Children: Parenting for Success in School

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 3rd February 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I, too, thank my noble friend Lord Northbourne for calling this debate. I recall Mary Crowley, the director of the Parenting Education & Support Forum, which for many years co-ordinated efforts in this area, telling me that my noble friend called a meeting in the Moses Room several years ago bringing together interested parties in this area and out of that grew the Parenting Education & Support Forum. As the noble Lord, Lord Eden of Winton, said, my noble friend has many years’ practical experience of organising holiday camps for young people from the East End.

I shall make a few quick points. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, made very important points about Sure Start. A recent report from 4Children and the Daycare Trust found that a significant number of Sure Start centres expect to close at the end of the year. One thing that might help is guidance to local authorities on the best priorities to use when some services might be cut; for instance, on choosing between a speech therapist in a children’s centre and some other practitioner, on whether one post can be lost or on looking at a Robin Hood method so that wealthier parents pay while the poorer do not. This might be something on which the Minister could work with the Department for Communities and Local Government.

The Coram Family was mentioned twice. We speak of Sure Start children’s centres, but the original model on which they are based was the Coram model. This brings me to my theme, which is the importance of having the right professional framework to support parents with complex needs, the sort of professional framework that Coram offers so outstandingly.

I am very concerned about the future of the Cassel family assessment unit, and I am most grateful to my noble friend Lady Hollins for alluding to her concerns. Will the Minister speak with the noble Earl, Lord Howe, about these concerns? We understood that the decision on its future would be taken last month, but I think there is still some hope that that decision might have been delayed because of other priorities. This centre has faced difficulties. In 2005, a decision in the Court of Appeal lifted the duty on local authorities to provide assessments at this centre of expertise in Richmond. It is a 25-bed unit that works with families, both parents and children, with very complex needs. It is a national NHS flagship institution. It has a good record of keeping families with very complex needs together. Since that 2005 ruling, it has been used less and less. It is hard to justify the continuance of this institution because not all its 25 beds are being used. The problem is that it has not been properly funded. It needs to be nationally funded. It is a specialist service. This is the question before the Government now: shall we fund it nationally? If the Government choose not to, it is currently due to close in May so that is a critical decision. I recognise that the Government have a huge range of priorities to decide upon at the moment but, given the importance of this early intervention, the complex needs and the money saved—as has been made so clear throughout this debate—by intervening at that point with those families, I hope that the Minister will pass these concerns to the noble Earl, Lord Howe. I am most grateful for the conversations I have already had with him on this matter.

I turn briefly to the model developed at Hackney of intervening on parents with complex needs. Over the past three to four years, Hackney has reduced the number of children coming into care from 500 to 270. That is a huge saving in costs on those children and in terms of the courts. That money has been saved and reinvested in the service, half of it being sent back to the local authority. That has been achieved by developing a superb expert framework, recruiting the very best social workers who are working in teams with systemic psychotherapists. Those people have eight years of formation and such high expertise that they can quickly get the children back into their families and support the parents in caring for them. I look forward to the Minister's response.