Edward Timpson
Main Page: Edward Timpson (Conservative - Eddisbury)Department Debates - View all Edward Timpson's debates with the Department for Education
(11 years, 6 months ago)
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John Glen (Salisbury) (Con)
3. What recent progress he has made on reform of the adoption system.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
I am determined to reform the adoption system to reduce delay for children. One of our most pressing priorities is increasing the number of approved adopters. We have already launched the First4Adoption telephone and online service to provide information to all potential adopters and published the adoption passport, and we are bringing in a quicker two-stage adopter approvals process from 1 July.
John Glen
My constituent Helen Holgate is a respected and experienced foster carer, but she still tells me that there are considerable court delays during the concurrency process. What steps is the Minister taking to improve the concurrent care process so that children can be placed permanently and more swiftly with a loving family on a full-time, permanent basis?
Mr Timpson
First, I would like to pay tribute to Helen Holgate and all the other fantastic foster carers helping many vulnerable children in our country. We are working towards streamlining the approval process for foster carers. On court proceedings, through the Children and Families Bill, we are introducing fostering for adoption rules to ensure that children are placed earlier with prospective adopters, and with the work of the Family Justice Board, we are helping to strip out unnecessary delays in care proceedings. As a result, the average length of a care case has already been reduced from 57 to 42.2 weeks.
Jenny Chapman (Darlington) (Lab)
What more does the Minister think local government should be doing to support foster carers who, according to the Fostering Network, feel unsupported and often take in children when they do not feel quite prepared to do so?
Mr Timpson
With the Fostering Network and many other fostering charities, we have developed some excellent training materials for foster carers, to provide them with the support that they need. This will make them feel confident that they are in control of the placement, with the day-to-day decisions such as whether children get their hair cut or go on a sleepover being delegated to them. This will also help the children to feel that they have a normal family existence while they are in a foster care arrangement.
David Simpson (Upper Bann) (DUP)
What more can be done under the reforms to encourage older people to adopt children?
Mr Timpson
One of the many myths surrounding adoption relates to the age of prospective adopters. We want anyone who is interested in adopting to come forward and use the new adoption gateway, which is the easy way of getting the information and advice that they need. We do not want to put people off adopting; we want to welcome them with open arms and do all that we can to support them in providing children with the homes they desperately need.
Dr Phillip Lee (Bracknell) (Con)
7. What steps he is taking to improve the quality of children and families social work.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
Building on the recommendations of the Munro review, we have put in place an ambitious reform programme for social work that seeks to improve initial social work education through the Step Up to Social Work and Frontline training initiatives to get the best people into the profession as well as improve the quality of front-line practice by revising Working Together to Safeguard Children and appointing a chief social worker.
Mr Timpson
My hon. Friend pinpoints a key area of our reform agenda. That is why we have asked Sir Martin Narey to look carefully at social work education and report back to Ministers later this year. It is also why we have introduced, along with the chief social worker, principal family social workers in each local authority area to help champion and challenge social work as well as to provide assistance and support in the first year, which we know has been so successful.
Luciana Berger (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab/Co-op)
More than half of councils say that they are planning further cuts to children’s services. What impact does the Minister think this will have on social workers and their case loads?
Mr Timpson
To date we have seen strong protection of children’s services across local authorities, which recognise the importance of providing the best quality service in their areas. Social worker vacancy rates have fallen, not risen, from 10% in 2010 to 7% in 2012. Many local authorities are doing a fantastic job, but we need to ensure that all raise their game.
Bill Esterson (Sefton Central) (Lab)
Given rising caseloads and the pressure exerted by the increase in child poverty up and down the country, does the Minister accept that more resources are needed to pay for additional social workers to deal with rising demand?
Mr Timpson
I explained in my previous answer the approach that local authorities quite rightly take to ensure that children’s services are the best they can be, but we can enable that through the revised Working Together to Safeguard Children, making it clearer who is responsible for providing which services while ensuring that the quality of social work is as high as possible. That is why I set out in my initial answer why this is such a high priority for the Government.
Lisa Nandy (Wigan) (Lab)
Has the Minister seen the recent survey of 2,000 social workers, which paints a shocking picture of, in their words, “crisis”, “breaking point” and “chaos”. It shows increasing caseloads, long waiting lists, the use of non-qualified staff to assess children, the use of agency workers, and children who need help being turned away as thresholds are revised upwards to cope with the situation. As one social worker put it, “amber is the new green”. Is it not time that the Government got on red alert and did something about this crisis?
Mr Timpson
I am sorry that the hon. Lady, who was so supportive of many of the measures we have taken to bring in the recommendations of the Munro review, decides to use this set piece to provide a dividing line that does not need to be there. We are all trying to achieve the same thing: to improve outcomes for children who come into contact with children’s services. We are seeing improvements in the country, but they are needed across the board, and we are introducing reforms to ensure that children and families get high quality social work and support when they need it.
Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)
10. What steps he is taking to support young carers’ attendance at school.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
The Department has developed an online training module for school staff. It is designed to raise awareness about young carers, including awareness of the potential impact that their caring responsibilities can have on their school attendance and attainment. Importantly, the Department of Health has recently started training school nurses to be champions for young carers, and to help head teachers and governors to decide how best to support them at school.
Stephen Barclay
There are about 300 young carers in my constituency. As my hon. Friend recognised in his answer, young carers often reflect many of the best values, but their education suffers as a result of their caring duties. Will my hon. Friend write to me saying what he considers to be the best scheme to support them, and what impediments there are to the spreading of such measures, given that even neighbouring districts such as Fenland and Huntingdon take such different approaches?
Mr Timpson
I praise my hon. Friend for the work that he is doing in his constituency. He has led by example in writing to all local secondary school heads to remind them of the support that young carers need, and to raise their awareness of what is available.
As my hon. Friend has acknowledged, there is a wealth of good practice out there. We recently awarded a £1.2 million contract to the Children’s Society and the Carers Trust to work directly with local services, including schools, and help them to improve support for young carers. However, I am happy to write to my hon. Friend explaining what we are doing over and above that, and what more we can do collectively—at both national and local levels—to improve support for young carers in schools.
Mrs Sharon Hodgson (Washington and Sunderland West) (Lab)
The Minister knows that many of us on both sides of this House care very deeply about the hundreds of thousands of young carers in this country and that they should get the support they need to fulfil their potential. He just cited the support role school nurses can play for young carers, but he must know from the parliamentary questions I have asked that the number of school nurses across the country is tiny—indeed, I think one answer stated I had one in the whole of Sunderland. If this is the solution, he might want to look at that. We welcome the assurances the Minister gave at the Report stage of the Children and Families Bill, but as it is due to be debated in the other place next week, will he give us and our noble colleagues a guarantee that he will make this work an immediate priority, so the Bill will make the changes we want to see for these young people, as the care services Minister, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), promised last year.
Mr Timpson
As ever, may I thank the hon. Lady for the tone she strikes with her question? We are at one in wanting to improve the support young carers receive. As she knows, I have met the Minister for care and support to agree some key principles for work in this area and to look at how we can use both the Care Bill and the Children and Families Bill to bring about a closer connection between adult and young carers, so there is a whole-family approach to the support they receive. We will use the stages through the other place to try to make that approach much clearer.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
11. What assessment he has made of the effect of the pupil premium on attainment of children from socially deprived backgrounds.
Mr Nick Raynsford (Greenwich and Woolwich) (Lab)
14. What recent steps his Department has taken to improve youth services; and if he will make a statement.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
In December 2011, “Positive for Youth” set out, for the first time, an overarching vision for youth policy, a key principle of which is that local authorities are best placed to decide how to shape their services to meet the needs of local young people. Their duty to secure sufficient services is outlined in the revised statutory guidance issued in June 2012. This Government have also spent an additional £141 million in a network of 63 myplace youth centres to support local youth service provision.
Mr Raynsford
In the aftermath of the appalling killing of Drummer Lee Rigby in Woolwich, the Prime Minister heard at first hand while visiting Woolwich about, among other things, the importance of a more proactive role for the youth service in providing constructive alternative options for young people at risk of being sucked into extremism or criminal gangs. Has the Department for Education yet submitted evidence to the Government’s taskforce on extremism? If not, will this be given priority by the Department?
Mr Timpson
The right hon. Gentleman raises a very important and serious point, which is all the more echoed around this Chamber today, as we will hear later during the Home Secretary’s statement. This is a priority for this Government and this Department. We have already submitted some evidence to the taskforce, and we will play a full and active role to make sure it achieves its objectives.
Ian Austin (Dudley North) (Lab)
15. What his plans are for the future of GCSEs.
David Mowat (Warrington South) (Con)
T6. Bewsey Lodge primary school is a very good school in a difficult part of Warrington. It has a large special needs unit that, although it is high quality, reduces the overall performance metrics, which affects morale. Better school comparability could be achieved if metrics were produced with, and without, special needs units.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Mr Edward Timpson)
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his keen interest in schools in his constituency that provide important and excellent special educational needs provision. It is important that we have an accountability system that recognises the achievements of all pupils, which very much chimes with Sir Michael Wilshaw’s comments last week, as well as the strengthening of the SEN element of inspection from September 2012. We will launch an accountability consultation shortly, and doubtless my hon. Friend will want to contribute to it on the very point that he has just made.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
Will the Secretary of State assure the House that the heads of academies cannot create small sub-committees of governors that can then take crucial decisions about the general future of the schools in question?
Paul Goggins (Wythenshawe and Sale East) (Lab)
In response to a cross-party amendment to the Children and Families Bill proposing a continuation of funding to foster carers until care leavers reach the age of 21, the Minister said that he was reviewing the current arrangements and was prepared to legislate if necessary. Will he give the House an indication of the time scale for that review?
Mr Timpson
I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman, both for his continued and passionate support for children in care and care leavers, and for his instrumental work in securing the junior ISAs—individual savings accounts—which have proved to be a great success, with over 30,000 in operation. We want to enable care leavers to continue to live with former foster carers where it is right for them to do so. I know from my own family experience that it can be a hugely beneficial part of their transition to adult life.
Although staying put policies have been clearly set out—and I wrote to all the directors of children’s services in October to lay out the terrain so that they can do more to support foster children in that situation—we want to see further improvements. More figures will be published later this year on the staying put pilots and how they are beginning to spread more widely. We will look at those keenly, as we want more progress more quickly.
Neil Carmichael (Stroud) (Con)
School governance is an increasingly topical issue. Does the Secretary of State agree that it is important to ensure that our school governing bodies are strong, courageous and capable of making sure that all schools provide decent education for all their pupils?