Queen’s Speech

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Thursday 19th May 2016 Lords Chamber

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, on listening to the eloquent words of my noble friend Lord Kinnoull on statistics and the transition from education to employment, I was reminded of the life of Florence Nightingale, broadcast last night on that national treasure, the BBC. Florence Nightingale was, I think, the first female fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and highlighted to Parliament and the public the plight of soldiers in Crimea, particularly in the barracks at Scutari, through the use of statistics. I am sure that she would have strongly supported my noble friend’s concerns. It is thanks to the BBC that I fully understand the importance of my noble friend’s words, and I am so grateful to the BBC for what it has done for me in my education throughout my life. I hope that it will continue to be an institution that inspires and educates our public and the public of the world for many years to come.

I declare my interests in the register as the trustee of two child mental health charities, the Brent Centre for Young People, dealing with adolescents, and the Child and Family Practice Charitable Foundation, assessing children with autism, and a child welfare charity, the Michael Sieff Foundation, as well as being vice-chair of the parliamentary group for children in the care of local authorities. There is very much to welcome in the Queen’s Speech, from my point of view. I hope that the British public choose to remain in Europe and that there will be the opportunity to take these humane and enlightened measures forward.

Outwith the Speech, I particularly welcome the Government’s increasing awareness of the unaddressed mental health needs of many children and young people in the care system. I stress to the Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Nash, and his colleague, the Minister for Health, Lord Prior, the importance to the mental health of those children that those who care for them—the foster carers, teachers, social workers and residential childcare workers—have clinical supervision and the very best support from the health service. Such supervision by a mental health professional is vital if we are to be more effective in improving the lives of these young people and help them to give their own children happier childhoods, most importantly.

I hope I may offer the warmest of welcomes to the Children and Social Work Bill, whose First Reading took place in your Lordships’ House today. I would like to focus on the new duty to provide mentors to all young people leaving care to the age of 25, and the introduction of a new regulatory body for social work. Given the imminence of the Bill, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me if I speak for longer than I might otherwise have done. It was your Lordships who persuaded the Labour Government to extend their care leavers Bill to those care leavers in education to the age of 25. Children are not removed lightly into the care of the state; most will have experienced abuse in their families. The removal process is itself very troubling for many children. While there have been significant improvements in the quality of local authority care and while evidence shows that those children taken into care do better academically than those of their peers who are not removed, young people in the care of local authorities can still experience much further upheaval, and the quality of foster carers, social workers and residential childcare workers can still be variable.

It is unsurprising that young people in care often experience what is called developmental delay. In the short term, this can mean they struggle academically and in finding and keeping employment and are open to exploitation by others, but often they will blossom in their late twenties. That has often been my experience. For instance, Mark Kerr, a care leaver and a graduate of a young offender institution with no educational qualifications, began his studies while in the criminal justice system and recently attained his doctorate. The number of care leavers entering university immediately after leaving care remains troublingly low, at about 7%, and that figure is declining. Dr Kerr conducted a survey of care leavers and found that more than a third had gone on to higher education but, critically, a large number did so as mature students, meaning they do not show up in official statistics, highlighting the delay in their attainment.

It is important to have continuity of care until the age of 25 for all these young people. I pay tribute to the Government for their humanity and engagement in introducing this. On average, children in this country leave home at 24. I hope your Lordships may wish to join me in consideration of the appropriate qualifications, support and caseloads for these mentors. The think tank, the Centre for Social Justice, has been critical of the current arrangements for personal advisers, the mentors for such young people. We need to ensure that this new legislation works for these young people.

Equally welcome is a new social work regulator to focus on training and professional standards. There can be no more exacting job than that of a child and family social worker. With them lies the decision about whether to take a child away from his family or leave him there. That literally is the judgment of Solomon, yet social work has often been neglected. It is a profession that would never have been permitted to decline in the way it once did if its customers, its clients, had been middle class, educated and articulate. It is a great tribute to the Government that they are taking the profession so seriously. I know many Members of your Lordships’ House have campaigned to improve the status of social workers over many years. The noble Lord, Lord Adonis, has played an important role recently in that regard.

There are several other welcome measures which will improve the life chances of children and families on the margins of society, and I wish there was time to speak to them now. However, before closing, I shall say a few words about the Government’s work to improve the mental health of all children, with special attention to children in local authority care. At the end of the last coalition Government, £1.25 billion was pledged for child and adolescent mental health services over five years. The Government commissioned the Future in Mind report on CAMHS and reports focusing on looked-after children have come from the NSPCC, the Education Select Committee in the other place and the Alliance for Child-Centred Care. Edward Timpson, the Minister of State for Children, has been consulting widely on the mental health needs of looked-after young people. The interest of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge in mental health and their campaigning have been of immense encouragement to those working in the sector.

Those focusing on the mental health of looked-after children have particularly campaigned for improved initial mental health assessments for these children. Most of these children have very complex mental health needs but currently their assessment is being undertaken by generalists, perhaps a GP, which is not sufficient. In future, children should have a mental health assessment undertaken by a mental health professional when they come into care because the current assessment process is, in practice, not effectively identifying their mental health needs and ensuring that they receive the support they need. We know that 60% of children first enter care due to abuse or severe neglect and that almost half of all children in care have a mental health problem. We are missing a huge opportunity to provide better support at an earlier time in their care journey, which ultimately would ease the pressure of support needed when they leave care. That is the view of the NSPCC, the Alliance for Child-Centred Care and the Education Select Committee. It is a view that I share and I hope that it is becoming the Government’s.

For many of us with experience of working with these young people, of equal importance will be a move to clinical supervision for the foster carers, social workers, teachers and residential childcare workers. This need not be financially perilous. Clinical supervision by an appropriate mental health professional can take place during the normal group discussions with children that take place in social care, but would mark a sea change in how we met the mental health needs of these children. With clinical supervision for staff dealing with these children, better and timelier referrals would be made to higher-level mental health services. This in turn would allow a far more efficient use of scant mental health resources. With clinical supervision, the all-important relationship between carer and young person would be better managed. That relationship is the most important tool for recovery from their early shattered and shattering relationships. With clinical supervision, we can avoid the real risk of the escalation of difficult behaviour from young people into violence or of carers themselves resorting to violence, as they have done at times in the past, or simply withdrawing from their young people by either leaving the job or emotionally withdrawing from them.

It was encouraging to hear the Health Minister say last year at a meeting of the Parliamentary Group for Looked After Children and Care Leavers that he was looking at the expansion of the clinical supervision of residential care homes to children’s homes. Clinical supervision would finally move us to a model of social care for young people that was integrated with mental health, and that would be a major step forward in our care for those young people. What further thought are the Government giving to the recommendations set out by the Education Select Committee, including the development of clinical supervision in social care for looked-after children and the improvement of initial mental health assessments?

I look forward to the noble Baroness’s response—perhaps she might like to write me if that is more convenient—and I am grateful to the Government for this important programme of social reform in the gracious Speech.