Education and Adoption Bill (Fourth sitting)

Debate between Bill Esterson and James Berry

Thursday 2nd July 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Bill Esterson]

There is a danger of that, and it is right to highlight the danger. The last thing I wanted to do in tabling the amendment was to undermine any good practice, and that was not what my hon. Friend was seeking to do, either. However, it is only right and proper that we express the concern that if all the focus, attention, energy and resources are directed towards something called adoption when that is not necessarily right for the child, other forms of permanence will not receive the same support and the best life chances for children and young people will not be provided.

We are all familiar with the very sad state of affairs that large numbers of children in care end up in the criminal justice system. They end up not getting good results at school. They find it difficult to establish stable relationships in adult life and find it difficult to get decent, well-paid employment. We have already talked about the mental health problems that young people in care suffer. All those indicators, all those problems, start early in life. The damage is done in the early years, is it not? So we should invest in support for children and young people as early as possible to improve their chances later in life.

If we focus only on adoption, we are focusing, sadly, on the few. I certainly do not want that to be at the expense of the very many for whom, sadly, the end result is as I have described, despite a lot of investment, intervention and good work by dedicated professionals, volunteers and people who act as formal or informal carers, with the support of people in schools, the health service and beyond. There is massive investment and support over many years, yet there is a stubborn lack of improvement in the life chances of this group of children and young people, with a considerable cost not only to their life chances but to society. The cost of young people who end up in the prison system is enormous. We need to consider the numbers who come through the care system first. If only there was a way of reducing those numbers, it would make an enormous saving further down the line, so my hon. Friend is absolutely right to raise that point.

We heard evidence from a number of witnesses. I have quoted Andy Leary-May already when I was talking about permanence teams. He called for the Bill to look at other forms of permanence in full. Another witness, Andy Elvin, an experienced adopter, was able to give evidence from a personal perspective, and we should listen carefully to that. He made the point that we cannot overstate the importance of early, stable and permanent placements. He talked about concentrating not on one solution—the Bill refers only to adoption—but on permanency. When asked by my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff West what change he would make to the Bill, Mr Elvin said that he would substitute the word “permanency” for “adoption”. Improving the outcomes in all permanence options would make a big difference. That improvement would make the legislation right. He said that this was not about adoption numbers but about increasing the quality of permanence. He spoke of the value of special guardianship orders and foster care, and urged us to consider how we, as a Committee, could help with those permanence options.

It is, of course, important that we do the best we can for those who are adopted. A number of Members have spoken about Julie Selwyn’s research, which showed that adoption is on the whole a very good thing for children. Hugh Thornbery, who also mentioned that research, made the point that while adoptive families struggle through tough times and survive them, adopted children still have very challenging needs. To paraphrase his evidence, it is clear that adoption offers a greater chance of stability, hence the low number of breakdowns in placements—3%—that we have talked about a number of times. However, if adoption is the solution for only 5% of children who end up in care, how do we ensure that we provide solutions that give the other 95% the best chance of permanence and stability, so that they can make the best of their lives and we do not end up with the poor outcomes that I mentioned for so many children and young people?

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that the Government are, in fact, very concerned about all the different forms of permanence? The Bill focuses on one such method—adoption—without in any way devaluing the other forms of permanence. It is appropriate to do so when, as Sir Martin Narey pointed out, there has been a massive decline in adoption since 1975.

[Bill Esterson]

We also heard evidence that there has been a worrying fall in the number of children being adopted recently.

Education and Adoption Bill (First sitting)

Debate between Bill Esterson and James Berry

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Public Bill Committees

[Bill Esterson]

Q 72 How will you assure the quality of those sponsors? We have seen some high-profile problems. How will we avoid those?

Dr Coulson: There are two things. One is that the system is learning a bit about sponsors—those that have been successful and those that have been less successful. The work that Zoe described about headteacher boards has brought greater scrutiny by headteachers of those kind of decisions. That has been a very helpful development in the last year. When someone wants to be a sponsor, they have to go through various processes when they apply. Potential sponsors now have to go into a level of detail, and they have to demonstrate why they would be any good at this, what the governance is and all those kinds of things. Certainly on this the bar has been raised very significantly, even in the last 12 months.

The second thing is the work we have begun to do in the last year to hold academy trusts accountable much more quickly when schools do not appear to be doing as well as we would expect. There is also the use of mechanisms in the funding agreements that allow us to give warning notices and pre-warning notices to academy trusts, which make clear that, unless things change, we will have to move schools from one trust to another.

[James Berry (Kingston and Surbiton) (Con)]

Q 73 I should say that I am a primary school governor. Dr Coulson, there are different tools for improving academies. Could you briefly explain a little about those? I understand that the Government will extend those methods to failing and coasting schools.

Dr Coulson: In terms of improving academies, when those academies that I have got to know in the last year have not been going successfully, crucially, the kind of measures which led to improvements have brought much greater local support. Typically those schools that have struggled are rather dispersed from other schools in their trust. They are schools which do not really have a local understanding of their area, and have struggled to succeed in the progress debate of the children, who typically are in quite low attaining schools. It has been about leadership, as you have heard many times. It has been about the academy trust being able to draw on the local leadership capacity that perhaps they had not previously had. It has been about bringing in fresh leadership to have a fresh look, and sharing some of the key people, whether they are heads of English or heads of maths. This gives a fresh look at departments where children have not been making the kind of progress which you would expect, certainly in these key subjects.

In terms of the second point about failing and coasting schools, there is a big distinction between failing and coasting. In failing schools, I would absolutely expect to see the kind of measures I just mentioned, so an academy trust would immediately take responsibility for the school and do the same kinds of things. In coasting schools, I think that there is a considerably wider group of possible interventions, of which joining an academy trust is one. There are some of the things which Emma Knights talked about, such as interim executive boards; some of the other measures that the Bill mentions, such as insisting on joining up and making arrangements with strong partners for support, and making use of teaching schools and national leaders of education. All those kinds of things are some of the measures we would expect to see a coasting school engaging in. The important thing about the Bill is that there is an expectation that the plan works, one way or another, and that we use every single tactic until we have made sure that it does. That then might include moving to academy status if necessary.