Children: Mental Health Assessments

Earl of Listowel Excerpts

Monday 18th December 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, I certainly congratulate the local authority on that great work. A number of pilots are operating across the country—over 80—experimenting with different ways in which to help these vulnerable children. Only last week, Ealing had an open day to showcase some of the work that it has been doing for vulnerable children, and invited every other local authority in the country. It has been able to reduce the number of children going into care, and to save money as well. So there is a lot going on and, with the launch of the pilots that I have discussed with the noble Baroness, Lady Tyler, we will be doing a lot more on this.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in the register in children’s mental health. Can the Minister assure the House that the recommendations of the expert working group will be fully funded by the Government? In particular, will recommendations around children’s homes be fully funded? Children’s homes have the most damaged young people, who are placed there as a last measure, yet their staff are still very poorly qualified. David Berridge, the eminent academic, commenting on the predation on children in homes in Rotherham, said that we must start moving towards having higher qualified staff in children’s homes, given the complexity of their needs and their vulnerability to predation.

[Lord Agnew of Oulton]

My Lords, in answer to the first question, the expert working group made 16 recommendations and we will seek to include all of them in the construction of the pilot programme. In relation to secure children’s homes, we all acknowledge that these are some of the most vulnerable children in our society. There are 14 secure children’s homes in England, covering 133 welfare and 117 criminal justice placements. The mental health Green Paper underlined the need to increase the number of qualified staff working with vulnerable children and we will certainly look very carefully at that.