Support for Bereaved Children

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Thursday 14th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House calls on the Government to develop a protocol for ensuring that bereaved children are made aware of and have access to practical and emotional support through public and third sector agencies.

I thank the Backbench Business Committee and everyone who supported my application.

I have a jigsaw puzzle at home that my sisters recently had made for me for a big birthday. It is an old photograph of the family at Christmas, when they were just seven and 12—it was the last Christmas before dad died. They did not have to explain to me why they had chosen that picture, as I knew from the moment I unwrapped the present. There is an unspoken bond between the three us, and with our mum when she was alive, and that bond is understood by families all over this country.

I have an interest to declare, of course, as I am both an adult who was bereaved as a child and the mother of a bereaved child. Every day, more children in this country experience what we experienced when our lives were turned upside down. The trauma of losing a loved one—not just a parent but a loved one—is often sudden and inexplicable. Every 20 minutes a parent dies in this country, and around 127 children are bereaved every day, but that figure is only for parents, and I say “only” advisedly. We do not have figures for the number of children who lose grandparents, siblings or friends, all of which are traumatic losses for a young person.

[Darren Henry (Broxtowe) (Con)]

I thank the hon. Lady for securing this debate. Supporting bereaved children is incredibly important, and the physical presence of their loved ones is a huge part of that. My Broxtowe constituent Aaron lost his wife Bernadette in childbirth. He did not qualify for leave or pay due to the time he had been employed so, while going through the heartache of losing his wife and raising his son Tim, he had the added stress of the employment situation he faced. No one should be in that position, so does the hon. Lady agree that there must be a day one right to leave and pay for those who lose a partner in childbirth, so that children can be with their loved ones?

[Christine Jardine]

The circumstances the hon. Gentleman outlines are dreadful and affect so many people in this country every day. We often do not acknowledge the amount of practical and emotional support and help that people need to get through this and, as he says, Aaron should have had support and should have been able to look after his child without having to worry about the financial implications.

I was recently privileged to meet a group of bereaved children who had come to Parliament while handing in a petition at Downing Street asking for exactly what we are talking about today. Listening to them, I could not help but be frustrated that so little has changed in the decades since I went through what they have experienced. Although there are support systems through schools and wonderful charity organisations such as Winston’s Wish, which had arranged the petition, I am told it is still the case that, unless a family is already in touch with social services, those services have no way of knowing about a child’s bereavement or that a child needs support. That means that brave children in this country must often still rely on luck and search engines to find the help they need. It is children of all ages, even those who might consider themselves, as I did, a young adult, who need support through those circumstances, but at the moment we have no official way of keeping track and matching up children with organisations.

These organisations tell me that they know the children are out there and need their help, but they just not know who and where they are, or, sadly, how to get in touch with them. Child Bereavement UK told me:

“As a service that works tirelessly to meet the needs of bereaved children, young people and families, one of the hardest things to hear someone say is, ‘I only wish I’d known you were there when this happened to our family’. Services like ours at Child Bereavement UK are there, but without knowing who and where bereaved children and young people are, they are invisible and the chances of them finding the practical and emotional support they need to navigate life after bereavement are severely diminished.”

That is a crucial point: this is about navigating life after bereavement, and not just immediately after. For children, this can be about more than that immediate period. My sisters and I were lucky, as we had support around us—mum was brilliant—but perhaps there was something more we could have had. Perhaps we could have had more support to make it easier for us and for her—something we did not know about—because it is tough and you just get through the challenges as you can, and not just then. My apologies if this seems ungrateful to anyone, but one reason why I hope the Government are able to take this on, take it across Departments and recognise that it is a cross-departmental issue is that we are dealing with a lifelong challenge. It does not go away miraculously when we hit 30, 40 or 50; I have no idea when it will go away—if it ever does, I would be grateful. More than one person I spoke to cautioned me, when I began to raise this issue, that I might be opening an emotional can of worms for myself. One group I have spoken to, Adults Bereaved as Children, tells me that anyone who loses a parent, grandparent, sibling or friend can be affected in ways that they do not recognise and can be affected later in life when this comes back. I am told that they have an increased risk of depressive symptoms and anxiety. They also have physical health symptoms and can suffer serious illness, have riskier health behaviours and face earlier mortality. Educationally, we can suffer lower than average scores. We are less likely to be employed at the age of 30 and, sadly, we are over-represented in the criminal justice system. Those are only the personal implications. For the NHS, there are ongoing costs involved in dealing with people who have mental or physical health issues as a result of not getting the support they needed when they were a child and this coming back in later life. We must also consider the economic impact of undermining the contributions that so many people could make to our economy by not making sure that they have the support they need at a traumatic time. So the ramifications of this are huge and they are much more than just personal.

In the past few months, I have spoken to people in the voluntary sector, written to the Scottish Government and sat down with the former children’s Minister, the right hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho). Without exception, they have been supportive. Everyone recognises that there is a problem, wants to help and outlines the wonderful services that are available. However, pinning down the solution is the problem: how do we connect these services with children who are grieving? That is the issue that everyone seems to grapple with, but should it really be difficult?

As I have said when we have talked about this previously, we have debated the merits of a registry for bereaved children. In modern society, it should not be difficult to find people who need support, as we have registers and statistics for just about everything. A digital society makes a lot of things easier; it is often too easy to keep track of things. For example, my medical records are online, as I am sure all of ours are, in order to make it easier for the NHS anywhere in the country to know our history if we collapse somewhere away from home. I hate to think of exactly what information can be scanned from my passport or my national insurance number. But if, God forbid, anything were to happen to any of us who have children, there would be no way of checking whether they were getting the support they needed and whether they were okay—whether they were safe, looked after, coping with the trauma they were going through or whether they were perhaps just needing someone outside their immediate family to talk to. The immediate family is vital and supportive, and schools do a fantastic job in supporting young children, but that may not be the ideal way of ensuring that every child gets the right help. What happens if they move home, to a different school? Who tells the school about this? Do they tell the school or will they be too embarrassed? What happens if they do not want their classmates to know just how bad they are feeling and they need more than the school can provide? Where is the network to ensure that they get that?

That is why today I am calling on the Government to look at how we establish a new and necessary protocol to help a wide range of public bodies—the NHS, local authorities and schools—to establish where and how children who are grieving can find the support that is right for them and perhaps put them in touch with a charity organisation that can give them support. We need to make the children’s carers and the children themselves feel valued and looked after. This should be a low-cost, low-effort task to help the charities connect with grieving families, but to help them in this process would also have undeniable benefits for many people in our communities. It would help them process difficult, traumatic experiences and overcome the problems I talked about earlier. All we need to do, and all I ask the Government to do, is invest some time, thought and care into coming up with what should be an administrative solution—this should not require legislation. This might be something as simple as noting, when a death is registered, whether a child might need support, and identifying which Department can best administer it and the easiest way to do it.

When I met those children who had been brought here by Winston’s Wish to deliver the petition, it was heartbreaking to hear their stories. I have not met anyone in this place who would not sympathise with them and want to address the problems some of them faced in getting support; we recognise the significance of helping them. There is no political issue here; there is no divide over whether or not we should be supporting our children and our adults who perhaps did not get the support they needed when they were younger and perhaps did not even realise they needed it, because the advice was not there for them. We all want to do this, so what is stopping us?

Many bereaved children will not take up the offer of support, but sometimes even knowing that there are organisations out there to offer it provides the safety net that their families desperately need. They may never actually pick up the phone or send an email, but a protocol would mean that they would know that they could and they would know who they could phone if they wanted to. That would be a way of making sure that we know where those children are, that they are getting the help that they need and that they know that we are here for them. We would be making sure that we can reach out and offer that support to every single child—it is the least we can do.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christine Jardine]

I thank the Minister for his comments, and I thank everyone who has stayed late today to take part in the debate. The powerful speeches from the hon. Members for Coventry North West (Taiwo Owatemi), for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) and for Strangford (Jim Shannon) all had one thing in common: they all reflected my own experience, as well as each other’s experiences. I find that we have confidence that support is there and is available, but our fear is that the people who need it do not know, and it is not reaching them.

I thank the Minister for his commitment to making sure that children get that support, that the services are there and that the Government are investing in them. I only ask that the Government continue to listen to survivors such as ourselves when we highlight what is perhaps missing—the co-ordination that is needed—so that we can continue to improve the support for children and young people that I am sure the Minister, and all of us, want to provide. I thank everyone for taking part today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved, That this House calls on the Government to develop a protocol for ensuring that bereaved children are made aware of and have access to practical and emotional support through public and third sector agencies.

Reinforced Autoclaved Aerated Concrete in Education Settings

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 4th September 2023 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

We have put a caseworker in place so that each school can work with that caseworker, as well as having access to the temporary accommodation and the company that can do the propping work, which we have already secured, or to additional surveying, if required. We are working closely with local authorities, but I urge the 5% of local authorities that have not responded to the questionnaire to respond—that is more important than ever.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I thank the Secretary of State for her statement, but I urge her to do two things. First, will she impress on the Prime Minister that this is a national-scale problem that will reach across all Departments, as we know there are other affected public buildings? She mentioned putting children’s safety first, and I am sure we all agree with her, but in her discussions with the devolved authorities, will she impress upon the Scottish Government the need for urgency? As she mentioned, they are still saying, as of today, that the buildings are safe. Two primary schools have been named in my constituency and I am concerned that perhaps the Scottish Government are not acting with the urgency that is necessary.

[Gillian Keegan]

There are two ways of going about this. The first is to go through the responsible bodies. To be fair, that was what we were doing until 2019, but then we did not think that we were being quick enough. We did not have a good enough picture of where RAAC was and what state it was in. That was why we started the direct questionnaire and surveying programme that has enabled us to have the data to take quick action when we got new evidence over the summer. We will continue to share that new evidence with the devolved Administrations. I believe that sometimes it is right to take a direct approach. That is not typical for a Government Department in Whitehall, but sometimes it is the correct thing to do. That is what we have done, and I think that will put us in good stead for being decisive about keeping pupils safe.

Oral Answers to Questions

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

Academy trusts can pool their general annual grant to deliver key improvements and efficiencies across the academies in the trust. The academy trust handbook requires consideration of each school’s needs and an appeals mechanism, which can be escalated to the ESFA.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

In my constituency of Edinburgh West this week, students are graduating, some of them with unclassified results, because of a dispute involving marking. This is making it difficult for those wishing to do masters or PhDs, particularly foreign students who have been told that they will have to reapply for visas. Are the Department for Education and the Home Office looking at ways of facilitating those students taking up the places that they have been offered without the classification and avoiding that problem with the visas?

[Robert Halfon]

UK Visas and Immigration will consider exercising discretion, and will hold graduate route applications made before the applicant results have been received, provided that the results are received within eight weeks of the application being made. Students who do not know when they will receive their results due to the boycott will be able to extend their permission while they wait for their results. They will be exceptionally exempt from meeting academic progression requirements. I will write to the hon. Lady with fuller details.

Bereaved Children: Registry

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Tuesday 28th March 2023 Westminster Hall

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the potential merits of a registry of bereaved children.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Gary. I thank the House for this opportunity to discuss an issue that is very close to my heart. I also thank the Minister; when we spoke recently, she understood exactly why this issue is so important, not just to me but to so many people and families, and why I feel almost personally driven to highlight it. There are a variety of reasons for that, many of which I have only recently come to fully appreciate, along with the impact on my own family of something that happened several decades ago. That is why I feel that I need to do everything I can, and we need to do everything we can, to protect our current and future generations of children, not with a new service but, as I will explain, with a simple administrative change—a process to ensure that children benefit from the many services that are there for them.

First, I would like to explain why and how I came to this point—my own journey. As a 20-year-old, I lost my father suddenly from a heart attack one Saturday morning. I thought that I was an adult and that I was okay, and I focused on my two sisters, who were just eight and 13. I thought that they were doing well. For decades, I thought that we had all come through the trauma—because there was a trauma—remarkably unscathed. Gradually, though, I realised that perhaps I had not been as aware of what had happened to me—what had happened to us all—as I thought at the time, and that perhaps things had not been as smooth as they seemed.

It was only when my own daughter was eight, and I watched her and her dad and saw how they enjoyed reading “Harry Potter” together and playing, that I realised, probably for the first time, just how huge the trauma of suddenly not having the dad she idolised at that age had been for my youngest sister. I saw the trauma that she had been through in a very different light. Then, when my daughter was 13, I thought about my middle sister, and saw for the first time how the inescapable insecurities of your teenage years must be so much more complicated when the ground is shifted beneath the family and everything becomes uncertain, and the security that you knew is suddenly gone.

I think it was only when, by the cruellest twist of fate, my own husband died when my daughter was 20—exactly the age I had been—that I realised for the first time not only that I had been much less of an adult that I thought, but the impact that my dad’s death had had on me, not just then but now. I realised that everything I have done —everything that has driven me, and the sense of insecurity and uncertainty, and very often fear about the future, that I have felt throughout my life—stems from that Saturday morning.

I talked about that to my youngest sister, who pointed out that perhaps it was because none of us—myself included—had had any outside professional support. Yes, the girls’ schools were great, our family was wonderful and my mum—well, she just dealt with everything that life had thrown at her. But we never heard from any of the services that were probably available to us at the time. We were never offered any counselling, advice, befriending services or trips away—not because the available organisations did not care or want to help, but because they did not know and we did not know that we needed them. We had never been in contact with social services, so, bluntly, they did not know that we existed. We just got on with it. My sisters, I felt, were too young to realise. I thought that I was okay, and that my family were coping with their own grief and making sure that we were safe and looked after, like every family do. In so many ways, we were lucky, but maybe—just maybe—we could have benefited from something else.

I would love to stand here and say how many children are in that position today—how many children wake up every morning to the pain of knowing that the person they loved, and who cared for them, is not there. I would love to say that all the services that are available to them are getting to them, and that they have that support. But I cannot, because we do not know.

We do not know how many children there are, and we do not know where they are. That is not because the services are not available; of course they are. Schools, social services and fantastic organisations such as Winston’s Wish do a wonderful job of helping youngsters every day—but only the children they know about. They have no way of knowing, as I have no way of knowing—none of us does—how many young people need or would benefit from their help. They cannot reach out and offer them support. They do not know where they are.

Sadly, the reality for a child suffering grief is still that, unless their family has been in contact with social services, or social services have a reason to be in contact with them, they may not be able to benefit from all the help and support that we all want them to have. Schools do a fantastic job, but what if a child moves because their main carer has died? A new school might not know, and how many children really want to be different at school? How many children want to be singled out and for everyone to know how upset they are—to know that they are struggling, because someone has been taken from them, with the anxiety that grips their poor wee hearts every time they leave home about whether everyone they love will still be there at the end of the day? That is their reality.

In the past few months, I have spoken to the voluntary sector, written to the Scottish Government and sat down with the Minister who is here today to discuss the issue. Without exception, they have been supportive. Everyone recognises that there is a problem, wants to help and outlines the wonderful services that are there. But the problem is still that we do not know who needs them and where they are. Pinning down the solution—how to do it—is the issue that everyone seems to grapple with, but it should not be difficult.

In this country, we have registers and statistics for just about everything. A digital society makes a lot of things easier; it is often too easy to keep track of things. I can go online now and check my MOT, my car insurance, my postcode and my council tax. My medical records are online to make it easier for the NHS to know who I am and what I might need if I collapse somewhere away from home. I hate to think exactly what information could be scanned from my passport or my national insurance number. A quick Google search tells us a lot. But if, God forbid, anything were to happen to any of us in this room and we had children, there would be no way of checking if they were there and if they were okay—if they were safe, looked after, coping, or maybe just needing someone to talk to.

I have not met anyone in this place who does not want to address this problem and does not recognise its significance. There is no political issue. There is no divide over whether or not we should be supporting our children. We all want to do it, so what is stopping us? All we need to do, and all I ask the Government to do, is invest some time, thought and care into coming up with what really is an administrative solution and identifying which Department can best administer it and the easiest way to do it. Yes, there may be problems with GDPR and privacy, but we can overcome those.

The solution may be as simple as introducing a system whereby, when someone registers a death, they also register whether there are children who could be affected—upset by the death of a parent, carer, sibling or grandparent —and then sending out the available information, in a leaflet or a letter, to tell them where they can turn for support, checking that they have got it and making sure that the organisations know they are there. It would be a process—a way of collecting data, which we have become very good at in this country recently. It would be a way of making sure that we know where those children who may need the help that is available are, and making sure that we can reach out and offer it. It is the least they deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Christine Jardine]

I thank the Minister for her comments, and everyone for their contributions. The thing that I take away from the debate is that we all agree. There is no dispute about the need to get the support that the Government are providing to those who need it. The family hub sounds like an excellent idea. The mental health support is there. Charities and organisations such as Winston’s Wish, as we have all mentioned, are doing tremendous work. They are running special camps for children to help support them; they are doing everything they possibly can. There is just one missing link in the chain, which is knowing where the children are.

We have learnt a lot of lessons from covid. As the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned to me, one of them is about safeguarding. As the hon. Member for Glasgow North West (Carol Monaghan) said, children were deprived of hugs at a time when, for many of them, hugs were what they needed most. From today’s debate I have taken away a great deal of comfort, reassurance and belief that we will manage to do this. I will take the Minister’s advice and speak to the Minister responsible for safeguarding at the Home Office, and hopefully we will move on and achieve what we all want to achieve.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the potential merits of a registry of bereaved children.

Childcare: Affordability and Availability

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Tuesday 21st February 2023 Westminster Hall

[Ruth Cadbury]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right: the inequality in the provision that does exist means there are stark differences within different communities and between families in different situations. The poorest and most disadvantaged children are the ones who need good-quality childcare from day one, as soon as they leave their parents. They need it more than anyone.

In low-income areas, providers are even less able to cross-subsidise free hours with fees, so there is a disproportionate loss of places in those areas. The poorest families are ineligible for the free 30 hours, and those families who are eligible face barriers to participation.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

This is a hugely important debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member on securing it. In Scotland, we have the same issue in deprived areas. Recent figures uncovered by the Liberal Democrats show that only 43% of families who are entitled to the free childcare for two-year-olds are taking it up, specifically because of the problems she mentions. Should we be doing more to make families aware of the support available to them and of how they can get it, as well as improving that support?

[Ruth Cadbury]

The hon. Member makes an excellent point and anticipates what I was going to say. The provision for two-year-olds, which is specifically there for the most disadvantaged, is complex and difficult to apply for, so it is underused. The families who need it most are not getting it, so I thank the hon. Member for that point.

Oral Answers to Questions

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Walker]

As the hon. Gentleman will recognise, vaccines have never been compulsory for children. We want children to have vaccines, but they are optional and something that requires consent. We are continuing to support the vaccine programme, and the Secretary of State announced last week that we have accepted £8 million from NHS England to accelerate that in the schools pillar. The community pillar continues to be available to children in this age group.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

10. What recent discussions he has had with the Chancellor of the Exchequer on future funding for education.

[The Minister for Higher and Further Education (Michelle Donelan)]

At the spending review, the Government set out spending plans for the Department for Education worth more than £86 billion for 2024-25. This is an £18.4 billion cash increase over the Parliament, showing that this Government are serious about skills, schools and families across the country.

[Christine Jardine]

I associate myself with the remarks made by the Minister for School Standards, the hon. Member for Worcester (Mr Walker) about the late Member for Birmingham, Erdington.

We now know that £2.7 billion was spent on personal protective equipment that cannot be used, and that £4.3 billion of the money that was stolen during covid through the furlough scheme and other schemes is being written off by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs. Does the Minister share my concern about the difference that that cash could have made in meeting the target of more than £15 billion that the Government’s own tsar reckoned was needed to catch up on the days that our children have lost in school? Will she call for a review of this?

[Michelle Donelan]

This Government are investing £4 billion extra on schools next year and £5 billion for recovery. This Government prioritise the skills of the future and the catch-up of children in schools.

Oral Answers to Questions

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Monday 6th September 2021 Commons Chamber

[Nick Gibb]

We totally understand the challenges many young people have faced during the pandemic. Up until the pandemic we had closed the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers by 13% in primary school and 9% in secondary school, and the hon. Lady ought to look back at the Labour record we inherited in 2010. We accept, however, the challenges faced by young people during the pandemic, which is why we are committing £3 billion to catch-up funding and introducing a tuition revolution with 100 million hours of small group tuition for young people, because this Government will do everything we can to ensure that children can catch up from any lost education they have suffered during the pandemic.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD)]

15. What funding the Government have provided to universities for effective ventilation to help safeguard students against covid-19 in the 2021-22 academic year.

[The Minister for Universities (Michelle Donelan)]

Higher education providers should complete suitable and sufficient assessments of the risk of covid-19 and identify measures to manage those risks, including ensuring adequate ventilation based on our comprehensive guidance. As autonomous institutions, it is for providers to put in place their plans based on individual circumstances, including allocating their own budgets.

[Christine Jardine]

Notwithstanding the Minister’s comments, there are still huge gaps in what needs to be done to provide a safe learning environment for students up and down the country. Students, including many from my Edinburgh West constituency, have already had two academic years disrupted and proper ventilation will be vital to preventing a third, so will the Minister make a commitment here and now that if the schools test pilot currently under way proves successful, it will also be rolled out in our universities?

[Michelle Donelan]

The hon. Member talks of Edinburgh university but I am sure she will understand that education is in fact devolved. She also refers to the CO₂ monitoring devices that are being allocated this term to schools; however, technical limitations mean that CO₂ monitors are likely to be unsuitable for many spaces in universities, particularly those with high ceilings.

Support for University Students: Covid-19

Christine Jardine Excerpts

Wednesday 3rd February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

Absolutely; I totally agree with my hon. Friend. This is a difficult time for students, and we do urge all providers of university accommodation to give a partial refund for this period in which students cannot all access their accommodation. A few that have done this so far include Warwick, Nottingham, Sheffield, LSE and Exeter—the list goes on—but we want others to contribute too.

[Christine Jardine (Edinburgh West) (LD) [V]]

I was delighted to hear that the Minister has regular discussions with the devolved Education Ministers, because although it is devolved, higher education is an area where there is an interchange of students from different parts of the UK. Can she assure me that in these discussions they will look at every aspect of student life that has been detrimentally impacted by the pandemic, including mental health, finances, and the disruption to their academic results?

[Michelle Donelan]

In every conversation that I have with my counterparts in the DAs, we certainly do look at all the issues affecting students, and also universities, at this difficult time.