Co-operative Schools

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Edward Timpson

Wednesday 11th March 2015 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. In the usual way, I congratulate the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) on securing another important debate on co-operative schools. I well remember the debate we had in October 2013, which I have taken the time to re-read. Other Members who are present today also spoke at that debate. What struck me was that through it shone a real shared purpose on the need to raise standards right across the education system. There was also a recognition that co-operatives are a part of the solution. I will remind Members of some my comments, which support my contention that the Government support the work that many co-operative schools across the country are doing. I said:

“We should, and do, cherish the values of co-operative trust schools”.

I also expressed the hope that I had given—I hope I will do so again today—

“a forceful indication that this Government hugely value the co-operative movement’s work in our schools.”—[Official Report, 23 October 2013; Vol. 569, c. 127WH, 132WH.]

I want to make it clear that those values, as my hon. Friend the Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker) said in his intervention, are shared by all parties, which is demonstrated by the fact that there has been no attempt to prevent in an ideological way the growth of co-operative schools. In fact, they have seen their biggest growth in quite some time. We have more than 700 of them, and we will be close to 1,000 by the end of next year. That is a huge increase for the co-operative movement in education.

The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) slightly stole my thunder in recognising that, in her time as an MP, the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley has, there is no doubt, been a huge force for good in ensuring that children of all backgrounds, but particularly the most disadvantaged, have their voices heard. It is a great loss to us all that she has decided to go on to bigger and better things in her future career. The service she has given and her commitment to the area is noted and should be applauded. In doing that, I hope that she recognises that we share the same endeavour. I reassure her and other Members that the Government continue to support wholeheartedly the role that school collaboration and partnerships play in achieving our goal of a high-performing, self-improving education system, which includes the role of co-operatives.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister is the acceptable face of the Conservative party, as is the hon. Member for Wycombe (Steve Baker), but they are atypical. The fact of the matter is that we need a real commitment to change the law. That is what we want. We do not want to muck around. We have got 837 schools. We want a change in the law, for a faster expansion—

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Edward Timpson

Monday 21st July 2014 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

The reasons why my hon. Friend is receiving correspondence about the current SEN system are also why, under the Children and Families Act 2014, we are bringing in substantial changes to introduce, from September, a single SEN system that puts families at the centre of decision making right at the start when they require extra support. Over and above that, we are also providing an additional £30 million of new funding so that parents can have independent supporters to assist them in navigating themselves through the system, which, in the past, too many of them have found too difficult.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

The Minister is aware that there is a crisis up and down the country—whether in Peterborough or Huddersfield—as many schools do not have the capacity for early diagnosis and treatment. When will he ensure that there is such capacity in every school in our country?

Government Child Protection Policy

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Edward Timpson

Tuesday 24th June 2014 Westminster Hall

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

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray. I thank the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) not only for calling this important debate but for her assiduous work in preparing for it and for the work that she has carried out in her own constituency and Parliament on child protection. Her speech was measured; it was also moving in parts, with recollections of some of the horrific abuse that children have suffered at the hands of adults and, in some cases, other minors. She has put forward a strong and coherent argument for keeping our gaze firmly fixed on the children who are the victims in all this.

Following on from our meeting last week, I hope I can reassure the hon. Lady that I share absolutely her passion for protecting children from the appalling form of abuse she raised, as well as other kinds of abuse and neglect. That is why we are taking action not just within my own Department but right across Government to learn the lessons from past mistakes, to see how we can improve the services that are there to protect children, and to make sure that professionals have the capability and the space to spot the signs of abuse and that they know how to act on those signs.

I will try to address the points the hon. Lady raised, in particular the key recommendations of the report by the all-party group. If I do not cover a point in sufficient detail to satisfy her, I will of course write to her. Many of the report’s recommendations are directed at other Government Departments and I will endeavour to ensure that they play their full part in providing a full and proper reply.

[Mr Sheerman]

Before the Minister moves on to the specific points raised in the report, I should say that in this very room only a month or so ago there was a harrowing session on children’s access to pornography, involving some very good campaigners. Does he think that that problem might be partly responsible for some of the early sexualisation of children and the behaviour that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) described?

[Mr Timpson]

I sit as one of the co-chairs of the board of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety, an organisation that has done some excellent work in grappling with precisely the issues the hon. Gentleman raises, as well as pushing internet service providers, and others who are there to protect children online, to do more to make sure that they are protected.

As a result, there is clearly more enriched research into the causal link between exposure to pornography and possible impacts on behaviour, attitudes and boundaries among children. We are learning more about how one affects the other and it would be remiss of us not to look more carefully at what more we can do to try to prevent some of the appalling consequences of exposure to online pornography and other forms of abuse that children, unfortunately, find more readily accessible now than was the case in the past.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mr Timpson]

Very briefly—I want to address the hon. Lady’s points.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Sheerman]

Just to push the Minister on that, my constituents are appalled not only about online pornography but about what is available on their television screens through Freeview. What will he do about that?

[Mr Timpson]

That is another area of advanced technology where we cannot simply maintain the status quo in our response, especially as smart TVs are becoming more prevalent on the market. A strand within the UKCCIS board is working specifically on how we can better ensure that anything broadcast through that medium is controlled more readily than it has been in the past. Of course, we need to do much more work to keep up with fast-moving changes in technology. I will happily write to the hon. Gentleman with more details if that would be helpful.

The all-party group’s report recommends a whole host of important considerations for various parts of Government to take forward. The hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley touched on a number and I will address a few in the time I have available. One was about information sharing—an issue that goes to the heart of the problems that underlie the failure that too often occurs in child protection. Anyone who sits down and reads a serious case review will see a common theme, as information sharing is often at the heart of why things have gone horribly wrong in the particular case.

The report recommends that guidelines on information sharing should be reviewed to ensure that professionals are clear about when data should be shared in the interests of children. I entirely agree that early sharing of information is key to providing effective early help to vulnerable children and adults. Of course, changing structures alone will not make children, or indeed adults, safe, and it is not enough simply to improve IT systems. It will be skilled professionals, who can identify problems early, working together under locally agreed and enforced arrangements, who will bring about effective information sharing.

In a number of initiatives, local partners are working in innovative ways to share information and knowledge about a child and their family, resulting in the better delivery of co-ordinated services. One such model, which I know the hon. Lady will know of, is the multi-agency safeguarding hub, or MASH, which can draw on information across all agencies, enabling them to provide a better informed referral process. Local authorities such Staffordshire, which was recently rated good by Ofsted, have made effective use of the MASH model to strengthen local partnership working and to provide better safeguarding services for children.

An independent report into the effectiveness of MASH was commissioned by the London safeguarding children board, and found that turnaround times for child protection cases involving children with high or complex needs had almost halved in some areas since the London MASH programme began in 2011. However, that is just one model, which allows services to work together in a co-ordinated way.

The hon. Lady referred to the statutory guidance published last year—the “Working Together to Safeguard Children 2013” guidance. That was revised to try to make the legislation and its requirements as clear as possible so that all organisations know what the law says they and others must do. The guidance provides the essentials to enable and encourage good cross-agency working so that all organisations understand what they should do to provide a co-ordinated approach to child protection.

The all-party group notes that different Departments lead on different aspects of the work to protect children from abuse. I understand the point; if responsibilities are not clear, whether in local or national Government, I will be happy to explain from the national perspective how my role fits with those of my colleagues. When I met the hon. Lady last week, I gave her what I hope was a clear read-out of where that responsibility lies. My Department has overall responsibility for reforms to the child protection system, professionalising children’s social care services and making life better for children in care and leaving care.

Bringing about the sort of changes we want in tackling sexual abuse of children requires a much broader programme of work involving several Departments, and that is reflected in the recommendations in the all-party group’s report. That is why the Government set up the cross-Government national group on sexual violence against children and vulnerable people, its purpose being to take forward much of the urgent work needed to address the missed opportunities to protect children and vulnerable adults. That national group is a board of leading experts from relevant agencies: the inspectorates, the police, voluntary and community organisations and senior colleagues from across government. Through the group, the Government are committing resources and important energy to meet significant safeguarding challenges, including child abuse, trafficking, missing people and child sexual exploitation, as well as managing sex offenders and tackling online pornography and paedophile literature.

[Mr Timpson]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right. In my previous job as a family barrister, all too often I came across the whole issue of intrafamilial sexual abuse that she spoke about. There is an opportunity through the group’s action plan to raise the matter more readily within it and to consider harmful sexual behaviour among young people where it is more likely to occur, and what our response is on the ground. I am happy to give her an undertaking to raise the matter in that group so that it is much more at the forefront of the thinking not just of the action plan, but the following action. Although the issue does not receive the same level of interest as some more high-profile cases, it is more embedded in society and we must find better ways to talk about it and ways to tackle it.

The hon. Lady alluded to the all-party group’s recommendation for my Department to ensure that higher priority is given to specialised training for social workers and teachers in spotting the signs of sexual abuse, including through the work of local safeguarding children boards. This is an area on which several LSCBs have made good progress. For example, last year I visited Oxfordshire county council, which has delivered specialist training for staff across agencies on child sexual exploitation, on the back of some horrific cases in the city of Oxford, as well as producing a professional handbook and a screening tool to help staff to spot the early signs of grooming and to take action.

More broadly, the Department for Education is taking forward a broad range of work to improve the skills and knowledge of front-line professionals. Isabelle Trowler, the first chief social worker for children and families, is leading work to define what a child and family social worker needs to know to practise effectively. That includes being able to identify and respond to sexual abuse and specific forms of child sexual abuse. If the hon. Lady would like to talk to the chief social worker about that area of her work, I will do what I can to make that arrangement. A final draft of the knowledge and skills document will be completed in the summer, following which we will consult widely to ensure that it accords with other people’s views.

Higher education institutions that deliver social work degree courses are required to ensure that newly qualified social workers are able to analyse and evaluate information, assess risks and intervene appropriately, so that they can give effective support to children and young people who have experienced sexual abuse. Following Sir Martin Narey’s review, we are overhauling the training and education of social workers to give trainees the expertise they need and employers more confidence in newly qualified recruits.

We have also launched the new fast track front-line training programme to attract the brightest and best to social work. We have spent more than £400 million on the social work bursary and our Step Up to Social Work programme—I have just announced the fourth cohort—is to ensure that we have enough highly skilled staff to meet demand.

[Mr Sheerman]

I remember when all three of us—the Minister, my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley and I—were on the same Committee, and one thing that we were really worried about when we looked at the training of social workers was their experience on the job. So many of them did not have relevant experience in a demanding local authority team. Is the Minister doing anything about that work experience?

[Mr Timpson]

Part of the issue is recruitment and part is retention and keeping experienced social workers on the front line not just managing cases, but being involved in the daily work required to ensure that families keep children safe and make progress. The assessed and supported year in employment programme—the ASYE—enables newly qualified social workers to feel supported enough to gain that experience and not drift out of social work because of the pressure they are under.

We also now have principal family social workers moving into all local authorities so that there is a lead social worker, who may previously have moved up into management all too readily. One advantage of some of the flexibilities of delegated functions is, as in Staffordshire with the Evolve YP social work practice scheme, a much flatter management arrangement so that senior social workers are active in the expertise and professionalism that brought them into social work in the first place.

The all-party group also recommended that the Government should lead on providing better and more consistent support for victims of child sexual abuse. It must be right that every victim of sexual violence has access to adequate service provision that meets their individual needs and supports them in coping and recovering, particularly in relation to children. To help children who have been trafficked, the Home Office has announced proposals to trial specialist independent advocates, and I am sure that the hon. Lady is aware of that. A new code of practice for victims of crime came into force in December 2013 and will give victims of crime clear entitlement from criminal justice agencies and will better tailor services to individual need. It contains a section dedicated to the needs of children and young people.

The Government’s review of ways to reduce the distress to victims in sexual violence trials was published on 31 March and recognises the benefits of specialisation of those involved in sexual violence cases. It proposes that the bodies responsible for professional conduct and practitioners should be encouraged to develop an accreditation system for defence advocates that is open and transparent. I will write to the hon. Lady with more details of that.

The hon. Lady touched on sexual abuse in institutions and rightly highlighted the importance of preventing sexual abuse in those environments, ensuring that those who have concerns about children can raise them. As she will know, my Department, like all Departments, takes historical abuse very seriously indeed. That is why Lucy Scott-Moncrieff is providing quality assurance independently on all the investigations that derive from schools and children’s homes. She will report to the Secretary of State later this year about the lessons she learns from those investigations. That will be very helpful in informing the Government’s next steps in tackling sexual abuse in institutions.

The all-party group made recommendations on the whistleblowing process, on which local authorities should have a strong policy. Time prevents me from going into more detail about that.

I thank the hon. Lady for her continued interest in this vital area of our work in this place. I am happy to continue to work with her to try to improve things in future.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Edward Timpson

Monday 11th November 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Timpson]

The new statutory guidance is crystal clear about the responsibilities of all those who work with children, including in schools, and if they have a concern about a child’s welfare, safety or care they should report that to the appropriate authority. We do not believe that making failure to report a criminal offence will improve the protection of children. There is international evidence that suggests that that can make children less safe, but of course we always keep these things under review.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does the Minister agree that the Baby Peter case and the tragic event of the death of that little boy highlighted the need for inter-agency co-operation? Will he also associate himself with my view that we in this House should all be ashamed of the inappropriate hunting down and scapegoating of Sharon Shoesmith?

[Mr Timpson]

In the light of the recent tragic case of Daniel Pelka, we look carefully at what we could learn from the serious case review. It seemed clear to us that the most important focus of our work had to be on understanding what went wrong and why, as opposed to trying to single out individuals at that stage of the investigation. We want everyone to prioritise the protection of children, whatever role they have, whether it is at the level of director of children’s services or working on the front line. We need to send out the message, “We are there to support you in your work, but where you need to be challenged, where there are basic practice failures, we will do so and make sure we put it right.”