Children and Families Bill

Debbie Abrahams Excerpts

Monday 25th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Debbie Abrahams (Oldham East and Saddleworth) (Lab)]

I recognise what the Minister is trying to do in seeking to reform important areas of law affecting children, young people and their families. New as I am, however, I am beginning to learn that the devil is in the detail when it comes to many of this Government’s Bills. I am not alone in that view. The Children’s Commissioner for England, Maggie Atkinson, said that she supported

“the objectives of the Children and Families Bill”,

but was

“concerned about some of the detail. Some measures proposed could be interpreted as overriding the principle that all decisions are to be made in the best interests of the child”.

In preparing for today’s debate, I was deeply disappointed by the lack of an impact assessment of the full effects of the Bill. I found one on business, but I did not find any relating to how the provisions would affect the groups of children and their families to whom the Bill applies. I feel that that is deeply disturbing. Again, my views are shared by others, including the Association of School and College Leaders. Because of the Bill’s complexity and the range of areas that it covers, there is concern about whether proper parliamentary scrutiny can be given to ensure that it has no unintended consequences. I think we should listen to such organisations.

The Bill’s positive elements have been recognised, but a number of concerns have also been raised, and I would like to focus on a couple of them. Although the steps forward on adoption have been recognised, we have heard concerns about adoption and about the importance of ensuring that the interests of children are paramount in the family justice system and of the need to strengthen the independence and powers of the Children’s Commissioner for England.

If I may, I will focus in my remaining time on part 3, which deals with special educational needs. These provisions have been heralded as the biggest reforms to SEN provision in over 30 years. Replacing the dual system of assessment for children and young adults with a single system and the education, health and care plans is a positive change. I am mindful of what colleagues on the Education Committee said in their pre-legislative scrutiny. The Committee observed that

“the legislation lacks detail, without which a thorough evaluation of the likely success of the Government’s proposals is impossible”.

Although some proposals, such as the pathfinders, have been supported and taken forward, Scope and other disability charities in the Special Education Consortium have continued to express their ongoing concerns, particularly about clause 30 and the local offer. The real concern is that, as the provisions stand, they allow for no more than a directory of services, with no duty on local agencies to provide what is set out in the local offer or to define service standards, although there has been some movement there. The risk is that the Bill’s objectives in seeking to improve educational outcomes for children with SEN and disabled children and their families will not be met. There is also concern that children with less complex needs will fail to reach the threshold for new education, health and care provision in much the same way as only the adults most in need of care services are able to access them.

[Meg Hillier]

One concern I have encountered a lot in my constituency is where a child has something that is difficult to diagnose or put a name to. Does my hon. Friend share my concern that unless we get this right in the Bill, those children, their parents and their teachers will not have any better provision than is currently on offer?

[Debbie Abrahams]

I do indeed share that concern. Similar issues have been raised with me in my discussions with different charities.

We know that one in eight families has a child with SEN, and it is estimated that one in six will not be provided for under the Bill. We already know that 1.4 million children with SEN do not have a statement and will not be eligible for EHCP—education, health and care provision—under the Bill. Approximately 87% of all children with SEN are currently supported through school action or school action plus—in the provision of speech and language therapy, for example. With the abolition of these programmes, those children will rely totally on the local offer, so we must ensure that it is strengthened.

I want to refer quickly to accountability, which is still an issue in respect of these services. We need to make sure that children and their families can hold people to account and be engaged in the provision of their services, and the monitoring review of those services. Simply publishing the comments of parents and young people does not really do what is needed. We need to ensure that the engagement is meaningful, as reflected in the UN convention of the rights of the child.

This Bill is inadequate not only in the proposals it puts forward, but in its failure to recognise the policy context that surrounds it. My hon. Friend the Member for Bridgend (Mrs Moon) spoke about that context, which includes complex legislation on welfare reforms and health system reforms, as well as massive cuts in local authority funding. It remains to be seen how well those local authorities will cope with that.

I want to conclude with a reference to one of my constituents: the mum of an eight-year-old son with Down’s syndrome. She says that taking him to all the various appointments he needs, whether for physiotherapy or speech therapy, or even for accessing an appropriate shoe service, given that he needs to wear corrective boots, has proved to be a full-time job in itself. Such demands on her time meant she was forced to give up work. As the household income has dropped with her loss of earnings, her husband has taken a higher-paid job in Scotland to make ends meet. Now the family is together only for the occasional weekend. Joanna says:

“I am not naive, I don’t expect services to exist just for me, or facilities to be for my convenience. The frustration comes from the possibility of services being made easier.”

This is an example of the stress experienced by families across the country in raising children with disabilities and special educational needs. Positive though some elements of the Bill are, it does not reassure us that the particular pressures that these families face will be addressed. I hope that the Government will look again at how to strengthen the provisions.

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak in this debate and to welcome the Bill, which covers such a broad range of areas. I hope Members will forgive me if I focus on special educational needs, as so many others have done.

I know from my own life story how important it is to get this right. I was one of the pre-1981 report children whose parents had to fight to get me into a special school, and then fight again to get me back into a mainstream school a few years later. The special school was not far from the Minister’s own constituency, in Hebden Green. When I was in the mainstream school, my parents had to fight to get the speech therapy I needed to make the most of being in that mainstream school.

It was with some distress and dismay that when I first got elected to this House, I found that the first three cases of my very first constituency surgery were all about parents fighting for their children to get the special educational help they needed from their schools. Thirty years on, nothing much seemed to have changed. That is why I welcome the Bill, as it starts to introduce some level of change. I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Brent Central (Sarah Teather), who is sadly no longer in her place. What she did with her Green Paper was to raise expectations, perhaps even to create a rod for the Government’s own back in a strange way. None the less, she needs to be congratulated on that.

I know not just from my own life story, but from what I see on the ground in Blackpool, how important this issue is. When one of our council officers—the head of inclusion and access—gave evidence during the Education Committee’s pre-legislative scrutiny process, she explained why this matters so much in Blackpool, where we have such a high transient population, with four times as many young people than the national average entering the town already having a statement—9.8% versus 2.8%. Yet Blackpool manages not to make it an adversarial experience; in fact, it has fewer tribunals than the national average. I can see that situation working itself out in my constituency surgeries and in my casework.

As always with legislation, the temptation is to focus on the elements that one is not completely happy with. I will try to resist that temptation and look at the wider picture. I am very privileged to chair the all-party group on young disabled people. What strikes me in that role is that society no longer puts a lid on expectations for our young disabled people and tries to limit what they can achieve. If anything, the only lid that is placed on their expectations is the bureaucracy in the system. Society is changing, but the structures of governance need to change as well to enable them to keep pace. That is why the Bill is so important.

When I meet groups of these people, I am struck by the fact that so many of them do not just want to go into work when they reach 18—they want to go on to university, to go and live their lives. I welcome what the Education Committee and the Minister have said about those who are in apprenticeships or are not in education, employment or training having access to EHC—education, health and care—plans. However, I have a twinge of disappointment about the fact that apparently those who want to go on to university will not have access to those plans. I share the Committee’s concern that we need greater clarity over what this provision should look like for the 19 to 25 age group and how the local offer should be structured in this regard. We have made great efforts in the draft Care and Support Bill to ensure that those who wish to attend university can take their social care package with them from their home local authority to where they seek to go to university. That was a bold and ambitious move that excited many young people, and I want to make sure that what we do in this Bill has the same level of sophistication.

Equally, I urge Ministers to look again at the issue I raised in an intervention—how we treat disabled young people who have a health need but no specific educational need. I realise that it is very difficult to place duties on the NHS. None the less, having had such a revolutionary Bill that is going to change the landscape, it would be a shame if we missed this opportunity to get it right for all our young people.

One of the big things that excited me about the Green Paper was that it finally tackled the issue of transition—the cliff edge that many young people, and their families, come to when they transfer from child services to adult services, whether they be wheelchair services, community and mental health services, or so many other services. As people reach the age of 16, child services start to tail off and there is never any confidence that adult services will then kick in. People get very concerned about that. I urge Ministers to embrace this opportunity to resolve that cliff edge. Families have a fear of the unknown because of the threat of uncertainty and fragmentation. On my reading of the Bill, children with health needs but not educational needs will not get an EHC plan. That is wrong given the spirit of the Green Paper.

I support charities such as Together for Short Lives, which represents the children’s hospice sector, and the Communications Trust, which represents people with augmentative and alternative communication, where interaction between health care and education is not just important but crucial to the role played by the machines that assist them.

I should like finally to focus on clause 69, which seeks to exclude a particular group of people for whom we, as legislators, have responsibility—people in custody in the youth justice system. Again, on my reading of the Bill—I am happy to be corrected—those in youth custody will be specifically excluded from having an EHC plan and will be frozen in a no man’s land.

[Debbie Abrahams]

Is it not the case that children who are in detention are more likely to have special educational needs than those in the population as a whole, and so denying them access to support in the Bill is a real discrimination against that group?

[Paul Maynard]

I thank the hon. Lady for that intervention; she is right. We must recognise that the Minister has moved substantially on the issue, but it is still important that clause 69 specifically recognises this group. Communication delays and speech and language needs lie at the heart of the offending behaviour of many of these young people, and it seems perverse to exclude them, because that will not help their rehabilitation.

Having picked out every bit of the Bill that I do not like or disagree with, it is important that I emphasise how important it is, how much I welcome it, and how pleased I am that this Minister will pilot it through, because he has a very strong personal commitment to and excellent understanding of these issues. I have great confidence that as the Bill goes through Committee much of what I am highlighting can be teased out, made clear and made fit for purpose. I want us to remember that the Green Paper raised such hopes among disabled charities, organisations and young people, who thought that it was the moment to make sure that Warnock was built on and, indeed, that many of Warnock’s inadequacies were corrected.

I welcome what the Minister has been trying to do and what I know he will continue to do. I even welcome the constructive comments from Labour Front Benchers and the shadow Secretary of State. This should not be a partisan issue—an opportunity to bash political parties over the head—because it is too important for that. I am sure that all of us in this Chamber have parents coming to our surgeries to try to get the support that their children need. This is our chance to work together to solve these problems so that in 30 years’ time we do not all have to come back again to try to make it right.