Adoption
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(10 years ago)
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Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, can the Minister tell the House what the Government are doing to support kinship care? That is overwhelmingly the most successful means of looking after children who are very vulnerable.
Birmingham Schools
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(10 years, 4 months ago)
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Lord Nash
I think that what has happened in Birmingham is unacceptable to all the communities there, including most of the Muslim parents and teachers. I do not recognise the noble Lord’s analysis of the religion of Islam, which I see as a religion of peace. I do think that there are issues in relation to developing counter-narratives to extremism, but I do not think that there is time to go into that here.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
Does the Minister recognise that the department has to take its fair share of the blame and be accountable? It is not possible to put all the responsibility on to Ofsted for knowing what is going on in schools day in and day out. With academies, the department has the responsibility through its newly imposed regulatory system. How could it miss what was happening to girls in those schools, when many women were being dismissed from schools as cleaners, dinner ladies and so on, as well as teachers? Many of us feel very let down in this respect by the Government, with their centralised control of academies. I declare my interest as a member of Northern Education Trust and as a governor of Castle View Academy in Sunderland—so I am not against academies by a long way, but the Government have neglected these schools and have not now got the infrastructure to know when things are going wrong. What are they going to do to change that?
Lord Nash
The noble Baroness is quite right that everybody needs to take their fair share of the blame in this. Nobody comes out of this particularly well. One could say, “How did the local authority miss these issues for years?”. It was only when Ofsted did a batch inspection of 21 schools and saw a common pattern of behaviour which had accelerated dramatically in terms of threatening behaviour in recent years that it became absolutely clear what was happening. As I said in relation to the actions we have taken with Park View Educational Trust, we dealt with these matters extremely speedily. We have now substantially tightened our procedures in relation to schools becoming academies and we will, as a result of events in Birmingham, look further at that.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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The Earl of Listowel
I thank the noble Baroness. She makes a very good point and I shall look at that. We are trying to ensure that anybody caring for these young people gets the support they need to do an excellent job. We do not want people who might wish to misuse any information about them to get information.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I want to intervene briefly. We know that many children want to maintain contact with their natural family, even if they know that that family is chaotic. I absolutely support the amendments but my concern is that they do not push hard enough for support when the child initially goes into care. This builds on something that I was trying to say last week. Our responsibility ought to be to ensure that, while the child is in care, work none the less goes on with the natural parents so that an assessment can be made of whether they are capable of change and willing for change to take place. Our problem is that too often children who themselves have improved are then sent back home and no work is done with the parents before that happens. That is often why the placement breaks down again, and that is expensive—not just in monetary terms in trying to deal with that when the child comes back into care, but precisely because it adds to the damage that has already been done.
I chair an organisation in the north-east which does quite a lot of work with people who have addictions. We have a programme where we take mothers who are addicted into residential accommodation with their children. It is largely paid for by the National Health Service but we put a bit of our own money into it and we try to get some money from local authorities too. During the residential period, intensive parenting takes place and what happens to the children in that situation is also monitored extremely carefully. In that way, you really can make an assessment as to whether it is going to be feasible for the mother and her children to make it outside the care system.
One problem that was re-emphasised to us while we were on the adoption Select Committee is that very often parents who are encouraged or are made to put their children up for adoption because they are not capable of looking after them simply go and have other children. Our intervention with the Cyrenians in Newcastle is really trying to stop that by saying, “If you’re going to have another child then you’ve got to take the steps necessary to make sure that that child actually stands a chance”, so that there is not a wheel continually going round where they are saying, “If I can’t have that child then I’m going to have another child”, without any exit.
The Government really need to look at how we work with natural parents once the child has gone into care. If we can get better at that work, we may indeed be able to return children much more successfully and the support package being talked about in the amendments will then really bear fruit.
Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)
My Lords, briefly, I particularly support the points made by the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in relation to Amendments 26 and 27. These amendments are important because, as she said, the statistics show us that the system is not working well for children who return home. While going home is the most common outcome for children in care, around half of them have to go back into care—sometimes more than once in this revolving-door pattern that can emerge—simply because there is not the good social work practice in relation to children returning home that we associate with other forms of childcare.
As the amendments address, there is not good assessment, good identification of need or provision of the necessary support services. There is also, very often, no continued monitoring of how that child is faring when they go home. That is the first point which the Government need to address: the statistics show us that it is not working when half the children who go home have to come back into care. That obviously not only damages them; as the research has shown, the costs of the consequence of coming back into care escalate because as children return from successive attempted reunifications, they are more damaged. The cost of caring for them in other placements then becomes that much greater. As the University of Loughborough has shown, as well as the social and moral imperative to try to reduce these failed reunifications there is, potentially, a financial benefit. If you can prevent the escalating cost of failed reunification, it makes financial sense as well and may in fact reduce costs to the local authority.
These amendments are about preventing further breakdown and damage to children. They are really about the good social work practice that should be going on but which we actually know is not, because reunification practice varies so widely across local authorities. The amendments would at least set a standard as to what should be required.
Children and Families Bill
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(11 years, 1 month ago)
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The Earl of Listowel (CB)
I, too, welcome the Minister to his first Grand Committee day of a Bill and thank him for his time over the summer in dealing with some of my concerns. As I listened to the debate, my mind went back to a meeting four months ago with women whose children had been taken away from them in the 1950s and 1960s. At the time, they were single women and were strongly encouraged to give their child away. Those women bitterly regretted having done so and were campaigning for an apology from government. It is unlikely that this Bill will result in women campaigning in 20 or 30 years’ time for an apology from Parliament for what is being done now, but we really have to raise our game. It is clear that if we took a more consistent approach towards to some of these vulnerable families and helped a few more parents off drugs and alcohol, as we could well do, we would not need to take their children away. We must not be too optimistic and allow children to be kept in those families and be harmed, but we see through the effectiveness of Louise Casey’s focused work with troubled families and through District Judge Crichton’s work in the family drug and alcohol court that, where a real effort is made and where central government is prepared to step up and take responsibility, we can make a difference with those families. I welcome what the Government are doing, but some of these children would not have to be taken into care if we raised the overall quality of our child and family practice.
This debate highlights the great judgment required of child and family social workers. They are in the position of making that lifetime decision: will a child stay with its birth family in kinship care or will it be removed for adoption? I welcome the huge investment that this Government and the previous Government have made in raising the status of child and family social work through the social work college, the new post of Chief Social Worker and the Munro review. Despite those all being very helpful inputs, a social worker who was training in London—an intelligent woman—said to me last week, “I was bitterly disappointed by my training. I didn’t get the feedback. Many of my fellow students felt the same way. I’m now going to Bristol to carry on my training in social work”. There is therefore an awfully long way to go in the nuts and bolts of getting the social work profession to where it needs to be to serve those families properly.
What progress are we making in the retention of child and family social workers? People are saying—I heard it said again recently—that we are getting the best young English social workers into the profession now and have seen a great improvement over the past two years, but are we succeeding in retaining those young people? Are we managing to retain experienced social workers close to the front line so that they can mentor and support those child and family social workers?
I have one final question for the Minister, which he might care to write to me about. It is a concern raised in the past by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss, and raised today by the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes of Stretford, about the outcomes for children in adoptive placements. We need robust evidence about outcomes for children in adoptive placements. We have them already for children in kinship placements. We need to compare, contrast and make good policy decisions based on those. I hope that the Minister can give an assurance that, if that cannot be produced at the moment, research projects will be put in place so that in future we know how stable those adoptive placements are. The worst outcome would be for a child or children to be placed for one or two years, to be settled, and then to be rejected again by their new family. I am sorry to have gone on so long.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top (Lab)
My Lords, I declare my interests. I, too, was a member of the Adoption Legislation Select Committee. I have what feels like a lifelong involvement with Action for Children, which certainly goes back to when I was very small and collecting money for the National Children’s Home, which has changed its name a few times. I think I am now an ambassador for it. I also had some experience of supervising adoptions when I was a social worker, but that was a very long time ago so I am not sure that it is really a relevant interest because the legislation and everything else was very different.
One of the things that were different in those days was that most children who were placed for adoption were babies. When I hear the rhetoric about adoption from the Government at the moment, I sometimes suspect that they still think that that is the case. The reality is that most children being placed for adoption now, before the changes, are not babies, and that if the Bill as it stands becomes law, that will be even more true.
I have worked with and still know several people who are both foster parents and adopters; some are just foster parents and some are just adopters, while others have done both. They perform a remarkable job. Far too often we take for granted the work, the commitment and emotional support that they put in and the trauma that their lives and their families are put through, and it is very important that we do not do that.
I have concerns about this issue. Even when I was a social work student, I did an adoption supervision and took it to court. I was very impressed with, and supported, the judgment and the words of the presiding judge. I know that you really have to get the law right. You have to ensure that the family understand their rights, and that the adoptive family understand not only their rights but the rights of the parents who are placing their children for adoption.
We are talking here about going to a further stage, where the parents are not placing the children for adoption but the local authority will decide that there should be permanence, and therefore fostering for adoption should be considered. That is legally a new situation. I need convincing by the Minister that the Government have done the work to ensure that the family court will not then come back and say, “Actually, we are not convinced that the rights of this child and its natural family were properly considered in your decision around permanence and therefore around placing for fostering up to adoption”. That means that when the case gets to court for adoption, the judge may then be tempted to say, “I’m not convinced that this is in the interests of the child or that the process has ensured that the rights of the child, which are expressed very clearly in all sorts of places, including the UN convention, have actually had due attention paid to them”. We would then be putting social workers and local authorities in an invidious position, and we really have to take account of that.
Adoption: Adoption Legislation Committee Reports
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(11 years, 6 months ago)
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Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
My Lords, I thank the House for appointing me to this committee. It was my first Select Committee at this end of the building, and I enjoyed being part of a very thorough piece of work with a very interesting and varied group of people, with very different expertise and experience. Of course we were expertly chaired by the noble and learned Baroness, Lady Butler-Sloss. I had the enormous privilege of encountering her chairmanship much earlier in both our careers, when she chaired the Cleveland child abuse public inquiry. I was new to the House of Commons but I had been working as a social worker in the north-east, so was involved and interested in the issue. I was also serving on the then Education Bill Committee in the Commons. This was, I think, in 1998—the Bill became the 1998 Act. I was able to learn from her work and report in getting a much firmer framework for child protection in this country. She was immensely gracious to those of us who were new to Select Committee work in this House, and very tolerant of our different approaches, and I am very grateful to her for that. I am also grateful that she has today given us a much more expansive report, in a sense, of the overall conclusions of the committee, because I want to concentrate on a much narrower area of the committee’s considerations. However, it is important for noble Lords to remember the whole context in which the committee was working.
Adoption is, of course, an important option for children who are not able, for whatever reason, to be cared for by their birth parents, but it is sometimes forgotten that the pattern of adoption has changed significantly over the past 50 years. No longer is it dominated by newly born babies, probably put up for adoption because their mothers were out of wedlock. These days, that is not the main reason for children coming into care or, indeed, being placed for adoption. Many of the children who are placed for adoption today will be from what the Government often call “troubled families”, which means that many of them will have had very traumatic experiences in their childhood and will be very damaged by the neglect, violence or abuse that they have already suffered.
The report is trying, in the areas with which I am concerned, to establish that careful balance between the importance of achieving early permanence for vulnerable children alongside that key recognition that the best place for a child is to be raised within the family network, provided that it is safe and in their best interests. I remember as a social worker many moons ago just how anxious and obsessed were many adolescents with whom I worked because they did not have contact with their birth parents or their early family. It did not matter what we did in the care system; they wanted to know, wanted the reasons and wanted to see what we could do to establish contact. Today, if they go down the adoption road, that is very difficult for them. For me that means that we have a responsibility to take early intervention seriously. The committee felt that the careful balance that I am talking about could be met only by effective early intervention. Again, my experience as a Minister in tackling social exclusion was that there are good evidence-based programmes around the world on early intervention. There is now a lot of knowledge and work around that, and we have a responsibility to use that knowledge, now that we know.
There is increasing evidence of the importance of the time from conception to the age of two in the development of a child. We know that this is the crucial phase of human development. It is in this period that children form those solid psychological and neurological foundations to optimise lifelong social, emotional and physical health, and that of course then has such an important effect on their educational and economic achievement. Lack of attachment, neglect and abuse all have serious detrimental effects on children, and severely affect that development.
I commend to the House a report that has been published since the committee deliberated this issue from the special interest group for nought to two year-olds set up by the Government. The report was co-written by Sally Burlington at the Department for Education and George Hosking, CEO of the Wave Trust. I remind the House of my interest as a trustee of that organisation. I hope the Minister has been briefed on that report as it clearly points out that the most effective interventions are often preventive rather than reactive. The report says that preventive interventions address risk factors likely to result in future problems for particular families without waiting for those problems to emerge. That is precisely what I urge the Government to do. Although we considered early intervention we were not able to look at that report, but I think that many of us on the committee agree with that finding.
We heard from the NSPCC about some of the work that that organisation has done in this area. I talked about evidence-based programmes such as the Family Nurse Partnership, and continue to do so. Indeed, some people think that I am obsessed with those programmes. I had the privilege of witnessing the Family Nurse Partnership in the United States of America and then persuading my Cabinet colleagues to fund pilot programmes in this country. It became clear from that work that health visitors and midwives are the key to achieving better health and well-being for children in their foundation years. We are simply not sufficiently innovative in how we use their knowledge and expertise to understand what is happening to children and prospective parents in these most vulnerable families. If we used their work much more creatively, we would be able to take decisions which could well achieve the Government’s ambition of providing more early placements and early decision-making. We have the opportunity to change the manner in which parents behave, or are likely to behave, towards their children. We now know about that from the Nurse Family Partnership; or the Family Nurse Partnership, as we have rechristened it. We know what can be done. We know how we can change the behaviour and ambition of young mothers undergoing their first pregnancy. That should be the overarching ambition in early intervention.
The challenge for the Government is to get the legislation right to ensure that families are given the right support at the right stage to avoid problems of neglect and abuse so that the child’s interests are attended to before damage is done. If that work is guaranteed, if there is no prospect of the parents’ behaviour changing, or of other appropriate kinship carers, families or friends taking on the care of the child, permanent solutions should kick in quickly. We have just not been good enough at this. We have not been good enough at early identification or early intervention to optimise the child’s opportunities. Too often potential carers among family and friends are not investigated at an early stage: it comes as an afterthought. Too often there is insufficient support for kinship carers. Earlier this week, I popped into the Family Rights Group reception in the Palace of Westminster. Members of that body gave evidence to the committee. At the reception we heard about the experience of kinship carers, which was incredibly moving. However, we also heard their pleas for greater support.
I accept that there is, on occasion, risk in kinship placements. Anyone who has listened to the remarkable story of my very good right honourable friend along the Corridor, Alan Johnson, about his experience of kinship care, knows that taking a risk is important. He had a remarkable social worker who was prepared to take that risk and leave him with his sister who was 16. However, such risk should be mediated by the guarantee of support, and that is the issue on which many kinship carers feel we let them down. The Government sort of acknowledge that in their response to the report, but I want more action on that. I would like them to take account of the recommendations of recent research by Oxford University for the Family Rights Group, which gives us a menu of how we might provide that support more effectively.
I know that I have not covered many other aspects of the report. I conclude by saying that sometimes the rhetoric from the Government about adoption overshadows the other things that the committee knows are important—indeed, our chairperson has identified them as being important—such as early identification and the menu of different forms of permanence for children in care. It is important to recognise the complex jigsaw of ways forward, and I know that that is where the Government are, even if the rhetoric sometimes belies that. We have responsibility to ensure that the legislation that we are shortly to consider enhances opportunities for the most vulnerable children. I look forward to that.
Education: English Baccalaureate
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I agree very much about the importance of religious education. I am particularly pleased that the number of young people taking religious education at GCSE went up by nearly 8% this year and by 10% last year, at a time when people are concerned about take-up because of the introduction of the English baccalaureate performance measure. We do not currently have plans to make it a compulsory part of the English baccalaureate system.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
Is the Minister aware that when GCSEs were introduced there was much discussion of girls managing better, in terms of both learning and achievement, under a system of continuous assessment than with a cliff-edge examination at the end? Did the Government consider this when they changed the rules for 16 year-olds’ exams?
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, the Government’s proposals for the English baccalaureate certificate are out for consultation. There will be a range of issues on which people will be able to express their views, including those raised by the noble Baroness. While I take the point about assessment and different people learning in different ways, it is the Government’s view that the balance has tilted too far, and that having a linear course with exams at the end will not only give a better indication of performance but free up more time in the classroom for teachers to teach not to the test but towards a broad and rich education.
Young People: Parenthood
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(12 years, 5 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
My noble friend is exactly right in both her points. We should try to have a legislative framework whereby the involvement of both parents in the upbringing of children is made as easy as possible. She is absolutely right that the core and underlying interest in all this legislation is to make sure that the interests of the child are at the heart of whatever arrangements one makes.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
My Lords, is the Minister able to reassure the House that any of the money that is being committed to spending on vouchers for parenting will be spent exclusively on evidence-based programmes that we know work?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I believe that the parenting trials to which the noble Baroness, Lady Armstrong, refers are being delivered by well established and well respected providers. It is important that what is provided is, as far as possible, evidence-based. I take that point. If I can find out more information about who the providers operating the trials are, I will make sure that the noble Baroness has it.
Children: Parenting
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(13 years, 4 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)
My Lords, we will consider Mr Field’s recommendations as part of our review of PSHE. Evidence suggests, though, that parenting skills are best taught to parents through a mix of practical application and learning, which is likely to be more effective the closer it is to the age at which people have children. My honourable friend Sarah Teather will shortly publish a foundation years policy statement to respond to recommendations from the Field, Allen and Tickell reviews that deal with the foundation years.
Lord Hill of Oareford
My Lords, part of the purpose of the PSHE review to which I referred is to look at what element of the content of PSHE is most helpful to children and young people. The other part is to look at what support teachers need in order to teach these important skills to children.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
My Lords, I apologise to the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, and the Minister for being a bit hasty just now. Is the Minister aware that several programmes were run in schools that proved incredibly effective at, apart from anything else, ensuring that young people became parents later rather than early? If the Minister were to talk to some of those young people who had those very effective programmes, he might revise his view that it was better to leave it until they nearly were parents. This is about how young people and prospective parents begin to understand things about their own relationships and about the responsibilities that parenting brings. My experience is that when this has been done in secondary schools it has been very effective, and I hope that the Minister will look at this again.
Lord Hill of Oareford
I am grateful to the noble Baroness for the points that she makes, and I listen to her experience very carefully. The evidence that the department has had about later life is there, but I am not saying that to disagree with the point that what one wants ideally is a mix. That is why the PSHE review will take the views of children into account. We want to ensure that we learn those kinds of lessons and have the best possible PSHE that deals with those points.
Building Schools for the Future
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top Excerpts(13 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Hill of Oareford
I understand the frustration that the noble Lord feels and I accept the reproach if it has felt to him like a poor process. I am not able, I am afraid, to answer the specifics now, but I shall go back after this Statement and check what they are. I shall then follow up the matter with him as soon as I can.
Baroness Armstrong of Hill Top
We appreciate the way in which the Minister deals with this House, but will he accept that there was real feeling when the Secretary of State made his announcement because it was so precipitate, because it had not been consulted on and because it was so quick? He would not have saved any more money if he had taken another two or three weeks properly to consult and make sure that he knew what he was doing. The announcement sounded ideological to most people. Will he accept that the decision has had devastating effects on some schools that are well past their sell-by date and where children are being educated in conditions which are inadequate for an education in this country? What will the Government do to make sure that those children are able to have their schooling in adequate and decent buildings so that they can get a more-than-adequate education, particularly in the most vulnerable and deprived areas?
Lord Hill of Oareford
I do not accept that the decision taken by the Secretary of State for Education was ideological. No one takes any pleasure from having to stop investment in schools. As I hope I have said a number of times, it was something to which we felt impelled by the state of the finances with which we found ourselves. I accept what the noble Baroness said about the need for good places and I would very much want to be in a position where I had a larger capital pot to do more for schools. I hope that she might accept in turn that had the result of the general election been different and the Labour Party were in government it would have found itself in a similarly difficult situation, having to stop capital spending on schools. It had said before the election that there would need to be a 50 per cent cut in capital, and the then Secretary of State for Education was clear that the schools building programme and schools would not be exempt from that.