside their peer groups at the very time in their development when they are looking for the approval of their peers. Those problems can be exacerbated as a child moves from primary to secondary school.

Some children carry huge burdens of life’s worries. That struck me again when I attended a consultation day on a possible children’s advocacy house in Greater Manchester recently. In one group, children estimated that about 15 out of 40 children in their school class had problems at home or other problems. An indication of the sadness in some of their lives came in the comments they wrote on post-it notes and put on a tree, including: “Hope my sister gets better soon and my mum stops being in pain”; “I wish my Nana would get better”; and “I worry about my mum because she can’t go anywhere but she can go on crutches but she struggles”.

We also need to understand that children who exhibit antisocial and aggressive behaviour often do so because of problems at home. Those children are often supported in primary school, but at the transition to secondary school they find themselves excluded, either for short periods or permanently. That increases their vulnerability, not only to child sexual exploitation but to other forms of exploitation by criminal gangs, such as drug running.

In Stockport last year, the number of children excluded from schools for a fixed period trebled in number from year 6, the last year in primary school, to year 7, the first year in high school. There has also been a rise in peer-on-peer exploitation, fed by websites that promote sex as a violent activity and blur the lines between someone consenting and not consenting.

Although much needed, compulsory sex and relationships education is not enough on its own. We need an environment that encourages children to take responsibility for other children and a culture of respect for each other that informs every day at school. That has been done effectively in some schools to deal with bullying. In Stockport schools, a restorative approach is being developed, through which children help other children to resolve their conflicts and reach resolution. They reach out to children who are not part of a peer group.

Another thing that young people told me again and again was how much they valued talking to their peers. We have many successful peer mentoring programmes in Greater Manchester. One school I visited had a big team of peer mentors, and children had to apply to become a mentor as if they were applying for a job; for example, they needed to have references.

We need to understand that children are a resource in themselves. They understand social media in a way that we cannot. They understand exactly the pressures that they are subject to, and they need to be part of designing projects to inform other young people.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Order. Could the hon. Lady conclude her remarks?

[Ann Coffey]

We need to give more young people the chance to do that. Thank you, Sir Edward.

[Sir Edward Leigh (in the Chair)]

Thank you.

Further Education Colleges: Greater Manchester

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 15th June 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Ms Ryan. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Mike Kane) on getting this important debate for Greater Manchester. The decisions made in the review will have far-reaching consequences for young people and employers in the region. He gave an excellent and comprehensive outline of some of the issues that we need to tackle.

In my contribution, I will refer first to the excellent report prepared by Councillor Andy Sorton, who represents one of the priority 1 areas in Stockport—the Brinnington and Central ward. “Educational Attainment in Priority 1 Areas” was produced in July 2015. In his foreword, he sums up the problem:

“Recent GCSE results showed a substantial drop in attainment for secondary school children in priority areas. Attainment in the Central Area of my ward fell from a low base of 36% attaining 5 A*-Cs in 2012-13 to only 14.3% in 2013-2014, a drop of 21.7%. In Brinnington this drop was 43.2% to 20.9%, a 22.3% fall. To contextualise this, performance in Stockport was, on average, 58.4%.”

The latest available figures, for 2014-15, show an improvement on that 36% attaining five A* to Cs in Central, but in the Brinnington area there was a further fall back to 15.3 %, a drop of 6 % on the previous year. Average attainment for the borough was 58.3%, similar to the previous year. Those are shocking statistics.

Stockport is a borough of contrasts, with areas among the 1% most and 1% least deprived in England. The “State of the Nation 2014” report, in a summary of the overall progress being made across the north-west, commented:

“38 per cent of poor children fail to achieve the expected level in reading, writing and maths at age 11: this varies from 32 per cent in Halton to 48 per cent in Stockport.”

Interestingly, of the four secondary schools with the highest number of students from priority 1 areas, when looking at English and maths GCSE results, only disadvantaged pupils at Stockport Academy performed well when compared with their peers by Ofsted. Stockport Academy was built under the Building Schools for the Future initiative of the previous Labour Government, recognising that issue of inequality of attainment for children in poorer areas.

There are further statistics, such as the December 2014 ones on 16 to 18-year-olds classified as NEET—not in education, employment or training—which suggest that 11% of young people from priority 1 areas fall into that category. The comparable figure for the rest of the borough is 4%. Also, 18% of 18-year-olds in priority 1 areas are not in education, employment or training. On absences, pupils from priority 1 areas are almost three times more likely to have an unauthorised absence from school than pupils from outside the areas. Also, 12.4% of all pupils from priority 1 areas were recorded as “persistent absentees” in the 2013-14 school year. That is more than twice the average rate across Stockport, which stood at 6.1 %. The unemployment benefit claimant rate in priority 1 areas is three times the average for the borough. We all know the lifetime effect of failure in the education system for young people and their families.

In an October 2015 letter sent to Greater Manchester MPs, David Collins, the Further Education Commissioner, and Peter Mucklow, the Sixth Form College Commissioner, announced the area review of post-16 education and training institutions. The letter stated:

“This is an important opportunity to shape the provision for learners and employers in the Greater Manchester area and to ensure clear, high quality professional and technical routes to employment, alongside robust academic routes, and better responsiveness to local employer needs delivered by strong, high status, and where relevant specialist, institutions.”

I agree.

I also agree that savings could be made by amalgamation, with consequent administrative changes, such as the sharing of human resources and payroll, or by looking at duplication of course offers, provided that no young people are disadvantaged by travelling costs. There could also be an argument for having one principal for all the colleges. The area review, however, must also address that issue of inequality of attainment in secondary schools, and the response of the post-16 sector to that.

In the area review, I want to see proposals for further education that will engage young people, such as those in Brinnington, because the challenges are huge. If young people have lost interest at school and have stopped attending, how will that change when they reach 16? How will their educational attainment be improved by a further education offer when they have already failed in the secondary system? At the very least, the offer that Stockport College or colleges in other areas make must be local, and attendance must be affordable for the young people and their families. They must believe that what is on offer will make a difference to their life, that it is something they want to do, and that they will get a job, or self-employment, from it.

Those young people have ability and they are creative, but they are young people for whom the education system and the wider social care system have failed. They are the children of the children I worked with as a social worker; some are the children of those children. Failure will be the inheritance of their children, and they and the wider community will continue to pay a price for that.

Those issues are, of course, not within the remit of the area review, but the response to the review has to have regard to the circumstances of those young people. I will be interested to hear whether, as part of the review, any young people talked to the commissioners about their issues and how they might be engaged more in learning and developing the skills that future employers will need.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East mentioned, we are going through huge changes in jobs as a result of automation. I am the co-chair of the all-party group on retail, and we are undertaking an inquiry on the effect of automation on jobs. It is clear that there will be more jobs in retail, but entry-level jobs will be not shelf-stacking, but managing the robots that stack the shelves. That will change the entry-level skills needed. We have to meet those challenges by ensuring that all young people—particularly those who are difficult to engage—have those skills.

I would like, in the area review’s reorganisation of colleges and courses, an offer of partnership working between young people and secondary schools in every locality. Without that, any reorganisation will continue to exclude young people from the opportunity to achieve something in their life by making them an offer that they cannot or will not accept.

[Mike Kane]

My hon. Friend makes a powerful point about joining up the skills system and the further education system. It is astonishing to most Labour Members, who have in general been warm supporters of devolution, that the schools sector has not been devolved. Michael Wilshaw, the chief inspector himself, has said that local politicians in Manchester and Liverpool should get more involved in improving standards in our schools. The one way in which we could do so is by having the school commissioner system devolved to the conurbations. Does she agree?

[Ann Coffey]

I absolutely agree. That is an excellent point, which I am glad my hon. Friend has made, because I was about to make it. I put that point to the FE Commissioner—indeed, I sent him a copy of that report—and he assured me that he was on the case. As my hon. Friend has just said, however, if we are to make partnerships work, we cannot have national Government in charge of one part of the partnership and local government in charge of the other. That is where there has been a history of failure in delivering social policy. On the provision of education and skills to young people, there is no longer a separate education agenda and skills agenda; they have to be integrated from quite an early age. I agree with my hon. Friend that for the partnership to work, it must all be devolved to Greater Manchester. That is my plea. I hope that we can have further discussions about how we can make the partnership work, engaging those all-important primary and secondary education systems in how the FE sector responds.

Children’s Homes

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered children’s homes.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan. In October last year, the Prime Minister announced a review of children’s homes led by Sir Martin Narey. The final report is due this spring. The review

“will look at which children should be in residential care, how it can be improved and how government can achieve the very best for every single child in their care.”

It is a huge and complex task, and an important review. The area that interests me in the review is the commissioning of residential care homes and distant placements.

By way of context, Ofsted figures show that in 2015, 69% of children’s homes were in the private sector, 8% were in the voluntary sector and 23% were run by local authorities. The number of children’s homes run by local authorities has decreased and the number run by the private sector has increased. Seventy-one per cent of private providers own one to two homes. The largest private companies provide just over a quarter of all placements. Owners range from families to private equity and venture capital companies.

I first initiated a debate on children’s homes in March 1995, on the issue of the registration of children’s homes. At the time, homes providing care to fewer than four children did not have to register and were not inspected. Social workers were responsible for fire inspections—the situation was completely astonishing. Clearly, we have come a long way since then in regulation and inspection, but in that debate, I expressed concern about the most vulnerable children being placed hundreds of miles away from home. Twenty-one years later, I am still expressing the same concern, and we still have a long way to go.

It is staggering that despite successive Governments calling for a clampdown on distant placements, the latest figures show that the number of children being sent away has increased. The 2014 Department for Education data pack shows that in 2013, 31% of children in children’s homes were placed 20 miles or more from their local area—an increase of 2% from 2011. In fact, 35% of new placements in 2014 were distant placements. It is clear that one reason is the unequal distribution of children’s homes in England. Until we sort that out, we will never be able to solve the problem of vulnerable children being placed miles away from home, with all the horrendous problems and risks that can flow from that. The present situation in the continuing unequal distribution of children’s homes demonstrates a continuing catastrophic failure of the care market for some children. It seems to be working for the providers but not for the children themselves.

In 2012, a joint inquiry into children missing from care was conducted by the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, of which I am the chair, and the all-party group for looked-after children and care leavers. It was supported by the Children’s Society. One of the main conclusions was that the unequal geographical distribution of children’s homes meant that large numbers of vulnerable children were placed at a distance from their home area. We found that many placement decisions were last minute, driven by what was available at the time rather than by the needs of the child. This meant that the child was often not involved in planning. Children told the APPG inquiry that they felt dumped in children’s homes many miles away from home. That increased their propensity to go missing and to come to harm from, for example, sexual exploitation.

The recommendations of the APPG report, including a call for urgent action on reducing the number of out-of-borough placements, were accepted in full by the Government and changes were made to regulations. An expert group on the quality of children’s homes was set up and reported to the Department for Education in 2012. A key finding in the expert group’s report was that local authorities could not overcome the uneven pattern of supply of children’s homes across England through their commissioning arrangements. In other words, the locations of children’s homes were determined, and continue to be determined, by providers.

According to Ofsted, a third of all local authorities— 54 in total, when excluding short-break provision—run no children’s homes. With local authority and voluntary sector provision decreasing, this means greater dependency on the private sector for places in children’s homes. That makes it even more essential that we address urgently the underlying issues that result in the unequal distribution of private children’s homes and the resulting distant placements.

In 2012, the DFE data pack showed that homes were concentrated in the north-west, the west midlands and the south-east. As of March 2015, that situation is unchanged—Ofsted stats show that Lancashire, Kent and the west midlands have the highest number of places, and London the fewest. The local supply of children’s homes places does not reflect the needs of local looked-after children. The situation is most extreme in London, which has 17% of the children’s homes population but only 6% of children’s homes. The north-west has 15% of the children’s homes population but has 25% of the children’s homes. In Greater Manchester, 71% of the children living in children’s homes in Rochdale came from outside the borough, and in Stockport, the number was 63%. Some authorities in England have no children’s homes at all and all their children are placed outside the borough.

Why are distant placements a problem? Children placed in care homes face huge challenges compared with other children in care. They are typically older and more likely to have emotional and behavioural difficulties. They are more likely to have substance misuse issues, more likely to have engaged in criminal activity, and more likely to be excluded from school and achieve worse GCSE results. They are also more likely to go missing from their placement, and those who go missing are more likely to go missing multiple times. Again, however, that was not the fate of all children in children’s homes: stability of placement is a critical factor in improving outcomes, but distant placements can make it more difficult to secure that stability for a child.

Ofsted’s 2014 thematic review, “From a distance”, highlighted a number of serious continuing problems in this area. Its research showed that in far too many cases, the local authorities in its sample were failing to pay appropriate attention to the quality of care provided, leaving too many children without the support and help that they needed. It is not difficult to understand why: with pressure on social work time, it is easier to make time to visit a child in a near placement than a distant one. Last year, 520 London children were placed an average distance of 52 miles and an average journey time of 69 minutes from their home area. That makes it very difficult for children to keep in contact with their family.

It is not clear to what extent the situation has improved since Ofsted’s “From a distance” report. If we look at the single inspection framework reports published by Ofsted in the last year, we see that although in many authorities work with children in distant placements was generally good, in just under half the reports, the work with children living far from home did not come up to standard. The most common shortfall was that decisions to place children out of the area were driven by a shortage of placements close to home rather than by individual need.

The last Labour Government placed a duty on local authorities to secure sufficient accommodation for looked-after children in the local authority area, so far as is “reasonably practicable”. The intention was to ensure local provision for looked-after children so that they could be placed nearer home, with access to friends, family and support services. Local authorities are required to publish a local sufficiency plan detailing how they are meeting that duty. However, the numbers of children sent away from their home area remains stubbornly high, despite the existence of those plans.

Why are so many children still being placed in distant placements? A major reason, as the expert group said in 2012, may be that although individual local authorities can recruit foster carers to meet local needs, they are not able similarly to influence the supply of children’s home places in their areas. It is also not clear if and to what extent the experiences and choices of children are influencing care provision. In preparing the “Real Voices” report on child sexual exploitation in Greater Manchester, I talked to children who had been in children’s homes. What was important for them was being listened to; they thought decisions about where they lived should be made with them rather than imposed on them, so it is important that there is choice in placements, including local choice.

The reasons for the geographical distribution may be that property costs are lower in some areas, that health and education support services are better in some areas, that the planning process is easier in some local authorities, that there are existing good relationships or that having a cluster of homes is easier. However, even in those areas that have a sufficient supply of children’s home places to meet local demand in principle, it may not be possible for the local authority to guarantee placements to providers in advance, and providers will not hold places, meaning that in the event children may still be placed out of their home area although there is actually a sufficiency of local places.

That is the situation in Greater Manchester. In February 2014, Greater Manchester had 192 regulated children’s homes. In 2013, 390 children were placed in children’s homes by the 10 local authorities; 185 of those children were placed in another local authority area. Rochdale, which has a high number of children’s homes, placed 41% of its children inside the local authority area and 18% of children more than 20 miles away, while in the children’s homes in the borough, 71% of the places went to children from outside the area, and of those 45% were from outside Greater Manchester. By contrast, in Stockport, which also has a high number of homes, 88% of the children were placed within the local authority boundary, but again they accounted for only 36% of the local children’s home places; 64% were from other local authority areas and, of those, 28% came from outside the Greater Manchester Police area.

Private and independent providers dominate in both boroughs. In Rochdale, the majority of the private providers are homes containing just one or two placements, while in Stockport the homes are larger and there has been a long relationship with the Together Trust, a voluntary sector organisation. That may go some way towards explaining the different figures.

In terms of distance and familiarity with an area, a child from Bury placed in Stockport will feel a long way from home in a place that is unfamiliar, and they may well respond by going missing. Greater Manchester Police calculate that missing children in Greater Manchester cost the police up to £30.9 million a year, and there are additional difficulties in keeping children safe when information needs to be passed across police boundaries.

Given all that, it is ludicrous that we have an oversupply of children’s homes in some areas that do not guarantee a place for local children, while children from areas many miles away that have few children’s homes are placed in Greater Manchester. That chaotic situation sometimes has long-lasting consequences for the children concerned.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

I am delighted that the hon. Lady has secured this very important debate. Will she join me in welcoming Sir Martin Narey’s review of residential children’s homes, and does she agree that sometimes children can have incredibly positive experiences in the residential care system?

[Ann Coffey]

I will of course agree with the hon. Lady: children’s homes are an important part of the care system. It is equally important that children’s homes offer the highest-quality care, and it is very important that children’s homes are where they need to be, which is the point I am making.

The situation is just as difficult where there is an undersupply of places. A local authority struggles to attract new providers when it cannot guarantee bed occupancy.

What is the answer? In 2014, the Select Committee on Education said:

“We can see the attraction of adopting a rule which prohibits the placement of children more than 20 miles from home unless there is a proven need to do so.”

That would work only if it were part of a wider strategy to tackle the unequal distribution of children’s homes. Local authorities could increase the number of homes that they run, especially in areas that have little or no private provision. They could do that by using available capital borrowing powers or, if they do not want to manage the homes directly, they could provide the capital and a provider could manage the home.

Alternatively, the answer might be the co-commissioning of private providers by a consortium of local authorities. At present, there are regional or sub-regional frameworks in place to purchase places from providers, but in practice those can amount to little more than “catalogues” giving information about homes. Co-commissioning is a challenge, but one that recent devolution facilitates. For the 10 local authorities in Greater Manchester, it offers not only an opportunity for all children’s services to look at how they can use their individual resources such as fostering services in a more co-operative way, but an opportunity to commission from the private sector the provision that will meet the needs of children in Greater Manchester. The DFE could helpfully publish a toolkit for consortiums of local authorities showing them how legally and financially they could structure regional and sub-regional commissioning of children’s home places to meet projected need, instead of merely relying on spot purchasing.

There is a large sum of unspent capital allocated for free schools. Perhaps providers could work with consortiums of local authorities to bid for that funding. Local authorities can currently access basic need funding from the DFE to provide sufficient school places, and capital funding for the childcare offer for two-year-olds. Why should that not be the case for residential placements for looked-after children?

Greater Manchester could provide the perfect test bed for any new approach, as could any other group of local authorities willing to work together, as the problems differ from area to area, depending on the number of children’s homes, local policies and the needs of the looked-after children.

Structural problems with the children’s homes market have no easy solutions. That said, if we mean what we say about seeking to

“achieve the very best for every single child in…care”,

we must overcome them. We cannot allow this situation to continue. I hope that Sir Martin Narey’s review will recognise that reducing distant placements should be at the heart of reforms to the children’s homes market and that therefore action must be taken by the Government, by local authorities and by providers to tackle the unequal geographical distribution of children’s homes.

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[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship and to participate in this debate, Mrs Gillan. I also commend the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on securing this debate on an important topic. It has been interesting to listen to the contributions so far. A number of important points have been made.

So far—I am sure this will continue—there has been clear agreement that it is vital to ensure that care is provided in the most effective and appropriate way for all of our looked-after children. I appreciate that this debate has an English perspective, and I will focus to some extent on what I have heard today and on what differences there are between how things work here and how they work in Scotland. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) said, it is useful that we can all listen to one another, because it is vital that lessons are learned and that best practice is shared in all corners of the United Kingdom, and more widely, on such an important issue. Of course there are no easy answers, but we must appreciate that much can be done.

This topic should concern everyone. The hon. Members who have spoken, including the hon. Member for Stockport, have noted the vulnerability of many of the children who find themselves being looked after. As my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran pointed out, all those children are particularly vulnerable. They all deserve our care and concern, and we have a collective responsibility, particularly in this place, to be as aware as possible of the issues facing them in order to facilitate the best possible outcomes and safeguards, as the hon. Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) said, for these most vulnerable children.

Local authorities have a responsibility to provide support to our looked-after children and vulnerable young people. We know that a young person might be looked after for a number of reasons, including neglect, abuse, complex disability requiring specialist care or involvement in the youth justice system. Those are all challenging situations for young people and merit our support. I was heartened to hear my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran and the hon. Member for Rochdale refer to the positive intentions and hard work of many who work in and with the sector. It is vital.

Looked-after children have often had to deal with myriad challenges in their lives, so we should take seriously our obligation to minimise those challenges rather than add to them. Where possible, for instance, avenues other than children’s home accommodation might be more suitable to the needs of the children concerned. For instance, as we have heard, kinship care might be possible. Kinship care is not always fully understood and can be far more challenging than many people realise. For that reason, the SNP Scottish Government have provided additional support to kinship carers and were the first to introduce kinship care payments to ensure that children looked after by relatives, which I acknowledge is not always possible, are entitled, as they should be, to the same support as those placed with foster care families.

As my hon. Friend said, I am enthusiastic about the £10.1 million in support that the SNP Government provided to councils last year to increase kinship care allowances. Importantly, we have also extended support to eligible children on the edge of care, who are subject to what will be known from this month as a kinship care order. Because vulnerable children come in all varieties, we must consider their needs as a whole in deciding how best to deal with them.

As we have heard from a number of speakers, the circumstances leading to a child or young person being looked after or taken into the home of a relative can be heartbreaking, confusing and complex for the family as well as the child. If we can encourage a family relationship that provides some stability and support, we must do so, but like moving into care, such situations are significant and involve huge upheaval, and we need proper frameworks in place. The additional investment in Scotland recognises that we need to make practical provision for people who have had to struggle more than they should, in order to provide the stability that such children need and that some of the most vulnerable people in our society deserve.

Anne Swartz, chair of the Scottish Kinship Care Alliance, has applauded that way forward and rightly commended kinship carers’ tireless efforts to raise the bar. I applaud them as well as her for their efforts. It is important that such work continues. I look forward to hearing more about the work between the Scottish Kinship Care Alliance and the Scottish Government on that issue.

However, kinship care often might not be possible. Due to the variety of situations involved, some children might have to be looked after in children’s homes, and additional considerations need to be taken into account there. The hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) rightly pointed out that in some cases, the experience of children looked after in children’s homes can be very positive, and I agree. It is absolutely true, and we must not lose sight of it, but we must also acknowledge and work on the genuine issues and decide the best way forward.

Any action that we can take to minimise additional complication in the lives of children in such situations and maximise stability and support is vital, especially if we do so at the earliest stage possible, as it can have a profound impact on children’s lives. On the basis that a significant number of children in Scotland and the UK are affected by this debate, we must consider the matter as a whole and where the issues might be, so that we can move forward.

In England, the number of children being looked after is rising, which is not what any of us want. In the year ending 31 March 2015, nearly 70,000 children were looked after by local authorities in England, and the absolute number of looked-after children has increased by 6% since 2011. That number has increased steadily over the past seven years, and is now higher than at any point since 1985.

[Ann Coffey]

I am always anxious to learn from Scotland’s experience, because I am a Scot, but I have been waiting to hear the hon. Lady share experiences of accommodating children in children’s homes in Scotland. What observations does she have about the children being placed in those homes, and how far those children’s homes are from their home authority? What are the Scottish Government overcoming, and how do they work with the private sector? That is the focus of the debate.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I will come to some of the points raised by the hon. Lady, particularly the issue of distance, which I know is a concern of hers.

Most looked-after children in England are between 10 and 15 years old. More boys than girls are looked after, and the gender distribution seems relatively unchanging. Although the majority of the looked-after population is white, children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds appear to be over-represented in the looked-after population. Those figures are concerning. Those are our children, and we must be conscious of the impact on their lives.

As the hon. Member for Stockport and my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said, things in Scotland might be different—useful progress has been made in recent years—but we must all consider what needs to be done and can be done at any time, because there is always progress to be made. I am pleased that under the Scottish Government, the number of children in the care system has dropped for the third consecutive year. It means that there is a possibility that we are taking action earlier in children’s lives to address some concerns before they escalate.

Between August 2014 and July 2015, the number of looked-after children in Scotland decreased by 1%, and the number of children on the child protection register decreased by 4%. We recently introduced a successful programme to help find permanent homes for vulnerable youngsters, and the Centre for Excellence for Looked-After Children in Scotland will receive around £580,000 a year to support improvements in helping looked-after children find a permanent home, because we have seen the positive outcomes of doing so.

The permanence and care excellence programme aims to find permanent homes for children in care. It has been piloted by Aberdeen city and Renfrewshire councils, and importantly, it brings together multi-agency staff teams to build capacity so that we can continue to improve service and outcomes, which the hon. Member for Stockport was rightly concerned about, for some of our most vulnerable young people. I think we agree that it is vital that, wherever possible, children should be able to achieve a permanent home, including through family rehabilitation where appropriate, at the earliest opportunity.

Of course, there are still children and young people who spend too long being looked after or on the child protection register. Sometimes it is appropriate to consider children’s homes and how we might provide better support, and sometimes we must acknowledge that that support needs to extend beyond what it might have been traditionally. I echo my hon. Friend’s sentiments about the positive impact of extending the right to stay in foster, kinship or residential care settings up to the age of 21, and supporting care leavers up to the age of 26 to help them move to independent living. When children cannot live at home, we owe it to them to help them find a stable, loving environment where possible and move forward in their lives as they get older.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Minister for Children and Families (Edward Timpson)]

It is a pleasure to have you overseeing proceedings today, Mrs Gillan. I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) on securing this valuable debate. As she reminded us in her typically humble way she has pursued the issue with unstinting commitment and authority for many years. I know she shares my determination that we should do all we can to protect vulnerable children across England and beyond, whether they are in residential care or any other form of placement. Her commitment has been demonstrated in her work as chair of the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, and as a member of my Department’s quality expert group on children’s homes in 2012. She was an important contributor to that work.

Although we await the impending Narey review of residential care, the debate is a welcome opportunity to consider the action that has already been taken, and the further important work now under way to improve quality, transparency, oversight and decision making in children’s residential care. I acknowledge the speeches by the hon. Members for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk), for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson), for East Renfrewshire (Kirsten Oswald) and for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). I always accept an invitation from SNP Members to look at what they are doing north of the border, and it is one that I would extend in the opposite direction, particularly because of the work that we are doing to try to inject greater innovation into children’s services.

Although I want to keep my remarks to the discrete and important issue of residential care in England, there is one issue that I cannot allow to pass without challenge, and that is the care population in England. It is important not to oversimplify the reasons why a care population may fall or rise, and why there may be variations across the country. It is not always right to say that a rising care population is bad and a falling one is good. What matters is whether the right decisions are being made for each individual child. For example, in a high-performing practice-based social work area, staff can spot where children may be in a situation of neglect, and take them into care. If they are not performing well they may miss the opportunity, so that the child remains outside state care. That is not good for the child, but it would not necessarily be reflected in the statistics, if we look at them in a simplistic way.

Children’s homes are a vital part of the care landscape, particularly for older children and children for whom a family setting might not be the right placement. In England the law is very clear: where a child cannot live with their birth parents, the first port of call should be to look at the immediate family and see whether there is anyone who can support them, as an individual or as a group of relations or friends. That happens for many children in this country. Three quarters of young people in children’s homes are between 14 and 17 years old and two thirds are likely to have a significant mental health difficulty. There are some excellent examples of good practice in supporting them, with homes providing superb care. I know from personal experience, and from visiting children’s homes around the country, that that excellent care makes a real and lasting difference to children’s lives. Like other hon. Members, I pay tribute to the dedicated care staff who do all they can to help change lives for the better.

I am the first to acknowledge, however, that despite the concerted efforts of consecutive Governments not all children’s homes deliver as they should. As the hon. Member for Stockport set out, challenges remain. That is why, as we have heard, the Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Education asked Sir Martin Narey to undertake an independent review of children’s residential care. Sir Martin, as hon. Members know, worked in the Prison Service and was the chief executive of Barnardo’s. He is much respected in the field, and we look forward to receiving his report, whose purpose is to set out the role of residential care in the wider care system, and to make recommendations about how outcomes for children can be improved. It is a complex undertaking, but I expect the review to look at some key issues such as commissioning and the geographical distribution of children’s homes, which the hon. Member for Stockport rightly concentrated on in her speech.

The hon. Member for Washington and Sunderland West raised the issue of criminalisation, and I have seen the report by the Howard League for Penal Reform. Sir Martin Narey has also seen it, and I hope that he will be able to address the issue in his review. We will wait to see what he has to say. The review’s call for evidence has received a strong response and Sir Martin will report later this spring. Understandably, I do not want to pre-empt the independent review’s findings, but I am determined to use it as a catalyst to help to drive further improvements in residential care and I hope that all, including hon. Members present for the debate, will continue to lend their support and expertise to the process.

It is right to acknowledge, as the hon. Member for Stockport does, that we have made significant progress in improving the quality and safety of residential care. We have introduced an enhanced legislative framework and a new set of quality standards for children’s homes. We brought those standards in to move away from the de minimis approach and to focus much more on outcomes and what is being achieved for those young people. The standards are backed up by rigorous Ofsted inspection and they challenge managers and staff to apply their skills and professional judgment—that, to me, is important —to ensure that there is properly tailored, high-quality care for each and every child in their home, and to make it possible for children to reach their potential in a safe and secure environment. There is a protection of children standard, which requires homes to have the skills to identify and take effective action on concerns about a child’s welfare.

A £500,000 programme of training and support has been made available to help homes to embed those new standards, and to make that crucial shift to a more aspirational and outcome-focused way of working. Although it is too early to assess the full impact of the changes through the quality standards, the independent small-scale research that has been carried out on implementing the standards indicates that they have resulted in a greater focus on evidencing outcomes for young people, which is exactly what we wanted to see, and on the need to consult young people about improvements, so that they feel that they are part of their journey through care, rather than feeling that it is being “done” to them.

To that end, it is positive that 12% of the children’s homes in England inspected between 1 April 2015 and 30 September 2015 were rated outstanding for their overall effectiveness, which is an increase of five percentage points from the same period in the previous year. In addition, because 62% of those in residential care have clinically significant mental health difficulties, which is something we should never overlook, I am pleased that the Department of Health has commissioned its own expert group to develop new care pathways, so that children living in children’s homes can better access mental healthcare.

The NHS England five-year forward view for mental health, which was recently published, and local transformation plans bring focus and resources to meet the mental health needs of children, including those in children’s homes. I also welcome the forthcoming publication of the quality standard from the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence on attachment difficulties in children and young people who are looked after, adopted from care, in special guardianship, or on the edge of care. If professionals and others working with and caring for children in care, including in residential care, really understand how to address the presentation of attachment problems, significant progress can be made.

I will address the specific point made by the hon. Member for Stockport and other hon. Members about out-of-area placements. As the hon. Lady mentioned, in order to address that issue we have sought to strengthen protection for children placed out of area by ensuring that it is now the directors of children’s services who have oversight of all decisions to place a child in a distant placement, and local authorities should now consult the authority where they intend to place a child to ensure that the placement meets the child’s needs.

We should be clear that for some children a placement at distance may be right, due to risks associated with their own home area or, as the hon. Member for Rochdale pointed out, because of the need for a very specialised placement but, as has been highlighted, we should ensure that Ofsted and local authorities make sure the right placement is made for the right reason. Therefore, as the hon. Member for Stockport said, it is a concern that there are still instances where the supply of places distorts too many decisions.

That is why we have improved the transparency and quality of data regarding children missing from care, to ensure that Government and local authorities have much more reliable data when they try to tackle this issue. Local authorities are now required to tell us about all instances of children going missing from their placements, even those that last less than 24 hours, because those 24 hours could be crucial.

Turning specifically to children’s homes, in January 2014, we strengthened children’s home regulations regarding children going missing from a home. All children’s homes must have clear policies to prevent children from going missing and they must respond when children go missing. It is no good their simply acknowledging that fact on a piece of paper; there needs to be follow-up action. We have also beefed up arrangements for monthly independent monitoring visits to children’s homes, to make sure that such action happens. Those visits scrutinise standards of safeguarding and care, and reports on visits are now sent to Ofsted. Those reports are valuable to identify concerns, and also patterns, as Ofsted continues its inspection of every children’s home.

We have strengthened regulation to ensure that local agencies, including the police, are more aware of vulnerable children in their area and therefore are more able to protect them. Ofsted can now share information on the location of children’s homes with the police. That practice was established by the expert group and many of us were extremely surprised to find that it was not happening before. However, it is now in place. In addition, children’s homes must notify their local authority of all admissions and leavers.

In this debate, it is important to acknowledge that for a very small number of children a secure home is the best option to address the reasons why they go missing from care. That is why we are improving the availability of this specialised provision, in partnership with the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, the Local Government Association, the Youth Justice Board and the Secure Accommodation Network.

By the summer, we will have determined the best long-term commissioning arrangements for secure homes. In the interim, we have funded secure homes to raise their capacity and improve the skills of their staff. With Hampshire County Council we have established for the first time a central point of contact and source of support for all local authorities seeking secure placements. On top of that, a further £10 million-worth of funding, alongside action from NHS England, will strengthen the quality of the mental health support available to children in secure children’s homes. I know that is an area that the hon. Member for Stockport has a deep interest in, and I am happy to keep her informed of developments as they occur.

All of this work will help, but I share the hon. Lady’s interest in the uneven distribution of children’s homes. Local authorities remain responsible for ensuring a sufficient range of placements for looked-after children and for managing local markets, which includes managing children’s homes. However, as has been identified, in 2013-14, 60% of children’s homes were concentrated in just three regions, including what for many of us participating in this debate is the shared region of the north-west, which accounts for a quarter of all children’s homes.

I should add that before 2012 there was no comprehensive overview of the location, status, quality, ownership and track record of children’s homes in England. That is why, as the hon. Lady alluded to, we set about pulling together all that data for the first time ever in the children’s homes data pack, which is a hugely valuable resource that enables patterns, trends, gaps and the like to be more easily spotted and acted on. Those who are in the role of commissioning places should use that information to be much smarter and savvier about how they commission them, so that they are not always the ones who have to acquiesce; the providers should try to ensure that they shape their homes to meet the demand from every local authority.

In tackling the issue of uneven distribution, I agree very much with the hon. Lady about the value of joint work between local authorities in ensuring adequate provision of homes. Research commissioned by the Department for Education from the Institute of Public Care showed that in May 2015 most local authorities were taking part in a wide variety of commissioning consortia and partnership arrangements. For instance, there are 14 regional or sub-regional commissioning consortia for residential care, and typically authorities were able to achieve 4% to 5% in savings for placement costs as a result of those arrangements. However, I believe that they can go much further.

[Ann Coffey]

The Minister is quite right—in the north-west, Placements Northwest provides that information. The difficulty is getting local authorities into a more proactive commissioning role, so that their staff sit down together not only to exchange information but to say, “In five years’ time, we will need this number of children’s homes and this number of places.” Without support, it is very difficult for local authorities to work with each other to do that.

[Mrs Cheryl Gillan (in the Chair)]

Before I call the Minister, just for the information of Members here in Westminster Hall I will point out that I have had a report that we may have a vote shortly in the main Chamber. I leave it to the Minister and Ann Coffey to decide how long they speak, but I thought that it would be helpful to bring that information to your attention. I call the Minister to speak.

--- Later in debate ---

[Ann Coffey]

I thank the Minister for his reply. He has demonstrated yet again his complete and continuing commitment to improving the lives of looked-after children. He is a very experienced Minister—I think he has been in the role for four years—and he reflects the value of having a Minister in place for that length of time. It is an idea that should be considered for other positions.

I thank all other Members for their contributions. My hon. Friend the Member for Rochdale (Simon Danczuk) has also taken a long interest in this area, and he is right to remind everyone that residential children’s homes offer a very good-quality and much-needed provision. They are not a last resort; for some children, they should be a first resort. I thank the SNP Members for their observations on the situation in Scotland, which are always welcome. I also thank the shadow Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Washington and Sunderland West (Mrs Hodgson). She is also incredibly committed to this area, and has also been in post for quite a long time. It just shows the value of people being in post for a long time.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered children’s homes.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 7th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Nicky Morgan]

Havering local authority received £23 million of basic need funding for places between 2011 and 2015, which helped to create nearly 3,000 new places. It has also been allocated a further £47 million to create the places needed by 2018. I should also say that we are pleased that a new free school is scheduled to open in Romford this September. Concordia Academy will provide 630 additional primary places in the area, and I hope my hon. Friend will work with other providers to encourage more free schools to be built in the local area.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

T8. The recent, and latest, children’s home data-pack shows that there has been little change in the numbers of children placed at some distance from their home areas since 2012, despite the introduction of welcome new regulations. The underlying problem continues to be the unequal distribution of children’s homes across the country. What more can be done to support local authorities to work together and use their commissioning powers to ensure more local provision of children’s homes?

Children in Care

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 7th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

The hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) is right to express concern about the rising number of children taken into care and to ask whether more can be done to keep families together, but perhaps consideration should also be given, particularly in respect of older children in care homes, to whether the care system could be more flexible in supporting relationships with families, if that is what the child wants. In European countries such as Denmark, there tends to be a much stronger focus on prevention and family support, and that is characterised by the care system operating more flexibly around the family. Residential care is likely to be more local, allowing work with the family.

In March 2015, there were 6,570 children in children’s homes in England. They are likely to have had more placements than children in foster care and to have significant emotional, behavioural and social difficulties.

[Jeff Smith (Manchester, Withington) (Lab)]

As a children’s home visitor until my election here in May, I am very aware that, as my hon. Friend says, care homes are not the best environments for vulnerable young people, who often have mental health issues, to grow up in. I am sure she agrees that the best approach is to intervene before families go into crisis. Does she agree that unfair cuts to the most deprived local authorities, such as those in Manchester, make it much harder for the authorities with the greatest need to provide services such as Sure Start to the families with the most vulnerable children?

[Ann Coffey]

I agree absolutely with my hon. Friend, and the point he makes is absolutely right. To achieve prevention, funding is needed.

Children in children’s homes are more likely to have more significant problems. In October 2015, the Government announced that Sir Martin Narey would head an independent root-and-branch investigation into children’s residential care. The aim of the review, which I welcome, is to

“help put an end to a life of disadvantage for some of the most vulnerable children in care”.

The Minister will be aware that in 2012 the all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults, which I chair, conducted a joint inquiry into children missing from care. It looked at the incidence of children going missing from care homes and concluded that one of the biggest problems was the unequal distribution of such homes, as a result of which large numbers of vulnerable children were placed at a distance from their home area. Many placement decisions were last minute, driven by what was available at the time rather than by the needs of the child. This meant that the child was often not involved in planning. Children told our inquiry that they felt “dumped” in children’s homes many miles away from home. This increased their propensity to go missing and come to harm—from child sexual exploitation, for example.

An expert group on the quality of children’s homes was set up and reported to the Department for Education in 2012. The Government then published the first children’s homes data-pack in the same year. One of the key findings of the expert group was indeed that the pattern of supply of children’s homes was uneven across England. One reason for that could be that property prices were so much lower in some areas than others, leading companies to set up in low-cost areas to suit business plans rather than what is best for the children.

The latest figures show that 79% of homes are in the private or voluntary sector. In 2012, homes were charging up to £5,000 a week for children with complex needs. Some £1 billion a year is currently being spent by local authorities on children’s home places, and concerns have been expressed about the number of large private equity firms becoming involved.

The report from the Government’s expert group in 2012 made a number of recommendations to help remedy the unequal distribution in the market, and to mitigate the impacts of children being placed at a distance, but what has actually changed since 2012? In 2012, children’s homes were concentrated in the north-west, the west midlands and the south-east. For example, the north-west has 15% of the children’s homes population, but 25% of the children’s homes.

The 2014 children’s homes data-pack shows us that the picture has not changed in regard to location of homes and the number of children placed at a distance. In 2014, a third of children were still placed 20 miles or more from their home areas. It is disappointing that progress is slow. We still have the continuing problem of children being sent to where the homes are rather than the homes being where the children are. All this evidence paints a picture of a market that is run in the interests of the providers, not in the interests of children and young people.

I very much welcome the introduction by the Government of new regulations recommended by the expert group, particularly the need for a director of children’s services to approve a decision to place a child in a distant placement. However, I am not clear about how the effect of these regulations is being monitored for assessing better outcomes for safeguarding children, particularly those in distant placements. I would be grateful if the Minister provided some information on that.

The 2014 data-pack makes it clear that local authorities placing children far from home are not placing them in poor-quality provision, but that the main problem is one of distance. This means that the placing authority is unable to rely on any local knowledge or intelligence about the quality of homes or the suitability of their location. It also gives rise to significant travel times, limiting social work oversight, and the distance between the child and their family might limit relationships and undermine the scope of work with the family.

There are, of course, other issues, such as the quality of staffing, but it is the geographical locale of children’s homes that limits choice for social workers and for the child at the point of placement. Unsatisfactory placements of children only compound the difficulties that they may already have, adding to their distrust of the system and causing more to go missing, with the subsequent risk of harm involved.

Evidence continues to point to a failure of commissioning in relation to the unequal distribution of homes. After all, local authorities are the only buyers of these places, and commissioning cannot simply be the sum total of decisions made according to available capacity. It must be proactive, having regard to the longer-term needs of the children whom local authorities look after, now and in the future. As I said earlier, the European model, in which residential care is likely to be local, allows families to visit, which provides an opportunity for constructive work with parents. That approach aims to support the resources of the family. At present, families all too often feel that they have been identified as failing, and that all decisions have been taken away from them. Local provision is the key.

School Funding

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 5th November 2015 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I will be brief. The guaranteed unit of funding for Stockport is £4,229 per pupil. It ranks 144th out of 151 authorities for funding; it is one of the worst-funded authorities in England. The national funding average is £4,718. If we got that national funding average, we would have £18 million more to spend on education in Stockport, which is a lot of teachers and additional help.

The base funding that the authority gives to each pupil is £2,795; it then allocates additional funding for deprivation, special needs, and children in care. Adswood primary school in my constituency, which is a good school, gets £4,889 per pupil. The school serves an area of very high deprivation. Children come into the education system with poor language development, challenging behaviour and poor social skills; in addition, the school has 145 special educational needs children. It is a school that is under pressure: it is cutting staffing, cutting supply cover, renegotiating service contracts and not doing any more outdoor learning, which is very important for children whose families cannot offer the kind of opportunities that children in more advantaged areas enjoy. There is clearly not enough funding.

In another part of my constituency, there is Tithe Barn primary school, which serves a more advantaged area. It receives £3,493 per pupil from the authority, because it does not get any deprivation money and has very few pupils with special educational needs. That is much less than the national average. To ensure that all children have the same opportunity in Stockport, there is a case for far higher funding for Adswood, but that can only be done by taking money away from Tithe Barn, which is unfair, because the children in Heaton Moor are entitled to a good education. Stockport is faced with the endless problem of robbing Peter to pay Paul, and then robbing Paul to pay Peter.

[Julian Knight (Solihull) (Con)]

I add my congratulations to the hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart) on securing the debate. I understand that in one respect the constituency of Stockport is probably very similar to Solihull, in that pupils come into our area from other areas that receive more money, and they are educated in our area but the money does not come with them. Does the hon. Lady want that situation to be addressed?

[Ann Coffey]

Whether funding should follow pupils or whether funding should be given directly to schools or allocated by the authority is another issue, and I will not go there, if the hon. Gentleman does not mind.

The only way forward that I can see for Stockport is a fairer funding formula that recognises the basic cost of educating a child before additional money is allocated for deprivation and other factors. Otherwise, we are going to be in a situation that is unfair in authorities such as Stockport. I think we are all agreed that every child is entitled to the best educational opportunity, every child is entitled to a basically good education, and some children are entitled to more help with getting that education than other children. However, every child should have that opportunity and unless the issue of fair funding is addressed, and addressed quickly, children in my constituency—children both from advantaged and disadvantaged areas—are going to be disadvantaged, and, quite frankly, that is not good enough.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 26th October 2015 Commons Chamber

[Edward Timpson]

Where there is a specific safeguarding incident that either a governor or parent wants to raise, they should contact their local authority’s children’s services safeguarding team; where there are concerns about safeguarding processes at a school, they should be raised through the school complaints process; and if the safeguarding processes at the local authority are causing concern, they should be raised with Ofsted. In law, it is the local safeguarding children’s board that is responsible for developing and scrutinising local procedures and arrangements, but I am sure my hon. Friend will also know that the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has an excellent helpline to enable parents who have concerns about safeguarding in their school to raise them directly.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Ofsted recently praised Stockport academy for its outstanding work to keep pupils safe. The school uses a software application into which staff input any concern they have about a child, including if they are missing from a lesson. That means that immediate checks can be made to ensure that the child is in a safe place. Does the Minister agree that that approach to safeguarding, using modern technology, should be used by more schools?

[Edward Timpson]

I know how assiduous the hon. Lady has been in pursuing these matters, and it is good to hear of that initiative in her constituency from Stockport academy. I would like to learn more—as, I am sure, would the Department—about how it has achieved that, so that that best practice might be spread more widely. I am happy to discuss that with her further.