Children and Families Bill

Baroness Walmsley Excerpts

Tuesday 7th January 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, I shall be brief, as I usually am, but I want to say two things. One is that when I read these amendments my heart leapt. I thought that if only the home local authority could be made responsible for every young person in secure provision on this basis with a proper plan for seeing them through—as I remember, and as I am sure my noble friend Lord Laming will remember, was the case in children’s departments, where someone was responsible for a young person, with a plan, wherever they were—that would be absolutely wonderful. Of course, at that time there was much more focus on education in the institutions, as childcare establishments, than there is in some of the more penal establishments that exist today.

So I was utterly delighted and was going to congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, whose tenacity of purpose has taken this through, until I realised, as he did, the key flaw in this piece of legislation. That flaw is that those who wish to take the plans through are not the people with the capacity to provide the resource in order for it to happen in the place it needs to happen. As I am always interested in implementation, I thought about how this would work. There has to be a further step somewhere, either in some sort of regulation or a change in the legislation, that ensures that these plans are formulated into the institution—because, remember, these are individual plans. In the institution they have to be put together into programmes for groups of young people; it is not as easy as simply saying that you can carry each plan through as it stands without extra provision being brought in, with all the problems with that in terms of financing.

I hope that the Minister will look at this, take heart that many of us have been very impressed with the way he listens, and take it forward. Many of us are very concerned about young people in detention who have been failed by everybody by the time they get to detention, particularly those with special educational needs who should not be in this form of provision at all. Surely they can get the right education through this legislation, but they certainly will not with this flaw.

[Baroness Walmsley (LD)]

My Lords, I have a suggestion following what the noble Baroness has just said about implementation, but first I must say how pleased I am to see that my noble friend Lord Nash has listened tremendously well and gone away and done something about it. This has been a great example of the way this House works so well behind the scenes. I am very pleased that the blanket statement that all the good stuff in the Bill should not apply to children in custody has been got rid of and that my noble friend the Minister has grasped the opportunity that the Bill gives to put something better in place. Let us see whether we can get it as perfect as we would like to see it.

It occurs to me that it is a very good thing that the responsibility moves back to the home local authority. What we want to see when young people come out of custody and go back to their home local authority is continuity of provision. I know that the Local Government Association has welcomed this provision, but the people actually delivering the services while the young people are in custody are a company, an organisation that has been contracted to deliver that service from outside. They are not the prison authorities. These education services are provided by external organisations under contract. Why should those contracts not always have a proviso within them that says that there is somebody within the organisation with the responsibility of liaising with the home authority to ensure that the EHC plan is delivered, or the assessment is made, whichever is appropriate, and that the services are provided while the young person is in custody? That should be a condition of the contract for delivering education services within the prison. They should be obliged, under their contract, to provide what EHC plans say should be provided. I see no reason why that should not be a condition of winning a contract for providing services within a prison.

My final point is that I am particularly pleased about the duty that is being put on health commissioners to provide services within an EHC plan. I am aware, and the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, has emphasised it on many occasions, that speech and language therapy is much needed by a high percentage of young people in custody. Let us hope that those services will be provided better in future under these new provisions.

[Baroness Hughes of Stretford (Lab)]

My Lords, my name is attached to Amendment 50 along with that of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham. The amendment seeks to take Clause 70, which disapplies the provisions of Part 3 to detained young people, out of the Bill and I am pleased that the Government have accepted that. I also support Amendment 49, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham.

I can be brief because most of the points have been made. I welcome the Government’s recognition that, as the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said, it was unbelievable that the provisions in Part 3 ought not to apply to detained young people and they have come some way, at least, to applying some of the provisions to young people in custody. However, I regret that, compared to the situation that will exist for young people in the community, the provisions in the government amendments are weak and that, as they stand, they will not give detained young people the same rights to and expectations of support as those in the community.

A number of points have been raised and I would like to summarise two significant holes in the proposals in the amendments as they hang together. First, where there is an EHC plan in existence before a young person goes into custody, the amendments will require the home local authority to maintain that plan and be ready to re-implement it on the release of that young person. That is good. However, as the noble Lords, Lord Ramsbotham, Lord Storey and others have said, the amendments will require the local authority and the healthcare authority to use only their “best endeavours”. That is very different from the duty on the local and healthcare authorities for young people in the community to secure the provision in the EHC plan. That is a big hole and I should be grateful if the Minister would address that issue and say why the Government have diluted the duty on local authorities in respect of detained young people.

The other big gap, which has been addressed in different ways by different contributors to the debate so far, relates to what happens to young people while they are in custody. Most of the amendments address the issue of what happens when the young person is released—they ought to be able to go back home and the home authority should carry on implementing the EHC plan that was in place—but there is nothing in the amendments about what happens in custody. There is a duty on YOIs and custodial institutions to co-operate with the local authority but there is no requirement on the institutions to, for example, identify if a young person has SEN if it has not been identified before they go into custody. This may well be the case because many of them have special educational needs. There is no responsibility on the custodial institution to request an EHC assessment. They can, but there is no requirement for them to do so. There is no responsibility laid on the custodial institutions to take over the responsibilities that would exist for a local authority if that young person was still in the community.

The noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, referred to the contractors providing the education, but the responsibility ought to lie with the public sector organisation, or the quasi-public sector organisation in the case of a privatised institution, which is holding these young people. It ought to be its responsibility to address the special educational needs of those young people while they are in custody, working closely, of course, with the home local authority from which a young person has come and to which they will return.

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[Baroness Walmsley]

My Lords, I, too, welcome this group of amendments. From these Benches in Committee we proposed a group of amendments about the voice of the child and the child’s involvement with decision-making. We have not got all that we wanted but there is certainly a step in the right direction here today and I very much welcome it. I echo the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, when she said how important it is that children have the information they need to enable them to take part in decision-making about matters that relate to them. This is a right under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and I am very glad that the Government have taken one step further towards implementing it.

[Baroness Howarth of Breckland]

My Lords, very briefly, I would be remiss if I did not welcome this amendment. I was directly involved for many years with children and giving children information, both in voluntary organisations and in the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. It was clear to me that they did not know what information you had given them unless it was in an appropriate form. I hope that the code will take the best from some of the practice that already exists in some local authorities and CAFCASS regarding the form of information and the method of delivery to children and young people. Young children in particular can be involved very easily in many complex areas of their lives and indeed in decision-making if it is explained to them in an appropriate way by an appropriate person. I welcome the amendment but I hope that the implementation will be looked at carefully as there is good practice out there that could be used.