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.

Paediatric First Aid

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 15th December 2014 Westminster Hall

[Mark Hunter]

I welcome the right hon. Gentleman’s intervention. The Millie’s Trust campaign has done an awful lot of work in this regard and is satisfied, I think, as most hon. Members who have considered the issue would be, that this can be done at no great cost. We hope that the Minister will make it clear that the Government are serious about their intention to address the subject. As other hon. Members have already said, with the benefit of hindsight, there is a loophole in the regulation that needs to be addressed urgently.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this very important debate and congratulate Millie’s Trust on its campaigning work on this issue. Was any member of staff on the premises that day trained in paediatric first aid? If there was, what happened?

[Mark Hunter]

Yes, there was. I mentioned just a few moments ago that, of the two paediatric first-aiders who were at the school at the time, one chose not to be involved, by going to look after the other children in the nursery, while the second member of staff with a qualification did carry out the back slaps, but then left the baby and went via the nursery grounds on to the main road to wait for the ambulance to arrive. So the child was actually left without the continual support of somebody qualified in paediatric first aid, which of course the guidelines clearly stipulate.

[Ann Coffey]

Would not the member of staff trained in paediatric first aid have appreciated the seriousness of the situation?

[Mark Hunter]

The only answer I can give is that one would like to think so. I think any parent would have assumed that to be the case. However, I will come on to that and to what the coroner said in this regard as well.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that important intervention. I know that he has a lot of experience in these matters, which brings me on to one of the points that has been raised in this debate. It has been said that the regulations have been watered down since September. That is simply not the case. We have strengthened the regulations by saying that providers must take account, as I have said, of the number of children, the staff and the layout. Although we have removed the local authority approval, we replaced that with a requirement to meet the course content for British Red Cross and St John Ambulance, so based on good practice of those with expertise.

[Ann Coffey]

The Minister seems to be saying that he is not prepared to ensure that all staff working in a nursery have training in paediatric first aid. Two staff in this nursery were trained. Does he think that the nursery had trained enough staff in paediatric first aid? If he does not think that is so, why will he not bring in regulations to ensure that the number of paediatric staff that he thinks are suitable to be trained in a nursery are trained?

[Mr Gyimah]

That is a very good intervention. I am developing my case, but as I said at the outset, it is obvious that we need two things. We need enough staff trained in paediatric first aid, but also, importantly, we need to ensure that they are confident and capable of acting in an emergency, rather than panicking and not dealing with it. We do not want it to be the case in an emergency that there are a number of people who have a first aid certificate but it is not clear who is the point person who is capable and competent to deal with that kind of situation.

[Ann Coffey]

As the Minister will be aware, the campaign that Millie’s Trust is running is aimed at ensuring that every member of staff in a nursery is trained in paediatric first aid, because it believes, rightly, that that will protect children in all situations. The Minister has not answered my question; I have heard a lot of good intentions from him, but I return to the question that I asked him. If he does not think that it was sufficient, in the nursery in this case, to have only two members of staff trained in paediatric first aid, why will he not regulate to ensure that all members of staff working in a nursery are trained in paediatric first aid?

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady makes a very passionate point. As I said, I will develop my case further. What I am saying is that the requirement of the EYFS means that nurseries must think carefully about whether they have enough trained staff. That is about more than ensuring that they have enough trained staff to cover leave or staff sickness. We know that, in some instances, the speed at which a trained first-aider can attend to a child who needs help can be crucial in ensuring a good outcome for the child. We are already seeing how the new requirement is being delivered on by many nurseries, which are taking into account staff turnover, holidays and sickness.

The hon. Member for Cheadle mentioned the House of Commons nursery, which advertises that all its staff have first aid certificates. In fact, many nurseries continue to do that as a point of differentiation between them and other nurseries, so I would say that the strengthening of the EYFS is having an effect on the market. We are putting lots of other things in place to strengthen that even further.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Gyimah]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. He used Ireland as an example in his speech and, in the light of the intervention that he has made, I will refer to the Irish example. The Irish are actually moving towards the framework that we have in this country with the early years foundation stage. In response to a parliamentary question, they have said explicitly:

“The final draft will include a requirement that early years services have a person trained in first aid for children available at all times.”

The solution that we are adopting, which can best be described as one that allows nurseries to use their professional judgment in appointing the right staff to this vital role, is not as anomalous as the hon. Gentleman describes. I have said before and I will say again that not everyone who works in a nursery will be ideally suited to being a first-aider. Nurseries should ensure that their first-aiders have the confidence and the reliability to cope with an emergency, and I believe that the EYFS achieves that. At this stage, I do not feel that we need to amend those requirements further. I do, however, want to remain fully informed of the effects that those changes are having on the ground, and I know that the Department for Education plans to undertake a review of them next year.

I also know that the Thompsons were concerned that some nurseries might not know how to interpret the strengthened requirements. I am pleased that in direct response to the Millie’s Trust campaign, the Department for Education will issue in February new guidance for nurseries, setting out clearly what the expectations are and how nurseries can deliver on them effectively. I have asked the National Day Nurseries Association to help with that guidance. It will be identifying a number of nurseries delivering exemplary paediatric first aid practices, including methods used to ensure sufficiency of first aid-qualified staff, and providing case studies and videos to ensure that nurseries are absolutely clear on what the PFA requirements mean and how they should work in practice.

[Ann Coffey]

Despite what the Minister is saying, we could still have a situation in which a nursery, under his example, had decided that having two staff trained in paediatric first aid was sufficient—and a child died. That clearly shows that the way to protect children is not to rely on nurseries exercising their professional judgment, but to make it mandatory that all staff be trained in paediatric first aid. Otherwise, at some time in the future, there will be another inquest because a nursery has exercised its professional judgment. Sadly, for the child who might die in the future, that is not enough. Surely the Minister can accept that the way forward has to be making it mandatory for all staff in nurseries to have first aid training. We cannot leave this matter just to the professional judgment of individual nurseries.

[Mr Gyimah]

The hon. Lady makes another very passionate intervention. Of course we want to ensure that the requirements in the EYFS are being delivered on in every nursery. As she rightly points out, we do not want just to leave that to the nursery’s professional judgment on its own. We should remember that Ofsted regulates and inspects all early years provision. Before a nursery can open, Ofsted checks that it meets all the registration requirements, including those for first aid. It also inspects all nurseries on how they meet the EYFS requirements, including those for paediatric first aid.

If a nursery fails to meet the requirements on first aid, that will impact on Ofsted’s inspection judgment; as anyone who has looked at the nursery market will know, nurseries crave a good judgment from Ofsted because it is a point of differentiation in the market. Ofsted’s judgment is therefore really important. If the nursery does not meet the requirements on first aid, Ofsted will respond with appropriate steps. That may include giving the nursery a short time to meet the requirements. Where necessary, Ofsted can take enforcement action.

[Mr Graham Brady in the Chair]

To ensure we have consistency of practice in the sector, I would like to hear from professional bodies and training providers about how they support nurseries in providing paediatric first aid. I would be delighted to discuss the guidance further when I meet Mr and Mrs Thompson later today. The guidance will be published next year, and I very much want to have their input and involvement.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 1st December 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gyimah]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her post, but I do not agree with the numbers she cites. In fact, the pay of nursery staff has gone up, according to independent statistics. More important, most of the provision is in the private sector. The Government cannot prescribe wages for people in the private sector, but we can cut taxes so that people can keep more of what they earn, and that is why we have raised the personal allowance to £10,000.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

6. What recent assessment she has made of the vulnerability of children missing from school and home to child sexual exploitation.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)]

Nothing is more important than keeping children safe. To better protect missing children, we have introduced tougher statutory guidance and regulations, improved national data collection and published new practice standards for social workers. Ofsted has found that many, but not enough, local authorities are making progress, so we will continue to establish where that is not happening, and why, and will take whatever steps are necessary to ensure children’s safety.

[Ann Coffey]

A recent Ofsted report entitled “The sexual exploitation of children: it couldn’t happen here, could it?” said that most local authorities inspected are not making the connection between child sexual exploitation and children missing from school. Does the Minister agree that every local authority should keep a centrally held persistent absence list that could be cross-referenced by police and children’s services to identify children at risk and patterns of local child sexual exploitation?

[Mr Timpson]

I begin by thanking the hon. Lady and acknowledging the significant and important contribution she has made over a long period, and more recently through her report “Real Voices” on child exploitation in Greater Manchester. It poses many of the right questions, as she has this afternoon. I agree that it is absolutely right not only that all schools must inform the local authority of pupils who are missing education but that local authorities must identify pupils missing from school and take action as a result. Those duties already exist and Ofsted’s thematic review made it clear that in many cases that was not happening because of very basic practice failures across a range of agencies and organisations. The number of persistently absent children has dropped by 40% since 2010, but we need to highlight even more those children who are particularly vulnerable for the reasons the hon. Lady has outlined. I know I have a meeting with her in a week or two to discuss these matters further and I look forward to having a conversation to see what progress we can make.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 24th March 2014 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

As ever, my hon. Friend is absolutely right: the decision as to what constitutes exceptional circumstances is a matter for the head teacher. It is important, however, to stress that children wherever possible should be in school and learning, and a drive to reduce truancy and push up the number of days and hours that children spend in school is at the heart of our long-term plan to raise standards in our state schools.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

In 2013, Ofsted estimated that more than 10,000 children were missing from education—children more likely to have special educational needs and to be more vulnerable to child sexual exploitation. Will the Secretary of State look at ways in which the extent of the problem and the risk to the children involved can be better monitored, such as asking local safeguarding children boards to include in their annual reports information on children missing from school?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a very good point. The work that she has done on emphasising how much better a job we can do to help vulnerable children and young people has been exemplary, and I very much take her point to heart. I stress that local safeguarding children boards have had a bad press recently but it is important that we use all the agencies at our disposal to try to ensure that the most vulnerable are in school, where they can benefit from great education and appropriate pastoral support.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 10th February 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Buckland]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady. She and I have spoken about these issues in the past, and I know that she shares on behalf of her constituents the aspirations that I have for mine.

Other hon. Members have mentioned implementation, but it is important to reiterate the point. I stress the importance of the pilot scheme for the single point of redress as regards the appeals mechanism for parents who have met with a refusal or a decision that is not, in their view, in the interests of the child they look after. I argued long and hard with my hon. Friend the Minister for a streamlining of the system. My worry was that despite the proper attempt to bring health, education and social care together, the courts and tribunal system would still be fragmented in the sense of people having to launch and lodge appeals in different formats.

My hon. Friend has rightly placed great emphasis on mediation. I support the provisions that relate to the use of mediation for parents, because we do not want more of the adversarial combat that has bedevilled the fight that many families have had to undergo to obtain SEN provision. It is important that the pilot becomes a reality, that the intentions in the Bill are not left to lie gathering dust, and that there is a proper evaluation of the pilot so that, if it proves necessary, we can go down the road of having a single point of redress provided by the first-tier tribunal. That is important in making the system user-friendly, simple, streamlined and clear.

Some of the most important amendments deal with the extension of the duty on local authorities to identify not only children and young people with SEN but all children and young people with a disability. That is a hugely important concession that goes a long way towards satisfying the concerns of those of us who were worried about what happens to children and young people who are, for example, on school action or school action plus and would not be caught by the provisions. These amendments, which are replicated throughout the Bill, will make a huge difference to the lives of young people with a disability. They also give added impetus to the need for early identification of a health issue. Leaving these matters until full-time education is not good enough when there is so much more we can do during the early years and, indeed, the very early years to identify disability so that, way before the child gets to school, action is taken not only to diagnose the condition, whatever it may be, but to assist them and their family with its consequences.

I warmly welcome the whole-family approach that is now being taken in the context of carers. Together with other hon. Members, I supported amendments on young carers. I was very pleased that the recommendations about parent carers made by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, on which I serve, were also taken up in the other place. We now genuinely have a whole-family approach to the assessment of carers, and that is absolutely vital if we are really going to make a change on the ground.

My hon. Friend the Minister mentioned the position of young people in detention. The glaring deficiency in the Bill as originally drafted has now been amply dealt with by the very comprehensive amendments that were accepted in the other place. My friend Lord Ramsbotham deserves huge credit for the tireless work that he does on this and other matters. Particularly important is the fact that the disability of difficulty with speech and language communication will now be identified as a health issue at the earliest possible stage, and I think that will have hugely positive consequences for those young people affected.

I think we can say that this is a Bill of which we can be justly proud and that we will be able to look back on it in the same way we look back on the Education Act 1981, which first legislated on the SEN concepts with which we are now so familiar. That Act is now being succeeded by a Bill that takes on those concepts for a new generation and develops them in a humane, comprehensive and effective way. As I have said, however, if we do not get the implementation right on the ground, and if the local offers I expect to appear across the country are no more than mere signposting, we will have failed. To use a well-worn phrase, this is not the end or the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning when it comes to judging the effectiveness of this historic Bill.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I welcome the “staying put” Lords amendment 128, which means that a young person can stay with their foster carers until they are 21. The Fostering Network ran an excellent campaign, bringing to our attention the many examples of young people in care who may have experienced poor parental care and neglect, who often go into care for the first time in their early teens and who need more time and stability to prepare for adult life. It is good that they will now be able to stay—provided they wish to do so, of course—with foster parents who will see them through that transition to independence. That has been very much welcomed by foster carers in my constituency.

I also congratulate the Earl of Listowel on his determined efforts to persuade the Minister to change his mind after his initial rebuff to hon. Members. It was clear that the Minister had great sympathy with the proposal and it is to his credit that he was able to find the money to underpin it. I regret that Paul Goggins, who, sadly, died earlier this year and ran a tremendous campaign on the issue, is not here to enjoy its successful conclusion.

I want to raise an issue with regard to the draft guidance issued on 4 February to support the Bill’s Third Reading in the House of Lords. A paragraph on preparations for ceasing to be looked after states that

“local authorities should start discussions with the young person and foster carer regarding the option of staying put as early as possible, ideally before the young person reaches the age of 16.”

Another part of the guidance states that there is no minimum time the young person needs to have lived with their foster carer prior to turning 18. One of my slight concerns about the way in which the guidance is written is that it might be interpreted as only being a consideration in a long-standing foster placement, whereas the provision gives young people the option to stay put with foster parents, even if they have only been there for a few weeks. It is important that this is seen as an option for those vulnerable young people who may have left a children’s home aged 16 and were not able to cope in the accommodation they were then offered. Foster care would be a good option for some of those young people in order to help put them back on their feet.

[Mr Timpson]

The hon. Lady makes a very important point. Although she correctly notes that this is draft guidance that is subject to further discussion, I believe that, in the main, it reflects the Bill well. I am, of course, happy to take up any specific concerns, particularly that which she has raised this evening.

[Ann Coffey]

I thank the Minister for that. I also welcome his amendments, which mean that Ofsted will be able to inspect children’s homes for good standards rather than minimum standards. It seemed strange that one of the young girls involved in the child sexual exploitation case in Rochdale had run away 100 times from a children’s home, yet that home was deemed “good” by an Ofsted inspection. I hope that will not happen again.

I very much look forward to the Minister’s proposals for introducing a reform package for the qualifications and training of staff working in children’s homes. It cannot be right that the most damaged children are often cared for by the least qualified staff. I wonder whether he might give us a time scale for bringing forward those proposals.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 5th December 2013 Commons Chamber

The Secretary of State was asked—

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

1. What recent meetings he has had with representatives of the retail sector.

[The Minister of State, Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Michael Fallon)]

I regularly meet representatives of the retail sector. I attend the retail policy forum, which meets three times a year, and I recently spoke at the Association of Convenience Stores’ heart of the community conference. As part of small business Saturday, I will visit independent shops in Westerham this weekend and I encourage all colleagues to support this hugely important campaign.

[Ann Coffey]

The rise in e-commerce and online sales is changing our shopping habits and impacting on our high streets. What more can the Minister do to encourage co-operation between big retailers, independent retailers and councils to take advantage of the opportunities offered by developing technology to transform our high streets into exciting community spaces for the 21st century?

[Michael Fallon]

I agree with the hon. Lady about the huge opportunity here. We are keen to help small businesses in particular to trade online. With the help of my Department, Go ON UK is piloting a programme to help to provide businesses with the skills to transact online, including using mobile technologies to exploit the increasing use of smartphones in e-commerce. That will roll out nationally next spring. The Technology Strategy Board carried out a successful digital high street pilot last year in Hereford and it is currently exploring how to build on that.

Daniel Pelka

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 17th October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Geoffrey Robinson (Coventry North West) (Lab)]

Let me say, Mr Speaker, how graced we are by your again being in the Chair for our debate.

This is a very important debate. I hope that one or two other Members who have an interest, apart from the Minister, to whom I spoke two weeks ago, will find it beneficial. I labelled it “The Lessons of Daniel Pelka in Coventry”, which happens to be my own constituency. It is a horrid shock to MPs who have never had anything like this happen in their constituency before but have to get to grips with it as part of the job. As so much is taking place at the moment around the discussion groups, this debate is a unique opportunity for us, as a small group in the House, to see what might be done and what might be improved. One thing is for sure: there has been report after report, study after study, and still we get these dreadful incidents from time to time, all too frequently.

Some people say to me, “It will always happen—don’t worry about it. It’s bound to happen and you can’t stop it.” I find that repugnant. I cannot believe that Daniel Pelka, whose home was visited 27 times following domestic violence incidents, who turned up at school getting thinner and thinner, who was showing bruises and was clearly being maltreated in every other respect, needed to die. I cannot accept it; it seems ludicrous to me. We have to find a much better way of dealing with the situation in an improved way, step by step; I am not saying that it can all be put right at once. I want to put forward four points for consideration, if not action.

I very much thank my hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey), who is a great expert in this area, and has done a tremendous amount and mounted campaign after campaign on it, for suggesting that my focus in terms of the Coventry report—she had read before I did, typically—should be on the fact that nobody spoke to the child. The poor child was going to school starving, being beaten up, and in the end clubbed and killed, and nobody tried to speak to him. One of the answers given is that he was Polish. Well, there are Polish-speaking people we could draw on, as we saw the other night in Wembley—although they are not exactly the experts that we would want for that.

The first thing we have to do is to make it very clear that in any one of these cases where there is a failure to speak to the child, consequences should follow. Nobody wants witch hunts or people being sacked, but they clearly cannot follow the basic instructions for getting into a dialogue with the child, who admittedly may be too young.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Mr Robinson]

I am delighted to do so.

[Ann Coffey]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this very important debate. We all want to see life made better for some of our most abused children. A few weeks ago I visited an organisation called Triangle in Brighton, which is strongly committed to helping children who have been harmed and abused to communicate their experiences, and I saw the extraordinary work that it does using drawings. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is very important that that kind of expertise is made available throughout the United Kingdom so that we can better help children to communicate their experiences and intervene in their lives before they are abused and killed?

[Mr Robinson]

I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. Indeed, it might have been plagiarism—I hope that is not an inappropriate word—but that was another idea I was going to take from her. We should have not one huge centre but various centres in which creative means of communicating with difficult children are imaginatively developed and explored. The day before Daniel Pelka died, a teacher was found in another school in Coventry—there are loads of them—to talk to him. She happened to be Polish and was able to speak the language, but that is not good enough. It is pathetic that things got to that stage.

I agree with my hon. Friend, so let us make that our No.1 point: children must be talked to and we should develop a whole area of useful specialisations, as opposed to a load of paper that gets churned out continually. Children could tell us what their parents look like by using diagrams. We might start to learn something and it could tell quite a story.

Children and Families Bill

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 11th June 2013 Commons Chamber

[Fiona Bruce]

I will not take any other interventions, because it would reduce the time for other speakers.

The Department for Education’s sex and relationships education guidance honours the involvement of parents, making plain the need for parental involvement in the content of PSHE. It states:

“Parents are the key people in teaching their children about sex and relationships, maintaining the culture and ethos of the family, helping their children cope with the emotional and physical aspects of growing up, and preparing them for the challenges and responsibilities that sexual maturity brings…schools should always work in partnership with parents, consulting them regularly on the content of sex and relationship education programmes.”

The majority of respondents to the recent Government consultation on PSHE believed that parental engagement was crucial, as was providing parents with every possible and practical opportunity to interact and engage with PSHE provision.

Although we should understand the important role that sex education provides, we should not aspire for it narrowly within one context. Current procedures provide a mechanism for drawing in parents who perhaps do not talk to their children about sex and relationships, and encourage those who do to continue with that. At present, all secondary schools must provide sex education by law, and although there is no centrally determined curriculum, governors and teachers, in conversation and consultation with parents, should develop a curriculum on a school-by-school basis, according to the ethos of the school. When properly applied, that decentralised approach means that this sensitive subject can be framed in a manner that has regard for parental views and concerns.If the curriculum were set centrally, that could and probably would disappear.

Currently, a good school should always contact parents to let them know when the sex education curriculum is taught, precisely so that they can follow up with their own conversations at home. The current procedures encourage parental involvement, but new clause 20 would serve only to diminish it. I cannot agree that that is the right approach at a time when many people are concerned that we live in a society in which opportunities for parental involvement and influence need strengthening and encouraging, not reducing and diminishing. Throughout this afternoon’s debate, I have repeatedly heard Ministers and others say how important it is to take into account parents’ views with regard to other aspects of education. Surely that should apply in this critical area of a child’s education.

That does not mean that I am complacent about the current approach—far from it. There is tremendous room for improvement in our relationship and sex education, not least the fact that greater emphasis needs to be placed on the duty to consult parents and communicate clearly with them about what is being taught. Some head teachers believe they must exclusively use whatever resources are recommended by their local authority, but in fact a plethora of other good materials provided by outside agencies can be used, such as the Evaluate: Informing Choice programme. Other head teachers do not accept that the decision should be for the governing body, which has a vital role. I encourage governors actively to take up that role in all schools.

New clause 20 would be a mistake and I hope the Government firmly reject it. However, I ask Ministers to tell us what plans the Government have to make the current decentralised approach to the critical area of sex education work more effectively, so that parents are more and not less involved, as is intended, and so help our next generation to form and sustain healthy, fulfilling and enduring personal relationships and family lives.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I rise to speak to new clause 4, which stands in the name of my right hon. Friend the Member for Wythenshawe and Sale East (Paul Goggins), who unfortunately cannot be in the Chamber because of a prior commitment. He has been a tremendous campaigner, along with the Fostering Network, for allowing young people leaving care to remain with their foster carers until they are at least 21. Currently, children in care leave on or before their 18th birthday, which usually means that children in foster care must leave their foster carer. Every year, hundreds of the most vulnerable young people have to leave home at age 17, but the average age for leaving home in the UK is 24.

The statistics on outcomes for care leavers are not good. One third of those living on the streets have a background in care, and almost a quarter of the adult prison population have spent time in care. Local authorities have a duty in care planning guidance to ensure that young people leave their foster care when they are ready and not before, but in 2011-12 only 320 young people—5%—remained with their foster carers after they reached age 18. Research shows that the longer a young person can stay with a foster family, the more successful they are later.

In 2008, the Labour Government set up a “staying put” pilot to assess the benefits of allowing children to stay in care and with foster carers. The pilot reported in 2012 and found that established family relationships and stability make a positive difference to young people in care as they become adults. That is not a surprising outcome—one of the basic values of our culture is the importance of families in providing a nurturing and secure base for young people to make the transition to independence. Not only that, but foster families can become families for life. My aunt and uncle had long-term foster children. To this day, contact continues, as we would expect in other families.

However, there have been no moves to roll out that scheme. It has been left to councils to decide what provision to fund. The provision is therefore a power a council can choose to exercise rather than a duty to provide a service. In effect, it is a postcode lottery. We have taken the responsibility of parenting those children, having judged that their parents’ care is not good enough. In doing so, we have effectively said that the care system will provide better parenting.

Since 2010, the Government have stressed the importance of treating looked-after children the same as we would treat our own children. Planning for the transition of care leavers to adulthood should be founded on the principle: is this good enough for my own child?

Many young people in care have experienced poor parental care, emotional neglect and abuse, and disruptive care placements. An increasing number of young people are coming into care in their early teens, often with complex needs. The care system is failing these children. They are often the ones who run away or go missing, making them vulnerable to harm, including child sexual exploitation. It is recognised that we need to cut the number of out-of-area placements, with local authorities making placements nearer home. The provision of supported foster placements will need to be considered as an alternative to children’s home placements many miles away, so that we can have more vulnerable children in foster care at 18. Although they are adults at 18, they are still vulnerable adults, which is demonstrated by the statistics I quoted earlier. What difference have we made as parents if children in our care end up on the streets, in jail or with disabling mental health problems—another generation doomed to mirror the lives of their parents?

Why would we not let them stay with their foster carers for those important extra three years? Cost must of course be a calculation, but it is minimal. Loughborough university calculated that on average it cost only £17,500 per local authority per year. There will be a far bigger public cost in providing services to a future generation of failing parents, or in helping young people through drug and alcohol addiction. The human cost in misery is incalculable, as is the cost to society in the lost opportunities of the contribution that might have been made if vulnerable young people had been better supported into independence.

For many young people, their scarring experiences will make their life a tough one. The statistics speak for themselves: young people leaving care need more support, not less. Our amendment would ensure that they receive that continuing support by being allowed to stay in foster care until they are 21 if they want to. I look forward to a positive response from the Minister.

[Dr Sarah Wollaston (Totnes) (Con)]

I am proud to be a patron of Devon Rape Crisis, which, like all of us in this House, is deeply concerned about sexual violence against women and girls. All of us in this House are particularly concerned about the extent to which young people are accessing their information about sex from violent pornography. The influence of violent pornography is to normalise distorted relationships. It teaches some young men that it is normal for women to enjoy violent sex, and to have a total lack of understanding about what constitutes consent. Disturbingly, many young women are being pressured into accepting deeply abnormal and often very violent relationships.

I completely accept that many parents wish to take on the role of delivering sensitive teaching on relationships in a home environment, but let us be absolutely clear that that is not happening for many young girls. The recent outrages in Oxford and in too many of our towns show that young women are being predated on by violent and often much older men. Young women have had no training in how to say no, or an understanding that it is okay to say no. Too often, there is no one for them to confide in. I put it to the House, therefore, that we need to have sex and relationships education in our curriculum: if it is not there, it will not happen. Too often when we teach sex in schools, it is about plumbing and prevention.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Free the Children is a wonderful charity and I look forward to supporting it later this evening.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

The Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mr Timpson), who has responsibility for children’s matters, is concerned about the high numbers of children placed in children’s homes some distance outside their local areas, the difficulty of supporting those children, and their vulnerability to child sexual exploitation. I am pleased that he is planning to make changes to tackle that problem, but will he update hon. Members on progress?

[Mr Timpson]

I once again express my gratitude to the hon. Lady for the serious and significant contribution she has made to the work my Department has done to try to tackle the important problem of children who are placed out of area in residential care—the number is almost 50%, which is far too high. That is why we have already made one change, whereby Ofsted must now report to police the location of all children’s homes. We will go further with changes to much of the regulatory framework to improve the “out of sight, out of mind” culture. I am happy to discuss with her in the coming weeks how we implement that, as I have discussed it with her in the past. An announcement will be made very shortly.

Children and Families Bill

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

The principle that the interests of the child are paramount, which is enshrined in the Children Act 1989, should underpin all our legislation, policy making and attitudes to children. I therefore welcome the strengthening of the role of the Children’s Commissioner by giving a statutory remit to promote and protect children’s rights. It is crucial that this strengthened mandate is underpinned by sufficient resources.

The Children’s Commissioner’s recent report exposed the extent of child sexual exploitation in this country. I had hoped that the Bill would contain some provision further to support child witnesses in court. I will take a couple of minutes to explain why, giving an example that shocked me deeply—that of a young girl who was the alleged victim of anal rape before the age of three. The girl was interviewed on video six months after the initial disclosure. Aged four, she was brought to court for a live cross-examination via video link about the matters described in the video a year earlier.

To get to court on time, the girl had to be woken at 6 o’clock. However, when she arrived, the court was not ready for her and, after waiting all day, she was sent home. The cross-examination took place the following afternoon, with difficult-to-follow questioning, including the use of double negatives. The prosecution did not apply for a registered intermediary. During cross-examination no one except the judge intervened to ask if the child needed a break. How can this happen in the name of justice in our courts?

The Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 introduced the use of a wide range of special measures for vulnerable witnesses. The use of special measures is important as children do not approach communication in the same way as adults. NSPCC recent research showed that only 2% of young witnesses receive support from registered intermediaries, and also that at least half of young witnesses reported being unable to understand some of the questions that they were asked in court. I agree with the NSPCC that children who have been the victim of abuse should always be supported by a registered intermediary, as they have been shown to improve the administration of justice, ensuring that questioning and cross-examination practice maximises the quality of victim evidence. Furthermore and very importantly, the court experience for the child is less traumatic.

Obstacles to implementing section 28 of the 1999 Act must be overcome as rapidly as possible. Governments have been delaying for practical reasons the implementation of the special measures provision, which would allow a young child’s evidence, including cross-examination, to be obtained out of court and in advance of a trial. This would reduce delays in the start of trials and in the presentation of evidence at trial, a cause of great distress to child witnesses.

[Tim Loughton]

I strongly support the case that the hon. Lady is making, but that applies to older children as well, who are deterred from coming forward with their evidence on the basis that they will be re-traumatised in child sexual exploitation cases, of which there are some notorious ones currently under way. We need to make the system far more child-friendly to enable those children to make their statements that can nail the perpetrators in court, and not make them go through those traumatic events all over again in front of multiple barristers, as can so often be the case. I strongly support the point that the hon. Lady is making.

[Ann Coffey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that. What he says is quite right. It is a problem that goes right through the system, from the youngest to the oldest children. They are put through a terrible trauma, and it is sad that the measures that were introduced in 1999 are not being used in the courts. Something must be done about that.

I welcome the measures to reduce delays in adoptions. Concerns have been expressed about delays in adoption as a result of ideological correctness and because of the requirement in section 1(5) of the Adoption and Children Act 2002 to give

“due consideration to the child’s religious persuasion, racial origin and cultural and linguistic background”

when making an adoption placement. The previous Government made it clear that this did not mean that a child should always be matched with a family of their ethnic origin or that this consideration overrode other welfare interests. Clause 2 removes that requirement. If that clarifies that this is not an overriding consideration in placement, that it is welcome. However, the requirement remains to consider the child’s age, sex, background and any of the child’s characteristics that the court or agency considers relevant when making a placement, and of course that will include religion and race. The Children’s Commissioner in her new role has a statutory responsibility to protect children’s rights, including the right for children to learn about and enjoy their own culture. So I do not think this issue can be resolved by legislation alone. It is more a matter of good adoption practice, with the individual needs of the child being paramount.

Just as the issue of ethnicity is complex, so is the issue of contact in adoption placements. This is certainly the experience of constituents of mine, who were informed by the local authority that placed the children for adoption that there was to be a voluntary letter box agreement—that is, letters are exchanged on an agreed basis. The way that that is being implemented was causing a great deal of distress. When I asked my constituents why they continued with this, as they clearly thought it was not in the best interests of the child, they said:

“You are correct, the agreement is voluntary and not legally enforceable. Our concern is this: the LA”—

the local authority—

“have said that although the agreement is not legally enforceable, birth parents have the right to apply for leave of court to get a contact order and so we were to be careful what we agreed to. This is written in a leaflet they gave us after we were told of what the contact arrangements would be. I will be quite honest with you . . . we feel very vulnerable and I have been having sleepless nights worrying about what we are to do. We can’t continue an agreement that is not in the best interests of our children but we feel that we have to continue it as we feel threatened.”

What a situation for adopters to be in!

I am unclear whether clause 8 will help my constituents. It may be that this is an issue of good practice and ensuring that adopters have the proper support. The new helpline manned by adopters, which was announced in September, will be very much welcomed by my constituents.

I tabled a written question on the number of children returning to care as a result of adoption breakdown. I was told that the Department for Education does not currently collect those figures but will do so from 2014. I think that it is important that there is much better research into what is needed to support an adoption placement and into the factors in adoption breakdown, which can take many forms, including sending children to boarding school, youth custody, returning to birth parents, admission to psychiatric units and sleeping on a friend’s sofa.

I understand that research is being undertaken by the university of Bristol. The demands on modern-day adopters are perhaps summed up by its introduction:

“More children have been entering care because of maternal drug/alcohol misuse, and the impact of such use during pregnancy and later parental neglect have detrimental developmental effects. Attachment difficulties/disorders and the impact of early trauma have all risen to prominence and been linked with placement disruption.”

We need that research. We have a shortage of adopters, and perhaps more families would be willing to adopt if they could be reassured that they would get the support they need. We will need a range of different care models, including adoption, family-based and residential, to meet the complex needs of children coming into our care. Adoption will always be the best placement for some children. We need to do all we can to support the therapeutic parenting we are asking of many adopters.

In conclusion, we must also do more to improve the quality of all our care placements so that when children come into the care system because their parenting is not good enough, they are provided with the best possible opportunities and do not again face poor care because of poor parenting in the care system.