School Funding Reform

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I had the pleasure of visiting Ian Ramsey school, which is a superb school with great leadership that also enjoys the advocacy of a great constituency Member. Like every other school, it should be able to apply and should know this autumn.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

The Secretary of State said in his statement that he would police the new privately financed school building programme to ensure there are not the excessive costs incurred by previous privately financed schemes. Can he give some more detail about how he intends to do that?

[Michael Gove]

We have benefited from looking at some of the PFI schemes that were inaugurated under the previous Government. The James review drew various appropriate lessons about how we could ensure, through standardised design and more effective procurement, that we can save money right at the beginning of any process. My colleagues in the Treasury have today published a report revealing how it has managed to bear down on costs in existing PFI schemes, never mind new ones. Let me take this opportunity to pay tribute to Ministers in the Treasury, and to the campaigning energy of my hon. Friend the Member for Hereford and South Herefordshire (Jesse Norman). Together, they have ensured that we will make sure that PFI works in the interests of the whole public.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 11th July 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

I share the hon. Gentleman’s concern, which is why Ofqual has ensured that there will be an inquiry into the mistakes made by the awarding bodies. This is not the first year, and it might not be the last, in which awarding bodies made mistakes in examinations, but it is a cause of heartbreak for every family affected. We inherited an examination system from the previous Government that needed reform. That is why we are changing both the way Ofqual operates and the way in which awarding bodies are held to account.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

4. What representations he has received on the report “Out of Mind, Out of Sight” issued by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

The CEOP thematic assessment has been widely welcomed as an important contribution to the tackling of child sexual exploitation. As available data are limited, the report does not provide a complete picture of this horrific abuse, but it does help us to understand much better the scale, nature and complexity of the issues that we are facing. As the hon. Lady knows, the Government are working with national and local partners to develop a comprehensive action plan, which we will publish this autumn.

[Ann Coffey]

The CEOP report says that sexually exploited children frequently go missing or run away, but, the Children’s Society report “Make Runaways Safe”, which was published today, says that two thirds of runaway children are not reported missing. One of its most disturbing findings is that most runaway children do not seek help because they do not feel that there is anyone whom they can trust. When drawing up his action plan, will the Minister take full account of the findings of both those reports?

[Tim Loughton]

I pay tribute to the hon. Lady again for the immense amount of work that she has done. She and I recently took part in a debate on the subject in Westminster Hall. She is right to draw attention to the strong link between runaway children and sexual exploitation, and that will certainly feature in the action plan we are drawing up. The Children’s Society report, which was published today, makes even more harrowing reading and reminds us of the urgency of the task. According to the report, children as young as eight are subjected to sexual exploitation, which is completely unacceptable.

Young Runaways (Sexual Exploitation)

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 21st June 2011 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner.

This debate is timely, given the growing number of cases of sexual exploitation and grooming of children that have recently hit the headlines in Greater Manchester and elsewhere. Sadly, the latest case involves young girls in the Stockport area, many of whom are repeat runaways. Every five minutes, a child runs away from home or care, and I support the children’s charities’ view that if we can reduce the massive numbers of children and young people running away and going missing from home and care, we can reduce the number of children at risk from violence, drugs, alcohol, sexual exploitation and grooming. It is estimated that 100,000 children run away overnight every year before the age of 16. Missing children will be protected only when they are seen as a priority for every local authority, police force, school, community and youth worker in every part of the country.

I want to thank the Manchester Evening News and its reporter, Jen Williams, for doing a superb job in reporting the plight of Greater Manchester’s runaway and missing children in February this year, including the invaluable role of the Safe in the City project in working with runaways. People in our region were stunned to read that there were 11,819 police reports of children missing in Greater Manchester last year. Of these, 2,281 cases related to children aged 11 or younger. Another shocking figure is that Stockport has the highest number of reports to the police of children running from care across the whole of Greater Manchester at 41% against the regional average of 27%. That reflects not only the higher number of children’s homes in the borough, but the high risk to children living in the borough.

We know from Children’s Society research that children in care are three times more likely to run away and are more likely to appear in police statistics. However, for reasons that I will come to later, there is clear evidence that the number of children in care missing for more than 24 hours is greatly unreported to the Department for Education. I am also concerned, as the Children’s Society research shows, that two thirds of children who run away from their own homes are not reported missing by their parents, meaning that the number of episodes is greater than the available data suggest.

Running away is an important indicator that things are not right in a child’s life. Children’s charities estimate that one in five of those who run away are at risk from serious harm, and many will become involved in the things that worry parents and society the most—drugs, alcohol and falling prey to sexual predators. The recent Barnardo’s report, “Puppet on a string”, states that “going missing” and “disengagement from education” can be key indicators

“that a child is being groomed for sexual exploitation.”

It adds that 51% of the sexually exploited children it was working with when the survey was conducted

“went missing on a regular basis.”

[Sarah Newton (Truro and Falmouth) (Con)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. There is enormous support across the House for what she is saying. The issue is of such magnitude that it is way beyond party politics, and we have a good opportunity today to discuss it.

Yesterday, I was in Torbay with Devon and Cornwall police to work with stakeholders on child sexual exploitation. Sadly, there have been two large paedophile rings in my constituency, so I have come to understand the devastating impact of such horrendous crimes on young people and their families. The hon. Lady is making a powerful case. Does she agree—she alluded to this in her speech—that we need good local work where everybody in a community understands and accepts that there is a problem and works together? I heard of some very good examples yesterday—

[Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)]

I remind the hon. Lady that interventions must be brief.

[Ann Coffey]

I know that there is a particular problem in some seaside towns. The hon. Lady is absolutely right that we have to have good local partnerships based on good data if we are all to help to overcome the problem. I agree with her.

It has been said that children living in care, particularly residential care, are more vulnerable to targeting by the perpetrators of sexual exploitation. I want to welcome the recent announcement by the Minister of an action plan to tackle child exploitation. It is important that it focuses on the link between running away and child sexual exploitation. Not all children who run away will be sexually exploited. However, all children who are sexually exploited will run away or go missing at some point. Either they will start running away as they become sexually exploited, or they will become sexually exploited as a result of running away.

I also welcome the fact that the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, whose headquarters I visited recently, is to take responsibility for missing children. I await with interest its thematic assessment on the extent of child sexual exploitation. I hope that the fact that CEOP will have responsibility for missing children and sexual exploitation means that linking the two issues is now Government policy. I am pleased that there is an interdepartmental ministerial group on missing persons with a lead Minister involving the Department for Education, the Home Office and the Department of Health. That is crucial if there are to be more effective partnerships at a local level.

As chair of the all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults, I have met Ofsted, the Missing Persons Bureau, CEOP, Greater Manchester police, the Association of Chief Police Officers, West Mercia police, local safeguarding children’s boards, the Children’s Society, Missing People, Railway Children and others. A number of common concerns keep appearing: the ongoing problem with collecting and sharing accurate data; the fact that not all local authorities are adhering to the statutory guidance for children who run away or go missing; and the different priority given to missing children by local safeguarding boards, which are responsible for co-ordinating all actions by local agencies.

On data collection, police forces vary in how they collect and analyse data on missing episodes, making for inconsistencies across the country. Poor data mean that local safeguarding boards will be badly informed. Accurate data would enable an intelligence-led response in each area to find out why children are running away, where they are going and what help they need. This would uncover patterns to prevent future sexual exploitation and enable convictions. I know that the Minister is aware that the collection and evaluation of data is a problem. He has rightly said that gathering data and evidence is the first major step to tackling child sexual exploitation and grooming. He is also right to say that the sexual grooming of children in the UK is a much bigger problem than has previously been recognised.

[Mr David Hanson (Delyn) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend has just highlighted an extremely important issue, and I will be interested to hear how the Government intend to resolve it. The Minister is from the Department for Education; the Department of Health is involved; and the police, which are the responsibility of the Home Office, are also involved. The devolved Scottish Government have police, health and social care responsibilities; in my area, Wales, we have the Welsh Assembly; and in Northern Ireland there is another devolved Administration. Yet, in the UK context, child exploitation will cross all those borders. I want to know who holds the reins of responsibility for gathering information across the whole of the UK, because those who wish to indulge in exploitation will not worry about the fact that the Department of Health and the Department for Education happen to apply to England only.

[Ann Coffey]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point in relation to the UK as a whole. I, too, will be interested in the Minister’s response.

Looking at the data held by the Department for Education on children missing from care for longer than 24 hours, there is a huge discrepancy between figures on missing children reported to the Department by local authorities and the information that I have gathered separately from police forces. I asked a parliamentary question in March about how many looked-after children in each local authority area were absent for more than 24 hours, but the answers that came back did not correlate with the figures provided to me by local police forces.

Figures provided to the Department for Education by 152 local authorities show that in England in 2010 a total of 920 children were missing from their agreed placement for more than 24 hours. However, figures that I obtained from Greater Manchester police, Kent police and West Mercia police reveal that, in those areas alone, more children in care went missing for longer than 24 hours in 2010 than the 920 recorded by the Department for the whole of England.

[David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. I have lost count of the number of times that debates about child exploitation and child and people trafficking have been held in this Chamber and on the Floor of the House. I am pleased to hear that the Government have announced an action plan, but in previous debates we heard that children in this great United Kingdom have been sold at £16,000 a time for men to have their way with them. Young children who have not reached the age of sexual maturity do not know what is happening to them; they feel only the pain. In this day and age in our United Kingdom, we can have all the action plans that we want, but we need to know that they are working and that children are not being put through a horrific experience, which marks them for life.

[Ann Coffey]

I absolutely agree with the hon. Gentleman. He has brought home to us the sort of exploitation that we are talking about in his description of what happens to children. It is truly horrible, and he is right to say that we must take all available action to prevent it.

West Mercia police say that 266 children in care went missing for more than 24 hours in 2010, and Kent police figures for 2010 reveal that 826 children were recorded missing for more than 24 hours. However, an answer to a parliamentary question stated that in Stockport only 45 young people were missing from care for longer than 24 hours in the three years from 2008 to 2010. The Department for Education figures that I mentioned earlier are staggering, given that Stockport police has told me that there were 2,014 missing incidents between July 2009 and June 2010, of which 41% were from care homes.

The police have provided me with their most up-to-date figures for Stockport, which cover the first five months of this year up to Friday 17 June. They reveal that the police received 1,070 missing-from-home reports, generated by 284 children in Stockport under the age of 18; of those, 77 were reported missing from care, and they generated a massive 711 reports. Forty-six of the youngsters were missing for more than 24 hours, and of those 25 were from care.

That shows a clear pattern of repeated missing episodes and a consequent vulnerability to abuse, as well as further evidence of gross under-reporting by local authorities. In addition, two thirds of missing incidents from home are not reported by parents. As I have said, there is good evidence that repeated missing episodes are correlated to children being exposed to sexual grooming. If accurate data are not held by the Department for Education and the Home Office, it becomes more difficult to estimate the risk of sexual exploitation to which these children are exposed. It is important that we get it right.

On that point, ACPO pilots are looking at ways of achieving the collection of meaningful data on missing episodes, so as to determine when a child is missing. It is concerned that children’s homes are reporting children missing when a telephone call could establish where the child was.

All the evidence shows that sexual grooming starts by encouraging children to stay away from home, or persuading them to go home late, in order to create parental disputes and thus drive a wedge between child and home. Removing the protection of families and carers is the beginning of the grooming process, and the eventual outcome is the sexual exploitation of the child. The significance of that should not be lost in any redefinition of “missing”.

The “Puppet on a string” report states that the entrapment of children and young people in sexual exploitation does not occur overnight. If a child goes missing for a few hours, there is a danger that professionals will become complacent. However, that is when the child may be at risk from the gradual grooming process that I have described, and these early missing episodes may be the warning signs.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

Experience in my constituency, and I suspect in many others, is that the homes may not be able to control the children and keep them in all the time, and the children will always indicate that they have human rights that must be respected. However, is there not a better and more definite way, with the homes and the local police co-ordinating on those who habitually stay out late or who may not return until the early hours of the morning? Could more not be done by the police, the local homes and the local authorities?

[Ann Coffey]

Of course the hon. Gentleman is right. We must have proper arrangements between children’s homes and the local police. If they do not work together, we will be unable to prevent children from going missing; and we will not know where those children who are that do go missing. He has made an important point.

Barnardo’s says that those who exploit children are all too aware of how the system works:

“These heartless men and women understand the police procedure on runaway children and know if a child goes missing on a regular basis, for a short period of time and then returns home safely, the case is unlikely to attract much attention.”

Turning to statutory guidance, another concern is the mixed picture that not all local authorities are adhering to the statutory guidance on children who run away from home or care, which was published in 2009. The guidance states that local authorities should have procedures in place for recording and sharing information between police, children’s services and the voluntary sector, and that the local authority should have a named person responsible for children and young people who go missing or who run away and that there should be return interviews.

I cannot emphasise enough the importance of the independent return interview. As the Children’s Society has demonstrated, children are more willing to disclose what has happened to them to adults whom they do not perceive to be in authority. A 16-year-old at Manchester’s Safe in the City project said:

“It was horrible. I felt I could not talk to anyone—friends, family, police, teachers—no-one.”

Eventually, however, the child did talk to the Children’s Society.

I have asked a number of parliamentary questions about implementation of the guidance, but I have been repeatedly told that the information is not held centrally. Implementing statutory guidance should be a high priority for local authorities. Local safeguarding children’s boards have a responsibility to protect children in their areas. The young runaways action plan 2008 asked safeguarding boards to evaluate the risk of children running away and to put action plans in place. The Children’s Society’s “Stepping Up” report found that half of the local authorities surveyed had no protocol for managing cases of children and young people who are missing from home.

According to recent research by the international centre for the study of sexually exploited and trafficked young people at the university of Bedfordshire, there are protocols for responding to sexual exploitation in less than a quarter of local safeguarding children’s boards. Ten years on from the introduction of the dual strategy of protecting young people and proactively investigating their abusers, a third of the country has no plans for the delivery of such a strategy.

[Susan Elan Jones (Clwyd South) (Lab)]

An increasing proportion of the sexual grooming of children now takes place online. I imagine that policing that is complex and difficult and that it involves many officers. It is important that funding is kept in place, and if possible increased, to deal with what is a horrific crime.

[Ann Coffey]

My hon. Friend has made an important point. It is crucial that resources are available to support such initiatives and actions, because without those resources the actions will be meaningless.

Ofsted has a duty to inspect general safeguarding in an area, yet in a letter to the director of children’s services in Stockport in December 2010 following an annual children’s services assessment, it stated:

“In reaching this assessment, Ofsted has taken account of arrangements for making sure children are safe and stay safe.”

Astonishingly, in that letter and in the assessment itself, there was not one mention of the number of missing incidents reported to the Stockport police in that year. I am not clear how an assessment can be made of how well local safeguarding boards are discharging their responsibilities in relation to missing children, but one way might be for Ofsted, in its inspection of safeguarding in local areas, to assess whether local authorities are implementing statutory guidance in relation to the safeguarding of missing children. Another way might be for local safeguarding boards to publish information annually on numbers of missing children in their area together with the actions that they have taken and the outcomes of their interventions. I would welcome the Minister’s comments on that. It is important that the statutory guidance is fully implemented in local areas, because such guidance is there for a purpose.

Furthermore, I want to see the development of early intervention programmes that target children who are at risk of running away. The Munro report stressed the value of early help in the area of child protection. I realise that funds are limited, but existing resources—education, health and police—could be used more effectively by developing innovative ways in which we can work with parents and voluntary agencies.

[Sarah Newton]

The hon. Lady has been generous to us all with the amount of times that she has given way. Does she agree that the UK Council for Child Internet Safety has an important role to play? Many new tools have been made available for young people, teachers, parents and carers to raise awareness of the issues of being groomed online.

[Ann Coffey]

I agree with the hon. Lady. I will emphasise that point later in my speech.

There is good practice. We have seen proactive police work in West Mercia, and projects such as Safe in the City Manchester and SAFE@LAST in South Yorkshire demonstrate the value of good local partnerships. It is vital that children’s charities and projects that help young runaways continue to receive resources. I am concerned to hear about the disproportionate cuts that are being made to such valuable projects at a local level.

All local authorities and police forces need to understand the link between missing episodes and the vulnerability to harm that it indicates, which needs to be a high priority for child protection and safeguarding in every area of the country.

[David Simpson]

An early-day motion on guardianship was tabled in the House in 2010. Does the hon. Lady agree that that is a way in which to deal with children who have gone through this horrific situation? I understand that guardianship is a requirement of the Council of Europe, and it may be an avenue that we can explore.

[Ann Coffey]

I agree that we must consider all possibilities. I know that the hon. Gentleman has a long-standing interest in this issue and a commitment to improve the situation for children.

In relation to Ofsted, I welcome the publication of the new minimum standards for children’s homes that came into force in April 2011. It set out how children’s homes should develop relationships and work with police forces to safeguard children and young people in their area.

I am also pleased that the recent Ofsted consultation on the new framework for inspection of schools includes an assessment of pupil behaviour and safety. Teachers and other school staff are in a prominent position to help children who run away from home or care and to identify behaviour, including absences, which may be indicative of serious issues in the child’s life. The all-party parliamentary group on runaway and missing children and adults emphasises the connection between missing episodes and vulnerability to serious harm, including sexual exploitation, in its response to the Ofsted consultation.

We should focus on prevention, which means involving parents and children themselves. I would like all schools to provide information about the risks relating to running away and how children can get help if they are thinking of running away. The subject should also be included in the school’s curriculum, where it is appropriate. There should also be information available for parents about what to do if their child runs away or goes missing.

I welcome the fact that CEOP is going to make the prevention of running away a new educational theme, when it takes over responsibility for missing children on 1 July. I would also like to see all professionals in children’s social care and education being trained in risks relating to children running away to ensure that they can identify such children and refer them to the appropriate services. Such training should also be in the forthcoming youth strategy.

The harm that is done to a child abused for sex is incalculable. Children live with it for the rest of their lives and are haunted by the memories of their experiences. Some never recover, which applies not only to children but to families. We should not forget that children who live in caring families can also be targeted and groomed.

I recently attended a meeting of the coalition for the removal of pimping at which parents whose children had been groomed talked about their experiences. Two of my constituents spoke up and said that their pain will last a lifetime. They said that they were not listened to when they expressed concern to local agencies. They said:

“Our experience was that, at that stage, social services seemed to be focusing much more on our inadequate qualities as parents, rather than on the significant risk of child sexual exploitation, which we had brought to their attention.”

Their daughter subsequently gave detailed accounts of having been kept in flats in various parts of Greater Manchester and both sexually abused and sold for sex. Her evidence led to the eventual conviction of 10 men. The parents said that

“the traumatic nature of her experiences has caused her lasting psychiatric problems, including severe self-harm and has also resulted in one of us being off work for a period of two years through the stress of coping with this extended family trauma.”

Parents must be listened to, helped and supported if we are to prevent sexual grooming of children. This is not an issue that divides the political parties, and we must all work together for the sake of our children.

I congratulate the Minister on his commitment and on his positive responses. Together with his colleagues in the Department for Health and the Home Office, he has announced a number of initiatives that deal with the concerns expressed by parents and children’s charities. Sexual exploitation is an abomination, and no excuse can be offered by the perpetrators. Together, we must ensure that everybody working in this area understands the link between missing children and harm from sexual abuse and exploitation; that that training is given a high priority at a local level; that statutory guidance on runaways is fully implemented; and that local agencies work together with parents, children and children’s charities. It is only then that we will be able to protect and safeguard our children in the future from some of the horrific experiences suffered by our children in the past. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

Munro Report

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 9th June 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I, too, welcome the publication of the review of the child protection system by Professor Eileen Munro. Her excellent report is thoughtful, well researched and based on extensive consultation. She makes the strong point that the responses to the terrible deaths of children in recent years have shaped the existing child protection system. She identifies four driving forces and says:

“These forces have come together to create a defensive system that puts so much emphasis on procedures and recording that insufficient attention is given to developing and supporting the expertise to work effectively with children, young people and families.”

I agree with her conclusion that there should be a move from doing the right thing procedurally to doing the right thing for the child.

Professor Munro points out that her recommendations are not a quick fix but should be seen in the context of changing the system while putting in place the knowledge, skills and professional expertise to enable professionals confidently to exercise their judgment to do the right thing. Judging whether a child should be removed from their family because there is an unacceptable risk to their life or well-being might be necessary in a very complex family situation. It might follow months of concern, intervention and meetings with parents and other agencies. Assessing the risk to a child relies on many agencies working together to do the right thing. I absolutely agree that over-reliance on procedures does not help make such decision making effective. As she says, procedures can be followed in a way that is technically correct but so inexpert that the desired result is not achieved.

What is the right thing for the child? In my early years as a social worker I supervised a family—a single mother who was an alcoholic and who had a seven-year-old child. The bond was close. The problem was that the mother’s drinking took the form of drinking bouts, often resulting in blackouts, during which she was unable to supervise the child in the home. The child had taken to wandering outside the house at night and his attendance at school was suffering, but there was no question of his suffering any direct harm from the mother. When sober, she provided good parenting and the child responded to it, but no amount of intervention or exhortation could stop her drinking and instead she retreated into a tissue of lies to hide the extent of her problem. I use that example to illustrate the complexity of judging what is the right thing to do, as levels of risk are not easy to assess and must be balanced against positives for the child in an existing relationship and the outcomes of any actions on their long-term welfare.

I was particularly interested in the report’s chapter on sharing responsibility for the provision of early help, particularly early in the emergence of a problem. I entirely agree with Professor Munro that preventive services will do more to reduce abuse and neglect than reactive services and that the co-ordination of services is important to maximise efficiency.

As chair of the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, I would like to offer some comments on the child protection system in relation to children who are vulnerable to abuse and exploitation while missing from home or care. Sadly, many children and young people go missing from children’s homes. For them, it has already been decided that they cannot be safeguarded and protected at home. We are their corporate parents and they are in our care, and I was pleased that the Minister referred in particular to our responsibilities as corporate parents.

More than 100,000 children run away overnight each year. Readers of the Manchester Evening News were stunned to read recently that there were 11,819 police reports of children going missing in Greater Manchester last year. Of those, 2,281 cases related to youngsters aged 11 or younger. Another shocking figure is that half of those cases related to children living in care, with more children disappearing from the 43 children’s homes in Stockport than in the rest of Greater Manchester put together. We know that running away is an important indicator that things are not right in a child’s life. One in five children who run away will be harmed and many will become involved in the things that worry parents and society the most—drugs, alcohol and falling prey to sexual predators. I pay tribute to the recent Barnardo’s report, “Puppet on a String”, which highlights those issues.

I welcome the Government’s recent announcement of an action plan to tackle child sexual exploitation and think it is important that it focuses on both running away and child sexual exploitation, as all the research shows that the two issues go hand in hand. I will be interested to hear the results of the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre’s current investigations on recent cases of sexual grooming. One of the problems is the collection and analysis of data and assessing the risk to children individually and in the wider community. I hope that the work being undertaken by CEOP will help to develop a risk assessment framework for incidents of children going missing that could form the basis of effective inter-agency work. Local safeguarding boards have an important role because they are in a unique position to monitor how effective local agencies are in addressing the problem.

When the Minister considers recommendation 6 in Professor Munro’s report, I would like him to take on board the child protection issues in relation to runaway children. I firmly believe that if we can reduce the massive number of children and young people running away and going missing, we can reduce the number at risk from violence, drugs, alcohol, sexual exploitation and grooming.

Sure Start Children’s Centres

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 27th April 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I understand that there are proposals for developing a payment-by-results scheme for children’s centres. I think those proposals have great merit: they will ensure the proper examination of which interventions work, and will lead to better outcomes for children. What is the Secretary of State’s thinking on this, and has any progress been made on developing such a scheme?

[Michael Gove]

That is a very fair question. The answer is yes. We are examining this matter with the sector to establish which successful interventions we can encourage and incentivise to be spread more widely. Building on the point made by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke), I would add that some children’s centres are hugely successful at outreach. The hon. Member for Walsall South (Valerie Vaz) referred to how a children’s centre in her constituency has succeeded in tackling some hard-to-reach families. We know that some families resent and resist what they see as state intervention and coercion in their families’ lives, but actually they desperately need that support, so we must incentivise those children’s centres that are good at outreach.

There is something else that is critically important. There is sometimes an understandable confusion between the provision of child care to ensure a higher level of female participation in the work force, which is a good thing in itself, and child development. Those are allied but separate issues. I would like to see a renewed emphasis on child development. The original Sure Start proposals, which the Treasury developed, had a real focus on child development, and through the work that Dame Claire Tickell has led, we have sought to look at the existing early years foundation stage and build on what is good about it. The focus of the foundation years should be on ensuring that children arrive at school school-ready and effectively socialised. That will sometimes require interventions to support parenting and to raise the quality of staff. However, we can identify and support good practice, and indeed support many of the voluntary organisations, such as 4Children, that are already doing a fantastic job.

I want to stress that the changes we are talking about depend on having in place the staff capable of leading our children’s centres in the right direction. We have provided funding specifically to ensure that the National College for Leadership of Schools and Children’s Services can ensure that there is a trained cadre of at least 400 highly qualified individuals with a new depth of training in running children’s centres, and that we move broadly in the direction hinted at by hon. Members towards a vision of children’s centres leaders as people who enjoy the same prestige and esteem as head teachers. We should see what is happening in children’s centres as part of the seamless process of education that should start at the earliest possible age and, in my view, continue for as long as possible, in order to prepare people for the world of work and progression.

At a time when we have to make economies, I recognise that it is difficult to concentrate on some of these areas of debate, but we have made a good start in the last 12 months. The constructive approach taken by the right hon. Member for Birkenhead and the hon. Member for Nottingham North, along with those in the sector, is something on which we can all build. It is often tempting to knock local government, but I have been hugely impressed by the way in which the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, with its outgoing president Marion Davis and the incoming president Matt Dunkley, has engaged with the coalition Government to operate constructively.

I know that many hon. Members will want to use their speeches to make points in advance of the local elections—that is fair enough; it is that time of year—but I hope that in the remainder of this debate, their speeches will continue in the tone so admirably set by the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. We all recognise the great work done by professionals in early years. I hope that we will all give some thought in the hours that we have left to how we can build on those successes and ensure that children, who are our first care and concern, can have the best possible start in life.

Post-16 Education Funding

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 28th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

Absolutely. I want to take this opportunity to underline my gratitude to my right hon. Friend for the painstaking way in which he has consulted students across the country, and for the thoughtful way in which he has put forward his proposals to ensure that our aim for a discretionary fund targeted on the very poorest can be implemented effectively. He is absolutely right to say that if we encourage more students to take part in further education, we will be able to achieve our joint aim of ensuring that more students, particularly from the poorest backgrounds, go on to college and university.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I am very pleased that students who are in receipt of EMA will continue to get some financial support for the continuation of their course, but will the Secretary of State tell me what plans he has to monitor the new scheme to ensure that young people from lower-income families are not discouraged from entering further education?

[Michael Gove]

The hon. Lady makes a very constructive point. We are going to consult on implementation. In the process of designing the new scheme, we have worked with the Association of Colleges, the Sutton Trust and others. I will be looking for evidence on the ground to ensure that all barriers are removed, and I would be very happy to work with the hon. Lady in the future. If she encounters any specific cases of students being unable to access the support that they need, we will ensure that they receive it.

Oral Answers to Questions

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Monday 7th February 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gibb]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that question. The English baccalaureate is designed to leave ample time in the curriculum for other subjects, including vocational subjects. In the countries around the world that have the best technical education systems, core academic subjects are taught alongside, not instead of, technical or vocational subjects until their students reach the age of 15 or 16. Subjects such as modern languages are critical for the technical and vocational success of young people.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

6. What steps he plans to take to reduce the incidence of children going missing from children’s homes.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

All local authorities are required to have procedures and processes in place to minimise the risk of children in care going missing. In April, we will bring in revised national minimum standards for children’s homes, which will strengthen the national guidance on this issue.

[Ann Coffey]

In Greater Manchester, more than half of all missing incidents involve children from children’s homes. According to a recent Barnardo’s report, many of those children are at risk from paedophile and criminal gangs. Will the Minister consider issuing statutory guidance to local safeguarding boards, asking them to monitor all incidents of children going missing and share that information with other agencies, such as Ofsted, so that action can be taken to reduce the number of children going missing and the risk to them?

[Tim Loughton]

The hon. Lady makes a good point and I pay tribute to her work as chair of the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults. I am looking closely at the Barnardo’s report with the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (James Brokenshire). This is a serious issue, but, without being complacent, I should say that the incidence of children running away from children’s homes has been reducing over the past few years. The figures are calculated on the basis of those who are missing for more than 24 hours, but in fact most children return within 48 hours. It is something that I will continue to look at.

Disadvantaged Children

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Thursday 20th January 2011 Commons Chamber

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for East Hampshire (Damian Hinds) on securing this extremely important and valuable debate. I believe that there is all-party agreement that early intervention in children’s lives is crucial to tackling not just the symptoms but the causes of deprivation, in order to prevent disadvantaged children from becoming disadvantaged adults and prevent cycles of deprivation from being repeated.

We all accept that it is essential to make the right interventions. Both my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field) and my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North (Mr Allen) have made that point in their excellent reports. However, the key question is: how do we most effectively achieve such intervention and produce good outcomes?

In an earlier debate, I discussed some of the interventions that I believe can make a difference, such as outreach work with families. The pilot scheme in my constituency to provide early-years education to disadvantaged two-year-olds was extremely successful, and we also had a successful pilot scheme for family nurse partnerships. Both share a similar model: contact with parents; building relationships with those parents; giving them information; and getting them to use other support services to improve the quality of their parenting, which is a key factor in delivering better outcomes for children.

I want to focus today on whether the introduction of the new early intervention grant will help us to safeguard such achievements and move us further towards obtaining the outcomes for disadvantaged children that we all want. The main problems with the EIG are that it is not a specific grant—it is not ring-fenced—and that it represents an 11% cut on its predecessor grants. They, themselves, were cut last year, so the real cut is more like 17% in Government funding to Stockport. The new EIG is not confined to early interventions in children’s lives; it is for early interventions in a number of areas. The EIG will replace funding to a wide variety of 22 other schemes, including everything from the Youth Taskforce to teenage pregnancy programmes, the youth crime plan and young people’s substance misuse services. Those schemes give support to young people in need, but they will now have to compete against each other for resources.

The Government have said that although local authorities will be able to spend money where they want, they will be expected to continue to support Sure Start children’s centres and the free early education places for disadvantaged two-year-olds. Ministers have also reiterated that short breaks for disabled children, support for vulnerable young people, mental health work in schools and support for families with multiple problems should also be priorities. However, it is not mandatory that those services are prioritised, and I fear that there will be a lot of casualties in the local financial tussles for funding up and down the country.

As the Minister will be aware, there is much concern in the early-years sector about the removal of ring-fencing, despite ministerial reassurances that the Government expect to see early-years services protected. People know that, ultimately, without a sanction, the councils can choose to ignore the exhortations of Ministers. The Daycare Trust, the national child care charity, says that many local authorities are already considering diverting funding allocated for early-years provision, leading to the possible closure of Sure Start centres.

I do believe that Ministers have genuinely accepted the arguments about early intervention, and I welcome that. Such a view is supported by the fact that the Government set up the report by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead and this week’s report by my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North. Both reports call for much more emphasis to be placed on the early years. It would be a shame if, having accepted the principle, Ministers failed to tackle the problem in a way that will make a real difference to the lives of some of the most disadvantaged and deprived families in the country.

As my right hon. Friend said in his recent report on poverty and life chances, which was endorsed by the Prime Minister:

“Later interventions to help poorly performing children can be effective but, in general, the most effective and cost-effective way to help and support young families is in the earliest years of a child’s life.”

It is vital that we continue the valuable work with young children that has been done so far, be it through children’s centres and early-years education, or through outreach work with hard-to-reach families, and that projects and services around the country are not damaged by the change in the funding process from having individual ring-fenced budgets to having one smaller communal pot of money, which has to be fought over locally.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

The hon. Lady is making a powerful and thoughtful speech. I wonder where she feels savings could be made elsewhere within the educational budget in order to prioritise early-years provision. I hope that Sure Start’s increased focus on the most vulnerable children, albeit with a reduced budget overall, can still deliver more of the benefit that we were originally seeking. Perhaps she, like the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman), would accept larger class sizes as the price for getting more money into early intervention. These are the choices that we need to make. I wonder whether she has any thoughts on that.

[Ann Coffey]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention, but the point that I am making is about the difficulty when ring-fencing is removed from grants from central Government to local government. I would be grateful if the Minister could clarify what processes are in place to ensure that we monitor how much money continues to be spent on early-years intervention as the mixed picture of how local councils choose to spend the early intervention grant emerges.

I would also be grateful for clarification about what monitoring procedures will be put in place to evaluate the effectiveness of the money spent in terms of outcomes for disadvantaged children. I can foresee two years from now a parliamentary question asking for information about early-years intervention receiving the reply, “The information is not kept centrally.” Without central monitoring, it is difficult for hon. Members to hold the Government to account for their stated policies.

Targets and some external assessments of local authorities are being abolished, so how will the Government monitor whether their emphasis on the importance of early-years intervention is shared by cash-strapped councils in the face of priorities set by a local electorate that might not be the same as those of the Government? The pressure on local councillors might be to maintain parks and street lighting and to keep roads and pavements in good repair. They have to be responsive to the needs of their electorate and early-years intervention might not be a priority for local people.

The Government have emphasised the importance they give to early years, but the chosen commissioners are councils so how, without statutory guidance and without ring-fencing, will the Government ensure that councils deliver on the coalition’s commitment to early interventions in children’s lives?

While I have the opportunity, I want to draw attention briefly to another disadvantaged group—children in care homes. They are the children who would have benefited from early intervention in their lives. As the chair of the all-party group on runaway and missing children and adults, I am particularly concerned about the number of children who run away from care homes. I was shocked when I discovered that more than half the children reported missing in Greater Manchester are from children’s homes in Stockport. This is concerning, as research shows that children who run away are at serious risk, exposed to violence, criminality, substance abuse, sexual exploitation and trafficking.

Over the years, I have expressed much concern about the need to improve Ofsted’s inspection reports so that they reflect the numbers of children who go missing from care homes. We are awaiting the new national minimum standards for children’s homes, which I hope will tackle the issue. I am disappointed that the timetable for the publication of the new standards keeps slipping. In a parliamentary written answer in July last year, I was told the revised standards would be ready in November 2010. When they did not appear, I tabled another question and was told they would be ready “early in 2011”. I hope that the new standards will be published as soon as possible and will include in the inspections of children’s homes consideration of how those homes manage children who go missing to ensure that the highest quality of care and control is provided.

In conclusion, as my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North said in his report about the importance of early intervention policies and programmes:

“The rationale is simple: many of the costly and damaging social problems in society are created because we are not giving children the right type of support in their earliest years, when they should achieve their most rapid development. If we do not provide that help early enough, then it is often too late”.

His words must not go unheeded.

Early Years Education

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Tuesday 14th December 2010 Westminster Hall

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Leigh.

There is now almost universal agreement in the House that early years education improves children’s outcomes in school and beyond. I want to focus today on the take-up of the entitlement to 15 hours a week of free early years education for three and four-year-olds, and to stress how important it is that all children should benefit from it. Currently about 8% of three and four-year-olds do not take up their free entitlement. Figures show that children who do not receive early years education are significantly more likely to be from non-working and lower-income families.

The free places were introduced as part of a strategy to improve child outcomes, as an abundance of research has shown that attendance at high-quality settings is linked to improved outcomes, both at the time of attending and later in life. That, too, was a central message in the recent independent review of poverty and life chances by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead (Mr Field), who said that the first five years of a child’s life were the most important. The Prime Minister agreed, and wrote to him that the foundation years

“are the critical ones in terms of promoting a fairer and more mobile society”.

In short, we all agree that early years education can make a difference to outcomes, and that it has the potential to reduce inequalities.

In January 2010, according to the Department for Education, the number of three-year-olds benefiting from some free early education at maintained schools or in the private, voluntary or independent sector was 584,200—or 92% of the three-year-old population. However, close analysis of the figures shows that the take-up of early years education remains lower among non-working and low-income families, some ethnic groups and families living in more deprived areas, who, I would argue, are precisely the children who would benefit from it most.

The child care and early years survey of parents 2008 showed that uptake of free early education for three and four-year-olds was highest, at 90%, among couple families where both parents were working. The figure for working single parents was 88%. By far the lowest take-up was in couple families where neither parent was working, where the figure was 79%, and among lone parents who were out of work, where it was 76%. That pattern roughly accords with figures that I have obtained locally.

In Stockport, the average take-up of places by three and four-year-olds is 96%, which is above the national average, but in the two most deprived areas of my constituency the take-up figures are lower. In Brinnington the take-up is 92.7% and in Lancashire Hill it is 84%. I believe that the Brinnington figure is higher because it is a more settled community, has a higher working population, and has had the benefit of one of the first children’s centres in the country, whereas Lancashire Hill has lower levels of employment and the population is more unsettled and transient. Although those figures are higher than the national average they are still cause for concern, because it is extremely important that children from the most deprived families should take up their places. Research shows that that increases educational opportunities in life and means those concerned are less likely to fail in later years. It also means that the state needs to spend less money later to pick up the costs of that failure.

Improving take-up of early years education for the most disadvantaged families is crucial. Perhaps some lessons can be learned from the experience of the pilots of free nursery places providing high-quality learning for the most disadvantaged 15% of two-year-olds, which the Labour Government introduced. I welcome the fact that the coalition Government have announced that they will continue that offer, and plan to put their commitment into legislation by 2013. In a written statement yesterday, the Secretary of State for Education referred to the commitment to

“extending free early education with an entitlement for disadvantaged two year olds from 2013”

with funding of £64 million in 2011-12 and £223 million in 2012-13. That will be part of the early intervention grant, which is for early interventions across all the age ranges. The early intervention grant is not ring-fenced. However, in the statement, the Secretary of State said:

“Against the background of greater flexibility to decide priorities locally, there are key areas of early intervention where the Government are ensuring that the overall grant provides support”. —[Official Report, 13 December 2010; Vol. 520, c. 68WS.]

One of the key areas is two-year-olds; indeed, specific funding was announced in the statement, together with children’s centres and short breaks for disabled children.

Will the Minister confirm that that is ring-fenced funding? If it is not, will he confirm that the continuation of the current offer for two-year-olds until there is an entitlement in law, in 2013, will be determined by local authorities? As the Secretary of State has announced that the early interventions grant will be 10.9% lower, in 2011-12, than the aggregated funding through predecessor grants, is the Minister confident that local authorities will continue to fund the offer for two-year-olds when there will also be pressure to fund services to young and vulnerable adults? Coincidentally, those are the same disadvantaged young adults whose life chances would have been much improved by early education. If the distribution of all the early intervention grant will be at local authorities’ discretion, what monitoring will the Department do to ensure that there is provision in all local authorities?

Stockport participated in the pilot for two-year-olds, which has been very successful. I believe that that is one of the reasons the take-up of the free entitlement for three and four-year-olds in Stockport is above the national average. Some of that success could be copied and transferred to help to increase the uptake by three to four-year-olds nationally. I maintain that in Stockport take-up has been high because of the nature of the proactive work that has been done in engaging families and children in the pilot for two-year-olds. In addition to high-quality places for 10 hours a week over 38 weeks, Stockport families were given access to strong family support. Although it was not a condition attached to a place, families were actively encouraged to participate in home learning support, or wider parental support. I hope that the Government’s offer for two-year-olds will involve such additional family support, which is vital. As part of the Stockport pilot parents were encouraged to ensure that they obtained an appropriate place for the free entitlement to 15 hours that their child would gain on turning three.

Stockport’s project for two-year-olds was successful also because of strong commitment from all partners. I pay tribute to Vicki Packman, from Stockport’s children and young people’s directorate, and her team, for their incredible enthusiasm and commitment to early years education in Stockport. The Stockport pilot had a data-driven approach, with a clear focus on early intervention and prevention, and family support. Allocation of places was by a multi-agency panel. It built on strong, existing universal and targeted outreach networks. Those teams took a holistic approach to the identification of support needs, and used their professional experience and judgment to refer appropriate families to the panel. They also helped to engage directly a number of hard-to-reach groups. A brokerage service offered by Stockport’s family information service was a key feature. It provided a key contact for parents, some of whom needed extra encouragement, support and advice, and offered home visits to explain the options to the family. In that way the service developed a trusted relationship with parents and carers. An initial visit to the setting was set up for the family and their support worker could attend. Those relationships, formed at an early stage, were crucial to the success of the placement and the project. It is interesting that that brokerage service ensured a very low drop-out rate. Only two children out of 117 left the project, and that was because both moved away from the area. Those figures are truly excellent.

It was very important that those disadvantaged two-year-olds had such a positive experience outside the home, as a proportion would have been on the child protection register, or the family would have experienced recent domestic abuse, or substance misuse in the previous 12 months. There are lessons to be learned, and the success needs to be transferred to encourage the families of three to four-year-olds who receive no early years education to get their children to attend and benefit from the free sessions to which they are entitled.

Kate Wood, the co-ordinator of the Two Year Old pilot project in Stockport explains things perfectly. She said:

“The Two Year Old Pilot Project is giving support to families who need it early on, before challenges become unmanageable. It is giving disadvantaged children a chance to learn and develop with new experiences outside of the home in a positive and social environment and it is giving families a chance to access other activities and services. We hope that these children will be more ready to access their free hours at three and to start school at five and will have the same opportunity to achieve as their peers.”

That is what we want for all those children who have difficult lives: an opportunity for them to learn, develop and have experiences outside the home, which will enable them to cope better and achieve when they start school. There is a variety of reasons why parents say they do not take up their free entitlement. Some parents simply want to look after their own children, but others will lead too chaotic a life and find it too challenging to get their children to the nursery on a regular basis, and we need to help them.

The Department for Children, Families and Schools 2008 survey asked parents who said that their children were not receiving free entitlement whether they were aware that the Government paid for some hours per week of nursery education for three and four-year-olds. Only 61% of those parents said they were aware of the scheme. Will the Minister tell me what plans he has to raise the level of awareness and improve the quality and accessibility of information about free early years education?

When parents were asked where they got their information about child care, the most frequently mentioned source was word of mouth, 41%; followed by school, 18%; local authority was mentioned by 10%; and families’ information services by 8%. Parents also mentioned local advertising, 8%; and health visitors, 6%. Lower income families are more likely than higher income families to mention health visitors or doctors’ surgeries as their sources of information. That suggests that health services may be a particularly good way to provide these groups with information about child care and early years education. Will the Minister, therefore, consider specific plans to use health services to provide disadvantaged groups with early years information?

The 2008 child care and early years survey of parents revealed that families living in deprived areas were less positive about the quality of child care provision than those in affluent areas. That is interesting as, according to the latest 2009 Ofsted report, the quality of early years provision is lower in areas of higher deprivation: the more deprived the area, the lower the number of good and outstanding providers. That raises the possibility that parental perceptions may reflect real geographical variations in quality. Of course, only settings assessed by Ofsted as “good” or “outstanding” were allowed to be used in the pilots for two-year-olds. I hope that in future, standards of settings will still be important criteria. It is vital that the quality of early years education is as good in deprived areas as it is in others.

In some instances, local authorities can also deliver the free entitlement through child minders, who have to be part of a child-minding network and accredited. For example, if a child has specialist needs and requires a higher level of one-to-one care, or a family needs flexible hours to fit in with a particular situation such as shift work, helping to match those families’ needs to a particular type of child care may help to improve the take-up of the free entitlement.

As I said, the clear message from the Stockport pilot was the success of the amount of support work with families. Offering places is not enough. I suggest to the Minister that perhaps one way forward is for the Government’s pupil premium, which recognises disadvantage, to be introduced earlier for three and four-year-olds, enabling that work to be done with disadvantaged families. That would enable local authorities to intervene earlier and work with families at the earliest possible stage. Although it would cost money now, it would save money in the long run. It would also help to target those children who are not classed as the 15% most deprived, and so would not have benefited from the offer regarding two-year-olds, but who are still disadvantaged and are not taking up places for three-year-olds.

The report by my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead, endorsed by the Prime Minister, said that we must ensure that today’s poor children do not become tomorrow’s poor adults. He said:

“Later interventions to help poorly performing children can be effective but, in general, the most effective and cost-effective way to help and support young families is in the earliest years of a child’s life."

I agree: we must not allow cycles of deprivation and failure to be handed on from one generation to another. The only way to prevent that is to ensure that those children, who, through no fault of their own, are born into disadvantaged homes, are helped. One intervention that we can make is to ensure that all children who are entitled to these very important early years education places are given the opportunity to take them up.

I look forward to hearing the Minister’s proposals and ideas to ensure that all disadvantaged three and four-year-old children, who do not currently take up their free early years entitlement, are actively encouraged to do so.

Schools White Paper

Ann Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 24th November 2010 Commons Chamber

[Michael Gove]

We are going to change the rules on search, on the use of appropriate force and, as I have said, on detention, but, critically, we are going to ensure that children learn to read properly at primary school. The problems involving disruptive children at secondary school are often due to the fact that they have not been taught to read. When they arrive at secondary school the curriculum is too stretching, and unfortunately they act up rather than learn. That is a tragedy, and it needs to be addressed at a very early stage.

[Ann Coffey (Stockport) (Lab)]

In his statement, the Secretary of State said that he wanted parents to choose schools rather than schools choosing parents. I am sure that many parents share that sentiment, but will he clarify the changes that he will make in the way in which local education authorities set admission limits for individual schools in order to ensure that that choice is available?

[Michael Gove]

I thank the hon. Lady for a typically thoughtful question. We will work with local authorities, individual schools and others to revise the admissions code in order to achieve exactly the aim that she has described.

I recognise that when it comes to admissions, one of the problems is rationing access to good schools. I want to ensure that there are more good schools, so that more parents can receive the education that they deserve for their children. Sometimes there are difficult decisions to be made, and in those circumstances we need clear rules that are rigorously enforced in order to provide fairness. I want to ensure that there is buy-in from everyone to guarantee that fairness.