Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Sixth sitting)
Emma Lewell ExcerptsTuesday 10th January 2017
(8 years, 6 months ago)
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Edward Timpson
Part of the evaluation is through the expert panel, which is involved in ensuring some independent oversight of the pilot, but it would need to be evaluated locally, as well as nationally. In addition to local government, the Department will keep a close eye on the development of the pilot; I will say a little more about that later.
If a pilot is not successful, it will be monitored locally, as well as nationally by the Department, to ensure that there are no adverse impacts on children. For example, we can track the relevant performance metrics, and random case audits are a helpful tool as well. As I mentioned in answer to the question from the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, the expert panel will scrutinise the proposed monitoring arrangements locally and by the Department to ensure that they are robust in what they are evaluating. If the Department gains intelligence through those processes that a pilot is not working in the best interests of children, that would be investigated and acted on immediately.
All regulations can be revoked through the negative procedure at any point. To answer a question posed earlier about whether a pilot can be terminated within the three-year period, I should say that it can be revoked at any point, should that be deemed necessary. That is clear in regulation. We will also want assurance in the application from a local authority that it will end a pilot immediately if there is evidence of an adverse impact on children.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
I am not sure whether the Minister will include this in his comments, but is not putting in the provision that a pilot can be revoked at any point if it is causing harm to children a backward way of doing things? Will he not accept the comments made by me and my hon. Friends that there should be robust consultation? The Bill should be built on the evidence now—not after the fact, to remedy mistakes once they have been made.
Edward Timpson
I understand what the hon. Lady says and take it in good spirit, but it misses the point of what these clauses are about: building an evidence base. We cannot future-proof all of children’s social care on the basis that we are already seeing failure—I will come to the geographical spread of success and failure across the country—irrespective of the fact that we have a very rigid and complex legislative framework within which all these local authorities have to work. In itself, that framework is providing the inconsistencies that it is meant to prevent. What we are trying to do in the Bill, in a careful and controlled way, is enable different ways of working that are not about what local authorities have to do but about how they do it. That is the purpose of the new clauses.
Hon. Members also asked what would happen if there was a situation where more than one local authority was in a pilot. New clause 9 makes provision for combined authorities to apply for use of the power set out in it. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston asked in particular about the Greater Manchester combined authority, which I think involves 10 local authorities that are currently working on their own devolution settlement. Of course, that may involve children’s services, because I understand that such services are part of their agenda. Where there is a combined authority, we will want to see any application made under these provisions, just as we would for any individual local authority.
Similarly, if a local authority was running a pilot and subsequently became a combined authority, it would need to reapply for any change or extension of the pilot. We will make sure that that is set out in statutory guidance, because that would clearly be a change in circumstances in respect of what would have been approved originally by Parliament. As a consequence, the authority would need to seek further approval.
The hon. Member for South Shields also returned to the issue of profit making. As I have said before and will say again now, the power to innovate has absolutely nothing to do with profit making in children’s social care. The clauses make it clear that it cannot be used to revisit the established position on profit, and we have also been clear that pilots are granted on the basis of achieving better outcomes for children and not on efficiencies. I do not see any evidence that this process could be linked to profit making and we will make it clear in statutory guidance that the local authority will be expected to use the financial impact assessment as part of its application, detailing the expected costs and benefits of a pilot. That information will also be available to the expert panel when it scrutinises applications.
Edward Timpson
The answer to the hon. Gentleman’s first point is yes, but of course the authority still has to comply with all the elements put in the applications and the process that follows in respect of the scrutiny of the application, and whether it is approved. There need to be very clear lines of responsibility and accountability within that, because ultimately it is the local authority that is responsible for providing those services; it holds that function.
As for the hon. Gentleman’s question about the Mayor, it is not one that I have been asked directly before; I know that it is becoming more relevant in some parts of the country. My initial view—I will clarify it later; if he does not mind, I will take some time to do that—would be that this is something approved by Parliament, which cannot be superseded by a Mayor or their powers. However, I will certainly seek to ensure that the hon. Gentleman gets chapter and verse on that point.
I also wish to consider the issue around consultation, which hon. Members have raised. The Department has had a period of very open consultation about the power and it has spoken with a wide range of organisations, including representative bodies of social work, local government, the voluntary sector, children’s organisations and others. Those meetings have been instrumental—indeed, critical—in forming our thinking on the new clauses, but we will of course continue to consult as we develop the detail of the process. We have committed to consult publicly on the statutory guidance to accompany the clauses and, as I have said before, there will also be consultation on each individual use of the power.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Does the Minister not accept the information I shared with the Committee earlier: that there are far more organisations, practitioners and experts who are against the new clauses than are for them? More than 100,000 people have signed a petition against the measures. If the Minister really wanted to listen to the sector and the public, would he not be going back and deeply re-thinking the new clauses? Even the NSPCC has said:
“Despite numerous conversations with ministers and officials, the evidence for the need for this power remains unconvincing and does not justify the potential risks of suspending primary legislation.”
More than 50 organisations in this country who are experts in the field share that view. Why is the Minister not listening to them?
Edward Timpson
Of course I respect all the views expressed about the Government’s view on any policy. I am not somebody who will not listen; in fact, I dare suggest that I have a good track record of listening to those who have views on matters that fall within my portfolio. The truth is that no legislation under her party’s Government or this one has ever passed where people have expressed only one side of the argument. Can the hon. Lady tell me any different?
It is my job to listen to both sides of the argument but to come to a considered and informed view as a decision-maker in a position of responsibility to make legislation. I have already alluded to the many representations I have had that I cannot ignore, from the likes of the Local Government Association and the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service. I also mention the support from the Children’s Commissioner for the new clause, which I did not mention before. There is a balance to be struck. I accept that this is not an uncontroversial piece of legislation. It has provoked strong views, but is one on which, on balance, I think we have come to the right conclusion.
Edward Timpson
My hon. Friend is right: the whole purpose is to ensure that this is a grassroots movement from a local level. There is no direction from Government about how local authorities decide they would like to provide the services they are responsible for. If no local authority applies, that is the end of the matter. The reason we are debating the clause is that local authorities have come forward and said that they want to be able to do that. It is important that we listen to those who are on the frontline, charged with making decisions and bringing policy into action, when they come to Government with a very clear view about what they think needs to be done.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I take the Minister’s point about consultation; there are always two sides to the argument, but the balance is heavily weighted against him on this measure. Other colleagues may correct me if I am wrong, but I have always held the belief that there is a history in this House of making child protection legislation—legislation that protects our most vulnerable children—on more of a cross-party consensus, as was the case with Children Act 1989, which is the flank of legislation used by all practitioners and all agencies when discharging functions in relation to protecting children.
The Minister said that local authorities are coming forward. I do not want to embarrass anyone, but when I asked one local authority that he had cited before as coming forward what power it wanted to be exempt from, it could not say. Is it not the case that there is just not enough support out there for these measures at all? The new clauses should be scrapped.
Edward Timpson
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman took the time to read the letter that I sent round to all Committee members, which set out a number of examples of how local authorities think the power can be used. There is no presumption that those would be granted, of course: any application would need to go through robust scrutiny before it was agreed, as I have set out.
Edward Timpson
I am just answering the question from the hon. Gentleman, if the hon. Lady could be patient for a few moments. If the hon. Gentleman rereads the letter, he will remember that it talks about testing changes to the planning processes, trialling new approaches to the independent reviewing officer, more agile approaches to adoption and fostering assessments, and looking at different approaches to assessing friends and family carers.
Of course, the whole point of the new clauses is that it is not me telling local authorities, “This is what you must do”; it is for them, over time, to come up with their own ideas about how they think they can improve their services. It is not what they have to do, but how they do it. If that is a concept that some struggle with—not necessarily the hon. Gentleman, but perhaps some in his party—I am afraid we are never going to have a meeting of minds; we are not going to find the consensus that, I agree, we are able to reach in the majority of cases on child protection.
There is a fundamental disagreement about what we are trying to achieve and the way we go about it. I am absolutely sure that the approach we are taking will do what local authorities want and what Eileen Munro set out in her report almost six years ago.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The Minister is being extremely generous. I read his letter in depth and the fact sheet that went with it. As I said in my opening comments, there are four examples that would get rid of vast swathes of legislation that protects children. Evidence from CoramBAAF to this Committee debunks every one of those four examples and highlights the extremely dangerous pitfalls there would be if that were to take place.
The Minister keeps quoting Eileen Munro, as if in her review in 2011 she recommended dispensing with primary legislation. She never did. That is what the Minister is trying to do, but Eileen Munro never recommended that.
Edward Timpson
I am sorry that the hon. Lady takes that view, because I was under the impression that the review into child protection carried out by Professor Eileen Munro in 2011 was widely welcomed and respected across the political spectrum. That is exactly what is reflected in the many Hansard reports I have read from across the House, in which hon. Members all lauded a report that finally got down to the nuts and bolts of why we need to have a system that, as the tri-borough rightly expressed in relation to this clause, gets social workers out working directly with families and away from being in front of a computer at their desks.
The reason why I keep quoting Eileen Munro is that she was the person charged by Government to provide an independent review, which has been considered, scrutinised and generally approved by this House as the way to go. I am often held to account for how many of Eileen Munro’s recommendations we have implemented, so I place credence in what she has to say about what we are trying to do, because she has already considered it and come up with a solution for Government, in her independent capacity. She says:
“I welcome the introduction of the power to innovate set out in the Children and Social Work Bill. This is a critical part of the journey set out in my Independent Review of Child Protection towards a child welfare system that reflects the complexity and diversity of children’s needs.”
I cannot ignore that, because it demonstrates that her report is still relevant in many ways. I would like to know whether the hon. Member for South Shields agrees with the Munro report. If she does, but disagrees with what Eileen Munro is saying now, what has changed? What is different? I cannot see where the logic would take us.
That is why it is important to allow local authorities such as Hampshire, North Yorkshire, the tri-borough and others—such as Richmond and Kingston with their “Achieving for Children” in Richmond—to try out new ways of working. They might not know, at the moment, exactly what those will be, but they need the opportunity to try them in a controlled, safe way. The Bill provides that without removing swathes of legislation. It enables them to trial or pilot a new way of working, exactly as was done with social work practices under the last Labour Government. Then a decision can be made about whether to go forward with it.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The Minister seems to be painting the picture that I disagreed with Eileen Munro’s recommendations. I certainly did not. In fact, I strongly supported recommendation 10 that councils should have a legal duty to provide enough early intervention services, which this Government rejected. He listened to my opening comments. He knows why I disagree with the new clauses, and he knows why thousands of people outside this House do as well.
Edward Timpson
I am not sure what question the hon. Lady wants me to answer on the back of that, but I can reassure her that Eileen Munro said in her conclusion:
“A move from a compliance to a learning culture will require those working in child protection to be given more scope to exercise professional judgment in deciding how best to help children and their families.”
I still do not understand what there is in our clauses, according to the hon. Lady, that contradicts that approach.
There are a number of other issues that I want to cover before I conclude, because it is important that every question asked by an hon. Member receives a response. One question was about which of the measures would be within the scope in the Bill. IROs in particular have been mentioned as an example; it is only an example. There has been some debate about the possibility of relaxing IRO support. The local authorities interested in that approach are talking not about getting rid of the role in its entirety but about using it more flexibly; it is an important distinction to make.
The hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak asked where improving outcomes is now in relation to the Bill. We have expanded the requirements that we set out in relation to new clause 2, replacing them with a more detailed set of requirements to ensure that the outcomes that we are seeking for the relevant children, whom I listed earlier, are much more clearly defined. We have also extended the consultation requirements on local authorities to go beyond safeguarding partners to include other relevant persons, particularly in relation to children and young people. The hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned schools, which are important and which we must ensure are part of the consultation where relevant.
Depending on the impact that the use of a power will have, it might be appropriate for local authorities to consult publicly, as they would in other circumstances. If the Secretary of State were dissatisfied with the extent of consultation, she could ask local authorities to widen it before agreeing to grant an application.
I risk of falling out a little further with the hon. Member for South Shields. She unhelpfully raised the link between funding and local Government support for these new clauses. I can categorically say there is no link between them and funding received by any local authority. The chief social worker was simply urging the profession to take this opportunity. I am sorry that the hon. Lady chose to try and suggest, or at least insinuate, otherwise and I hope she will disassociate herself from those comments.
In closing, I want to reiterate two points that must not be overlooked. First, this power is about grass-roots innovation. It is all about believing in and trusting professionals to test new approaches, and it is hard. The purpose of the power is to improve the services we deliver for children. If we look at who is calling for this power, it is not private companies or failing children’s services seeking to cut costs, but some of our country’s most inspirational leaders and innovative charities. To characterise this as something that is intended to take away support from children or even enable privatisation is to misrepresent our ambition and undermine the integrity and professionalism of staff who work with children on the frontline.
The new clauses being debated by the Committee today are significantly different from those debated in the other place, and I hope the Committee recognises that the Government have listened and taken substantial steps to put safeguards in place around the power. I remain ready at any time to discuss these new clauses further, but in the end, they are a genuine attempt to help local authorities test different approaches and better ways of working in the interests of children. I urge the Committee to support them.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I want to make some brief concluding comments.
If Government Members want to vote for this, they should be able to articulate with total conviction and clarity which primary legislation—out of the lists provided by concerned organisations and individuals under threat— they are and are not comfortable with a local authority, even their own, opting out of. They must be able to articulate why they are happy to give local authorities the opportunity of opting out of supporting disabled children in their area or visiting vulnerable children in their area and why they are satisfied to do so against a groundswell of objection outside and inside the House, even among Government Members. What culpability are they prepared to accept when children in their area have been harmed as a result and claim redress from the state?
The Minister asked for support, but he has not articulated a case, built on strong evidence and stakeholder engagement, for why these clauses are needed. He has not offered any comfort or explanation to people who are seriously concerned about the threat that these clauses pose to vast swathes of legal protection, on which the most vulnerable children and young people rely. I have not been reassured that the endgame is not the marketisation of social work.
These clauses have been the main thrust of the Bill from the outset. They epitomise this ideologically driven Government at their very worst and set a precedent, as Liberty, CoramBAAF and others have said in their evidence, for changing the fundamental rules on how our country’s laws are made and how we are governed, which MPs on all sides of the House have always adhered to. I am deeply disappointed that this Minister, of all people, is going along with this. We on this side will never, ever go along with it.
Question put, That the clause be read a Second time.
Edward Timpson
This is a new form of accreditation and assessment. Over time, all practitioners who want to work in the field will need to be accredited against the new standards set out in the knowledge and skills statement. The difference now is that there are three different tiers. One of the things that has led to our bringing in this proposal is the strong feeling that there has not been a clear career pathway for children’s social workers. When they become experienced they may even become Members of Parliament or they end up in management, away from the frontline but still using their great expertise and knowledge about how to deliver good social work. They have an opportunity to supervise practitioners or to become a practice leader.
Those who are already accredited and have shown that they have relevant experience will be well placed to meet the new accreditation standards that are being set for supervisory and practice leader role. We hope that over time that will enable more of those very high-quality, well-versed and experienced social workers to remain active in social work, rather than our losing that precious commodity as they move into corporate roles within their organisation. I hope that explanation finds favour with the hon. Gentleman and that hon. Members will support the new clause.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I have a few brief comments and questions for the Minister. I am a little concerned that we are seeing an attempt to put back into the Bill powers for the Secretary of State to determine professional standards and assess whether social worker practitioners meet them or not. It is right that Ministers should want to take action to improve standards, but will the Minister explain what those standards will be as they will be subject to secondary legislation and therefore not to intense parliamentary scrutiny? It is only right that the Committee is clear about the intention of the new clause and understands why the Secretary of State feels the need to determine professional social worker standards. It is also a little concerning that after the success in the Lords of the noble Lord Hunt as regards an arm’s length social worker regulatory body, new clause 10(1)(b) is now proposed. Will the Minister explain the rationale for the new clause and give assurances that there will not be Government interference, influence or Government-funded assessment activities of social workers against improvement standards?
The new clause attempts to reassert the role of the Secretary of State in setting standards and developing assessment benchmarks post-qualification. Could that not result in confusion and conflict with the role and functions of the proposed social worker regulatory body, or is the intention that the Secretary of State and persons appointed to assess improvement will be a de facto second regulator? I am sure the Minister agrees that that could have the adverse effect of creating confusion about who is setting and who is assessing standards. It could create more bureaucracy in an already highly complicated arena and would have an adverse effect on recruitment and retention—an area in which, as the Minister knows, the sector is already struggling.
After this morning’s debate, I cannot help thinking that there is an attempt to do something else with the new clause, especially as it has been introduced once again without any consultation or discussion with the social work sector. In answering my questions, can the Minister convince us otherwise?
Edward Timpson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her reasoned and helpful questions to try to establish what the new clause proposes. I think I have set that out in some detail already, but I will try to address some of the specifics that she has raised.
I have already given a picture of what the consultation has involved to date. It is also worth reminding the Committee that more than 1,000 social workers have volunteered to test out the assessment accreditation process as it is rolled out so that we can be sure that what we have at the other end is fit for purpose. There has been widespread involvement of the social work profession. This is not a new phenomenon. It is being brought in very carefully as regards this important change for those working on the frontline.
Simon Hoare
I take the hon. Lady’s point but I think we are looking through different ends of the same telescope. I do not think it would be sensible, or maximise the benefit of the thrust of the new clause, if faith schools were able to say “This aspect of human sexuality is contrary to”—I use that term in its broadest sense—“our religious doctrine, and we will not teach it.” The point I am making is that it should be taught because it is part of human nature—people are born straight or gay, or whatever phraseology one cares to use—but the school would not be in breach of any regulation or legislation to say to the class “We are a Muslim”—or Catholic, Jewish or Methodist—“school: this happens in human life, but the religious teaching of our majority faith in this classroom is that we don’t promote it”, or “That is not what we think.”
That is in part why this sort of debate is not best suited to the Committee. These discussions should take place across the genders and across the parties in preparation for Report. I am conscious that in trying to answer a legitimate point, fairly raised by the hon. Lady, I may have used terms that a 47-year-old white Catholic would use, which some people might find slightly old-fashioned and out of date, or perhaps not as politically correct as they should be. The thrust of what the hon. Lady is talking about is absolutely right, and germane to the whole of the Bill. However, if we are to command support from the religious as much as the secular, the sensitivities and anxieties that people often jump to—“This is all about promotion and trying to convince children at six that they should be gay, and if they are not there is something wrong with them, etc.”—need to be clearly and sensitively identified, so that those particular hares do not start running.
That is why I urge the hon. Lady, if she and her colleagues are serious about the new clause getting a fair crack of the whip, not to press it to a vote this afternoon but to work in a cross-party way to see what can be achieved, hopefully with the support of the Minister—we shall listen with interest to his remarks in a moment—on Report.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
It is a pleasure to speak in support of the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow, which would ensure that all local authorities would provide accurate, age-appropriate personal, social and health education, including age-appropriate sex and relationship education. I believe that we speak for most of the hon. Members in the Committee Room, and in the House more broadly, in saying that steps in such a direction are necessary and important to ensure that children can stay safe, happy and healthy in the 21st century. The current guidance in the area, as my hon. Friends have said, is out of date, and therefore woefully unable to address the challenges and possible dangers they outlined. The education system must respond to change in society to provide young people with the skills and knowledge they need to be safe. While guidance in PSHE and particularly in sex and relationships education is not able to do that, the dangers are clear, as is the case for acting.
I welcome the fact that the Minister and the Education Secretary seem to be coming round to the cross-party consensus on the issue, with suggestions in the media that the Education Secretary is planning a change of policy in that area. The issue is not about politics or partisan point scoring, but about protecting the best interests and the health of children. I am sure all Members in this room will agree that that must be one of our highest priorities.
The Bill offers an ideal opportunity for the Government to make the changes in our education system that are so badly needed. I hope the Minister will support the new clause tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow.
Edward Timpson
May I begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Walthamstow on a stoic effort when she is clearly under the weather? I wholeheartedly agree with the hon. Members who have spoken in what has been a helpful debate in teasing out the issues that surround these sensitive subjects. Now is the time to make sure that every child has access to effective, factually accurate, age-appropriate sex and relationships education and PSHE. That is why we are responding positively and strongly to calls for further action. I am grateful to the hon. Members for tabling this new clause.
Perhaps surprisingly, we have ended up with a greater level of consensus on this new clause than we have had on previous new clauses. As I have said in previous debates on the Bill, we hear the call for further action on PSHE and we have committed to exploring all the options to improve delivery of SRE and PSHE. We are actively looking at how best to address both the quality of delivery, rightly raised by the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston, and accessibility to ensure that all children can be supported to develop positive, healthy relationships and to thrive in modern Britain today. We welcome the support in delivering this in a timely and considered manner.
The Secretary of State herself has made this a personal priority, as we have heard, and we will be able to say more at a later stage in the Bill about how the Government intend to secure provision that is fit for purpose, inclusive and supports all young people growing up in our country today. It therefore seems to me that we are all pursuing similar aims. We all welcomed the excellent report published on 13 September by the Women and Equalities Committee and the considered recommendations within it. We are unanimous that sexual harassment and sexual violence in schools in any form is unacceptable and should not be tolerated. We are much more alive to that and need to make sure that that is properly reflected in the way that we equip children in future.
As part of our response, published on 9 November, the Government have committed to work with other interested parties over the coming months to produce a framework to support schools to produce their own new codes of practice, setting out the principles for a whole-school approach to inclusion and tolerance to combat bullying, harassment and abuse of any kind. Alongside that we have also committed to building our evidence base to better understand the scale and scope of the problem, as well as providing best-practice examples of effective ways to work with boys and girls to promote gender equality and both prevent and respond to incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence. We will also set up an advisory group to look at how the issues and recommendations from the Committee’s report can be best reflected within existing Department for Education guidance for schools, including the statutory guidance, “Keeping children safe in education” and our behaviour and bullying guidance.
Clearly, there is more that we need to do, which is why the Secretary of State is prioritising progress on the quality and availability of PSHE and SRE. In doing so, we must of course, as the hon. Member for Walthamstow said, look at the excellent work that many schools already do as the basis for any new support and requirements. As we know, sex education is already compulsory in all maintained secondary schools. Academies and free schools are also required by their funding agreement to teach a broad and balanced curriculum, and we encourage them to teach sex and relationships education within that. For example, many schools cover issues of consent within SRE, and schools draw on guidance and specialist materials from external expert agencies such as the PSHE Association, which produced the “Sex and Relationships Education (SRE) for the 21st Century” guidance in 2014. This supplementary guidance was developed by the PSHE Association, Brook, and the Sex Education Forum. It provides specific advice on what are sadly all too modern issues, including online pornography, sexting and staying safe online. The guidance equips teachers to support pupils on those challenging issues, developing their resilience and ability to manage risk.
In addition, Ofsted publishes case studies on its website that highlight effective practice in schools, including examples of how SRE is taught within PSHE. Examples include a girls’ Catholic secondary school that has used pupil feedback to enhance its programme to equip students to learn about healthy relationships and issues of abuse and consent. I do not dismiss out of hand the suggestion by the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak that innovation might have a place in this arena. There is much to commend his suggestion, and I will take it away and give it further thought.
We are also actively considering calls to update the guidance on SRE. As hon. Members have said, the guidance is out of date, and attempts since 2000 to update it have not come to fruition. The guidance is already clear that young people should learn about what a healthy relationship looks like, but it does not necessarily equip children with the skills and knowledge that they need in the world as it is today or ensure that the timeless nature of SRE that the hon. Member for Walthamstow spoke about is properly reflected.
Whatever we do, as hon. Members have said—including my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset, in relation to faith schools—we must attempt to allow everybody with a view a chance to make their case. It is a sensitive issue, as everyone is aware, but we want to ensure that we bring as many people with us as possible. The broader the consensus, the greater the prospect that any change will be successful. As the hon. Member for Walthamstow is aware, I have already said that work is in train and we will return to these issues later, at a stage of the Bill when the whole House will have an opportunity to debate them.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I shall speak in support of new clause 12, tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, and my new clause 20.
As it stands, there is a clear inconsistency in the law, where children in stable foster placements can stay with their foster families until the age of 21 under the terms of staying-put arrangements introduced by the Children and Families Act 2014, but similar provisions do not exist for those in residential care. I am sure that the Minister agrees that that is simply unacceptable. We cannot have a two-tier system under which those in foster care receive more comprehensive support from the state, their corporate parents, than those in residential care.
I know that the Department for Education is in discussion with key organisations on this matter, and that the Minister is aware that children in residential care often have complex needs and require an immense amount of support. I have no doubt that he is also aware that safe and secure housing is key to improving life chances, especially for some of our most vulnerable children, yet more than often that is not the case. Care leavers have disproportionately poorer outcomes compared with other young people; 40% of care leavers are not in education, employment or training compared with 14% of their peers. The Government’s own figures show that nearly one in five care leavers aged 19 to 21 were in accommodation that was considered either unsuitable or that suitability was not even known. I am sure that the Minister would want to use the Bill to take every opportunity to improve life chances and outcomes for those care leavers, and whenever he did so, he would have the support of all us in this room, because safe and stable accommodation is a basic human need and the starting point for providing young people with absolutely the best beginning in life.
The statistics on the number of care leavers who come into contact with the criminal justice system in comparison with those in the general population are heart-breaking. According to recent figures, the offending rates for looked-after children in England are now four times those for of all other children. For those who end up in prison, a recent study by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons found that 27% of young people in the young offender institutions it surveyed had previously been in care. When female young offenders were looked at, that figure was up to 45%. It is clear from those figures alone that the current legislation is failing care leavers. One of the factors that is known to give them a better chance in life is to ensure that they all have suitable and stable accommodation.
Local authorities have a duty to ensure that there is sufficient accommodation for looked-after children in their area. New clause 20 would introduce a similar duty to ensure
“sufficient…accommodation for all care leavers up to age 21.”
The Bill requires local authorities to consult on, and publish details of, their local offer to care leavers, setting out the support available for areas such as education, health, employment and accommodation. However, the local offer, as currently drafted, does not go far enough. It requires only that local authorities state publicly what they already provide, and there is no duty on them to ensure that the provision in their area meets local need. There is also no evidence, as we discussed earlier—that the local offer for SEN introduced in the Children and Families Act 2014 has made it more likely that relevant needs are met.
Many care leavers have had to deal with enormous trauma, instability and disruption in their young lives before they have learned the coping skills to deal with the impact of their experiences. That is why so many children growing up and leaving care have related mental health issues. It is absolutely vital that we support these young adults by offering them the stability of safe and secure accommodation. I want the Minister to explain to the Committee what he is going to do to remedy the inequality between children in foster care and children in residential care, and to ensure that the accommodation needs of every single one of our children leaving care are met, and met appropriately.
Kate Green
I just want to say briefly that I support both new clauses tabled by my hon. Friends. In introducing the Staying Put legislation for young people in foster families, the Minister took a big step forward. I have seen the benefit of that in my constituency, including the fact that it has put pressure on the whole system to facilitate keeping those young people in the families that have been providing the foster care, including ensuring that the financial arrangements to support housing costs are consistent with the Staying Put legislation. I have had casework where a foster parent has come to me to say that she faced a cut in the household housing benefit, and we were able to push back on that to enable the young person to stay in the foster home post-18.
That is a really important lesson, if I may say so, in relation to young people leaving residential accommodation. We know that there have been very difficult conversations going on over the last year or so relating to financial support for supported accommodation, as referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak. The Government have delayed, on two occasions, changes to housing benefit as they would apply to supported accommodation, but delay is not a long-term answer to what is putting huge uncertainty into the circumstances in which housing providers of that particular kind of accommodation are able to plan for the future. We could send a really good, useful signal in this legislation about the need for proper, strategic underpinning of accommodation for young people whether they leave foster care or residential care. We need to provide continuing housing support for them as young adults. This legislation is an important opportunity to reinforce that as our starting priority, which is the best interests of those young people.
I hope that the Minister will respond favourably to both new clauses. I think that he did a very good thing with the Staying Put legislation and it would be good to see that extended to the benefit of all looked-after, and formerly looked-after, young people so that we can really do everything. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak said, we should, as corporate parents, do what parents would do for their own children.
Edward Timpson
I am grateful to hon. Members for tabling these new clauses. They would place a duty on local authorities to secure sufficient accommodation for care leavers up until the age of 21 and would extend the existing Staying Put duty to those children leaving residential children’s homes. I understand the purpose behind both the new clauses and agree that care leavers should be supported to access the accommodation they need.
As a backdrop, it is worth going to the start of these Committee sittings and remembering some of the other aspects in the Bill in respect of corporate parenting principles, the care leaver offer and the extension of the personal adviser to every care leaver up to the age of 25 when requested. This is not an area where we have been neglectful. On the contrary: we are the first Government I am aware of who have managed to pull together a comprehensive cross-Government strategy on care leavers and get commitment from a whole range of Departments in areas where we know care leavers particularly require help and support.
I remind the Committee that local authorities are already responsible for providing suitable accommodation to all care leavers aged 16 to 17. When care leavers reach age 18, local authority leaving care teams are responsible for helping care leavers access suitable accommodation. Their new home must be suitable for their needs and linked to their wider plans and aspirations—for example, living close to work or college.
The tapered support offer that already exists for care leavers, which clause 3 will strengthen, is designed to help move young people away from dependence. The corporate parenting principles we are introducing in clause 1 will also ensure that local authorities remain focused on providing appropriate support as care leavers move to independence.
When a care leaver is homeless or at risk of homelessness, the homelessness legislation provides strong protection for them. Local housing authorities have a statutory duty to house care leavers under the age of 21 if they become homeless and people over 21 who are vulnerable as a result of being in care. Statutory guidance for councils also makes clear that those leaving care should be treated as a priority group for social housing.
The Government recognise the importance of improving practice and are funding the homeless charity St Basils to work with local authorities to improve joint working between children’s and housing services, to help them develop accommodation pathways for care leavers that provide a range of options, reflecting care leavers’ readiness to live independently. The Government are also supporting the private Member’s Homelessness Reduction Bill, which will place duties on local housing authorities to provide targeted information and advice for care leavers on preventing homelessness.
Another accommodation option for young people leaving foster care—it has already been mentioned—is Staying Put, which we introduced in 2014. That enables young people to stay living with their former foster carers where that is what they both want. The latest data show that, encouragingly, more than half of 18-year-olds who were eligible for Staying Put are now choosing to do so.
New clause 20 would extend Staying Put to young people leaving residential care. I completely agree with the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak that those young people should have the same opportunity as those in foster care to maintain relationships with their former care givers. That is why earlier this year, after the research that the hon. Gentleman mentioned from the NCB and others, we asked Sir Martin Narey to conduct a review of residential care. Like the hon. Gentleman, Sir Martin believed that simply extending the Staying Put duty to those leaving residential children’s homes was not the right answer and that the Government should test variations of Staying Close—I am afraid we are back into innovation territory—as an alternative to Staying Put for those leaving residential care. In July, we accepted his recommendations and committed to introducing Staying Close for all those leaving care through that route.
We are not biding our time. On 21 December, we invited local authorities to bid to run pilots, through which we will learn what works to deliver Staying Close, as recommended by Sir Martin Narey. We will use that information to make sure that the future roll-out is fully effective and properly targeted.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Will there be an option in Staying Close for children in residential care to remain in their residential placement if they wish to, or not? Mr Wilson, I should probably have declared at the outset that I am a patron of Every Child Leaving Care Matters, which campaigns on this issue.
Edward Timpson
The hon. Lady will be pleased to know that we have been working very closely with the Every Child Leaving Care Matters team, so that it is able to positively contribute to the work and look at the different models that we need to test out through the piloting of Staying Close. In that way, the needs of each individual young person can be met by the range of models available. Some of the early innovation that has already taken place through the children’s social care innovation programme has shown, interestingly, that there are different types of arrangements that work for different young people.
For example, in North Yorkshire we have the No Wrong Door project, which is centred around having a consistent keyworker throughout not only the young person’s time in care but also their time leaving care, irrespective of the place that they are then in. That is built around the concept, which has come through the care inquiry and other routes, that helping maintain those important relationships through that transition can be as beneficial as anything else that we do to support them.
The House Project in Stoke has set up a housing co-operative run by care leavers, who are responsible for managing their tenancy. They have formed their own community, have a good social network and continue to be well supported, but they are starting to gain a sense of independence. I think that the answer to the hon. Lady’s good question is that we want to ensure, through the piloting, that we allow the opportunity to try all the different options available for young people leaving residential care. There are already some residential care settings that keep on young people beyond 18. We need to discover through the pilot what level of demand there is for that and where it is right for that to be done.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Just to clarify the option to remain in some of the models that the Minister has said are being explored, will there be an option for children who want to remain in residential care to do so, or will there not? I am not clear from his response so far.
Edward Timpson
We have accepted the recommendations of Sir Martin Narey that there should not be a duty to provide that for every young person leaving residential care. Through the piloting of Staying Close, we want to consider the different opportunities to find not just the right accommodation solution but the right relationships and pathway into independence for each of those young people.
I think that that is the right approach, and a sensible and proportionate way to respond to the consistent view of the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak on staying in residential care. Having now understood the basis for his new clause, I hope that I have given him a sense that we are travelling in a direction that accords with where he hopes to go. However, there is still some work to do, and we have committed in our response to Sir Martin Narey’s report to rolling the measure out across the country, so that every young person leaving residential care will have the opportunity to continue with the support received by those in foster care.
Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Fourth sitting)
Emma Lewell ExcerptsThursday 15th December 2016
(8 years, 7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Children and Social Work Act 2017 View all Children and Social Work Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 15 December 2016 - (15 Dec 2016)
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
I support the amendment and want to make a plea to Conservative Members to support it. It is important for the values that we uphold in the House. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow for making such a passionate plea, and eloquently describing the plight of children who flee from violent homes to a land where they hope for a safe, secure home, and then find that they are no closer to home.
I have three questions for the Minister. Is he aware that the children who come to the camps are now at a 46% higher risk of being smuggled and of sexual exploitation than they were last year? Is he aware that the British Association of Social Workers has pointed out an inbuilt 50% shortfall in current funding on full cost recovery for services to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children—the children to whom the amendment relates?
Finally, the British Association of Social Workers also has concerns in relation to the Government’s support for the original Dubs amendment, which has been mentioned many times: only a tiny proportion of the children in mainland Europe have arrived in the UK.
I make a plea to Conservative Members: if we are honest about what we want to achieve in the House and we want to protect the most vulnerable, we must make sure we provide support for them. Of course we want to provide support for all children, but those to whom the amendment relates are at the bottom of the ranks.
I ask the Government and Conservative Members to show their support. The point is not a party political one; it is about what we uphold in the House, in an era when the children in question are demonised in the press, when we talk about checking their teeth to find out how old they really are, and there is open hostility to them. It is our duty to support an amendment that will give them some comfort and show that someone in the world is looking out for them.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to support the amendment. Amendments 16 and 17 will ensure that safeguarding partners safeguard and promote the welfare of unaccompanied refugee children, and that any guidance given by the Secretary of State must be developed in accordance with the United Nations convention on the rights of the child. They will help to protect the rights of some of the most vulnerable and unprotected children.
Every child, whatever their circumstances and background, deserves the support that they need to get a good start in life, and to succeed in their education and in life. I am sure that the Minister agrees, in view of the corporate parenting principles in the Bill. However, we have too often failed in that obligation to unaccompanied refugee children, as my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow outlined.
Unaccompanied refugee children are perhaps the most vulnerable young people in society. They have fled humanitarian disasters, wars, and horrors that none of us could begin to imagine. If they arrive in this country we have a moral duty to ensure that they receive the support they need; otherwise there is a risk that they will fall through the cracks and face a danger of being exploited. They have fled from terrible things and we must do all that we can to ensure that they get a better life here. That is no less than any of us would want for a child of our own. By ensuring that safeguarding partners have regard to unaccompanied refugee children, amendment 16 will go some way to ensuring that we rise to our moral duty. I am honoured to support my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow.
I hope that the Minister and his colleagues will lend their support to amendment 17. After all, I cannot imagine that they would object to any of the rights set out in the convention on the rights of the child. If they will not support the amendment, perhaps they will explain which of those rights they believe should not be extended to every child in the country.
I gently remind the Minister that the UN Committee on the Rights of the Child published its findings on the Government’s compliance this year, and they are failing in many areas. Accepting the amendments would go some way towards repairing that terrible record.
Edward Timpson
I am grateful to hon. Members for the amendments, which I recognise seek to ensure the best interests of this very vulnerable group of children, and I assure the Committee that I appreciate the good will and passion that sits behind them.
I turn first to amendment 16. Under section 16E of the Children Act 2004, which will be inserted by clause 16, safeguarding partners will be required to make arrangements for themselves and any relevant agencies that they consider appropriate to work together for the purpose of safeguarding and promoting the welfare of all children in the local area. I assure hon. Members that, when making those arrangements, safeguarding partners will be required to take account of the needs of unaccompanied refugee children. That will be the case even in areas where the numbers of such children are small.
In addition, we have also announced our plans to publish a safeguarding strategy for that particular group of children by 1 May 2017, as called for by Lord Dubs in the other place. The Government strategy will seek to ensure the utmost protection for unaccompanied, asylum-seeking and refugee children in this country, as well as those who are being transferred here from Europe, whether they are reunited with family members or become looked after by a local authority.
As part of the strategy, we will set out plans to increase foster care capacity for those looked after children, and will consider what further action can be taken to prevent them from going missing. We will also review what information is communicated to those children about their rights and entitlements; revise statutory guidance for local authorities on how to support and care for them; and regularly review the level of funding provided to local authorities for the care and support of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. As this point was raised earlier in the debate, let me say that local authorities were asked to submit their costs of caring for that group. Current funding is higher than 50% of local authorities’ costs, and we will keep that under review to ensure that their needs are being met. Those commitments are already being progressed in consultation with others, including local authorities and non-governmental organisations.
The safeguarding responsibility for those children who have been identified for transfer but are yet to arrive lies with the member state where the children currently reside, not the local authority in which they will ultimately reside. We have supported the French in their efforts to move all children from the Calais camp to safe alternative accommodation across France. While they remain in France, their welfare and safety is a matter for the French authorities.
Since the Home Secretary’s statement to Parliament in October, when the French operation to clear the Calais camp started, teams of specialist staff have been working in France, in close liaison with the French authorities, to ensure that children eligible to come to the UK continue to be transferred as quickly as possible. We continue to work in partnership with the French authorities to transfer children to the UK with close family here—who qualify under the Dublin regulation—and those children who meet the criteria of section 67 of the Immigration Act 2016. To date, around 200 children have been brought to this country under such arrangements. I can tell the hon. Member for Walthamstow that more eligible children will be transferred from Europe, in line with the terms of the Immigration Act, and we will continue to meet our obligations under Dublin II. We will announce the number of children to be transferred to the UK under the terms of the Immigration Act in due course.
I think it is worth making it explicit to the Committee that the guidance of 8 November applies only to the Calais operation, which is now complete, but that the Dubs process has not ended. More eligible children will be transferred, and I know the Home Office will make a further announcement on how that process will take place. I will undertake to make sure that all of the points raised by the hon. Member for Walthamstow in this debate and on Second Reading are made clear to the Home Office and the Ministers there, so that they are fully aware of those issues as they develop the next iteration of that process. The hon. Lady has undertaken stoic work in trying to make sure that all of those points are understood.
On amendment 17, the Government are committed to children’s rights, and we are determined to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children—including unaccompanied refugee children. We are equally committed to giving due consideration to the United Nations convention on the rights of the child when making new policies and legislation, and when developing guidance for local agencies. In fact, another written ministerial statement that I laid before Parliament—I have had a habit of creating them in recent weeks—set out our commitment to do so right across Government, making sure that every Department is playing its part. I know that the permanent secretary in my Department is speaking with his counterparts in every other Department to ensure that that is followed through within the civil service.
One of the commitments in our safeguarding strategy will be to publish a revised version of the statutory guidance for local authorities on the care of unaccompanied and trafficked children. The guidance we have is good, but it needs updating to reflect the new circumstances that we find ourselves in as well as the diverse nature of the group of children that we are talking about to ensure that local authorities are aware of the duties they must undertake to support and promote the best interests of these children.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to move amendment 40, in clause 17, page 14, line 12, leave out subsection (6).
This amendment would remove the role of the Secretary of State in determining certain arrangements for the working practices of safeguarding partners, ensuring that they remain locally accountable.
The spirit of the amendment is much the same as that of previous amendments concerning the child safeguarding practice review panel. It relates to unacceptable levels of involvement by the Secretary of State, this time in local child safeguarding reviews. Improvements in local safeguarding reviews are much needed.
There is huge variability in the quality and usefulness of serious case reviews, and there are questions about the suitability of board members and their closeness to those who might have a role in a serious case being scrutinised. However, the fact remains that a top-down approach whereby the Secretary of State advises each local authority—familiarity with which he or she cannot possibly be expected to have—about the criteria being taken into account, the choice of reviewers and, in particular, the content of the review cannot be either wise or a productive use of the DFE’s time or the local board’s time.
If serious case reviews are to have the desired effect of improving practice and procedure in response to tragedies, it is crucial that the review be locally accountable and locally owned. The purpose should be for those involved to reflect on possible mistakes and propose ways in which they can improve. Will the Minister explain why the Government feel there is a need for the Secretary of State to have such heavy involvement in these issues?
Edward Timpson
Once again, I am grateful to the hon. Lady for the amendment. Clause 17 sets out the requirement on safeguarding partners for a local authority area to identify and, where appropriate, carry out local child safeguarding practice reviews. Subsection (6) of proposed section 16F of the Children Act 2004, inserted by clause 17, sets out a list of provisions on which the Secretary of State may make regulations in order to assist local safeguarding partners to identify appropriate cases and carry out reviews where they consider appropriate, as set out in subsection (1).
It is important that the Secretary of State has the power to make regulations to help safeguarding partners in the process of local reviews. Subsection (6)(a) will enable the setting of criteria to be taken into account by the safeguarding partners in determining which cases raise issues of importance in relation to the area. That will not remove or reduce the local accountability of the safeguarding partners to make decisions. It will promote a more even and balanced consideration of the issues across the country, so that we get consistency.
The safeguarding partners will be responsible for appointing the reviewer for each review they commission. They will also be responsible for removing the reviewer if need be. Subsection (6)(b) will enable the regulations to provide for reviewers to be appointed from a list provided by the Secretary of State.
Edward Timpson
No.
If such a list was provided, safeguarding partners would still be accountable for decisions taken on whom to appoint, taking into account the experience of the reviewer concerned and their independence from the local area, among other factors. The aim of a list will be to improve the overall quality of reviews, given that many have acknowledged that as being deficient in the current serious case review system, as have Members on both sides of the Committee today.
Subsection (6)(c) allows for regulations to specify when a report should be provided to the Secretary of State or the child safeguarding practice review panel and published. In receiving copies of all local reviews, the panel would be in an ideal position to review both the quality and timeliness of reports and the learning that emerges from them. Regulations would enable timescales to be set for that process.
Subsection (6)(d) refers to the procedure for a review, which may include the establishment of terms of reference. Finally, subsection (6)(e) allows regulations to make provision about the form and content of the reports. It should be noted that such provisions would not be unduly prescriptive as they would be entirely about promoting the overall quality of reviews.
I want to reassure hon. Members that, in making regulations, we will consult on their content widely before bringing them before Parliament, which will give the hon. Lady an opportunity to scrutinise them in more detail. Indeed, we have already begun to talk to a range of interested parties about some of these important issues. I hope that, with those clarifications, the hon. Lady feels able to withdraw her amendment.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I do feel able, thank you, so I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 17 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 18 to 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 22
Guidance by Secretary of State
Amendment proposed: 17, in clause 22, page 17, line 5, at end insert—
“(3) Guidance given by the Secretary of State in connection with functions conferred by section 16E in relation to unaccompanied refugee children must be developed in accordance with the 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child.”—(Stella Creasy.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to move amendment 39, in clause 31, page 20, leave out line 4.
This amendment would retain reference to the Health Service in the Employment Rights Act 1996.
This brief amendment would retain reference to the health service in the Employment Rights Act 1996. Social workers and others in the sector have been pleased to see that whistleblowing arrangements have been included in the Bill, but we query why child protection and other children’s social workers employed by the health service have been omitted from the whistleblowing provisions, given how many there are. Why are children’s social workers employed in hospitals and other areas omitted? It would be a shame, especially in the wake of what we know of institutional abuse in certain hospitals, if such employees were not accorded the same whistleblower protections as their peers employed privately or by local authorities.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
I apologise for my earlier error, Mrs Main.
The Scottish Government acknowledge and respect the need for whistleblowing and believe that procedures should be in place across the public and private sectors to support staff in raising any concerns in order to ensure that people can work in a safe and secure environment. Without whistleblowers, serious concerns may take longer to be noticed and rectified. Any proposals that strengthen whistleblowing procedures and help protect employees and service users across the public sector are welcome.
Robust whistleblowing procedures are in place across Scotland, including in our NHS, but the Scottish Government and the SNP support further reforms to protect and embed an honest and open reporting culture in which all staff have the confidence to speak up without fear and in the knowledge that any genuine concern will be treated seriously and investigated properly. All children and young people have the right to be cared for and protected from harm. The amendment will help with that and we support it.
Edward Timpson
As we have heard, the clause provides the Secretary of State with the power to make regulations to prohibit relevant employers who carry out children’s social care functions from discriminating against those applying for roles in the children’s social care sector on the basis that it appears to the employer that the applicant has made a protected disclosure. This includes when the employer refuses the application or in some other way treats the applicant less favourably than it treats others for the same application. I am pleased that we were able to work so productively with Lord Wills in the other place over the summer to produce these important protections.
For the benefit of the hon. Member for South Shields, let me clarify that social workers employed in the NHS are already covered by the 2006 provisions and will be captured in the relevant regulations, with the consultation due in the new year. That is another consultation that I suspect she will want to keep a close eye on, and to which she might wish to contribute.
The Government are clear that those working with the most vulnerable must be able to report their concerns. They deserve effective protection when they make a protected disclosure. Workers with such concerns can already make a disclosure to their employer or the prescribed bodies for child protection and wellbeing social workers. We agreed with Lord Wills’s proposals that, in addition, we should protect those seeking employment with specified bodies in roles relating to local authorities’ children’s social care functions. We are delighted to have worked with him to produce a suitable amendment.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 31 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 32
Chapter 2: consequential amendments
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss Government motion to transfer clause 32 to the end of line 39 on page 19.
Edward Timpson
I will be brief. The clause introduces a second set of consequential changes to legislation contained in schedule 1 to the Bill and relating to the provisions in chapter 2. The motion to transfer is another administrative exercise to tidy up this chapter into three smaller chapters.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 32 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered,
That clause 32 be transferred to the end of line 39 on page 19.—(Edward Timpson.)
The consequential amendments introduced by clause 32 are in Part 2 of Schedule 1. They replace or remove references to Local Safeguarding Children Boards (abolished by clause 30). Transferring clause 32 would enable it to appear in the new Chapter relating to the safeguarding of children (see the explanatory statement for the motion to transfer clause 11).
Schedule 1 agreed to.
Clause 33
Social Work England
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Regulation clauses in part 2 of the Bill deal with the establishment of a new regulator for both children’s and adults’ social work across all specialisms. It will be called Social Work England. The Department for Education and the Department of Health, without any prior consultation or dialogue with the social work profession, propose to end regulation by the Health and Social Care Professionals Council and to replace it with an inevitably much more costly bespoke regulatory system.
In recent years there has been a lot of flux in relation to social work regulation. There was the General Social Care Council, the college and then the Health and Care Professionals Council, and now we will have Social Work England. I hope that the Minister will confirm that this ever-changing landscape is going to cease and that we will not be debating another regulator in another year or so, because all that this change does is create constant disruption in the profession.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I appreciate that.
Even with the amendments to the clause, the original proposition was outrageous. It has left a bad taste in the mouths of many in the sector, and distrust and scepticism behind the whole idea of the new regulator. What assurances can the Minister give that will ensure that social work regulation has the appropriate autonomy and distance from prevailing Government policy, and that it focuses on public protection, which is the proper priority of regulation? Will he tell us why social work is always treated differently from other health and social care professions?
Regulation of all professions should focus on assuring fitness to practise and public protection. All other professions are regulated to ensure consistent and safe practice. That arrangement provides continuity through the changes that inevitably come from successive policy developments under different Governments. Given that there is little cross-party consensus on children’s social care policy at the moment, and that subsequent Governments could take a different path, this is particularly worrying.
Although the amended proposals for a non-departmental public body regulatory body suggest more independence than was first proposed, a NDPB can mean a wide range of governance and independence options. We are challenging the detail of current proposals that intend for the Government to directly appoint the leadership of the organisation. We expect that the key roles of chair and chief executive officer, as well as the board, will be appointed without political control of process and decision making. Current Government proposals mean that the Secretary of State for Education controls those appointments.
It would be better for regulatory standards to be set out through a profession-led process. The British Association of Social Workers and its partners should drive that; BASW has always supported and campaigned for regulation to ensure high standards and to protect the public. If independence from Government control is not instituted in these new arrangements, that will detract from the profession developing its own standards and setting capabilities and a culture of responsibility for excellence at every single level.
We are also concerned that the proposals risk fostering resistance to regulation and might lead to social workers choosing to deregister if a new regulator focuses on delivering current Government policy and sets requirements for registration that inappropriately narrow down the options for how social workers can demonstrate their fitness to practise. That risk is exacerbated by the probability of significantly increased fees for social workers from an expensive and bespoke regulator. There has recently been a decline in the number of social workers being trained. There is a further risk of decline with proposed changes to training bursaries disincentivising good candidates from the profession. Problems in retention persist. The profession and our public services cannot withstand the further risk of a drain of talent and capacity from the registered workforce. I hope that the Minister understands that and will sum it up in his comments.
Edward Timpson
Clause 33 underpins our ambition to improve the practice of social work and raise the status of the profession. It establishes a new body corporate, Social Work England, which will be a new, bespoke regulator for this vital and unique profession.
First, I will set out the case and motivation for reform. In many ways, the easiest thing would be to do nothing and not prioritise social work as a key plank of the Government’s efforts to transform children’s social care. I think we all agree that high-quality social work can transform lives and that social workers play a critical role in our society. They deliver a range of vital services, from safeguarding the most vulnerable to supporting those with complex needs to live life to the full. Every day, social workers deal with complex and fraught situations that require a great depth of skill, knowledge, understanding and empathy. When social workers are not able to fulfil their role competently the consequences can be catastrophic, which is why the Government have developed a significant reform programme to improve the quality of social work and of the systems that support social workers. That includes investing £750 million since 2010 in supporting both traditional and fast-track routes into the profession and investing £100 million to date in the children’s social care innovation programme, so that local authorities and others can evidence how to reform services and practice to be more effective.
More is needed. To underpin the reforms, social work needs a regulatory system that meets the needs of this unique profession. Such a regulatory system will help to improve public safety and promote the status and standing of social work. The need for an improved system of regulation for the social work profession in England has been highlighted in recent independent reviews.
The hon. Lady asked why the social work profession should have a different regulator from the health profession. The approach of the current regulator, the Health and Care Professions Council, is designed to maintain minimum standards of public safety and initial education across a range of professions, rather than to drive up standards in any one profession. Driving up standards is vital for a profession in which the safety of our most vulnerable people is inextricably linked to the highest standards of practice. I would argue also that social work is a distinct and highly skilled profession and that its practitioners manage complex risks and work with vulnerable children and adults on a daily basis. A new specialist regulator for social work reflects that reality and will be able to focus on the unique nature of social work practice and on the education and training needed to support it in a way that is, unfortunately, not currently possible.
Clause 33 provides for the establishment of a new regulator for the social work profession in England. It makes it clear that our intention is to set up a regulator that is a separate legal entity at arm’s length from Government. It is important to maintain appropriate distance between the new regulator and Government, and I make it clear that it has never been our intention to give Government the power to make decisions about the fitness to practise of individual social workers.
The clause also introduces schedule 2, which sets out the new body’s governance and accountability arrangements. We may want to discuss that in more detail later, but our ambition in establishing a new bespoke, independent regulator for social work is to continue improving the practice of social work and raising the status of the profession.
Edward Timpson
I am always happy to talk with the hon. Gentleman at any time about the details of policies and their implementation, and this is no exception. Despite the short time I have had to prepare an answer, I will do my best to give him the details that he seeks.
The Government will significantly support the establishment of Social Work England as a regulator in terms of the set-up costs. We anticipate that about £10 million will be provided by the Government from the Department of Health. The Government will also contribute up to £16 million over the rest of this Parliament to support the running costs of Social Work England. We anticipate that it will become a self-sustaining model. For the reasons that the hon. Gentleman set out, we want to ensure that, during that period, that is exactly what we work towards.
The administration and workings of the new regulator will be overseen by the Professional Standards Authority, which will be keeping a close eye on its ability to be sustainable. At the moment, we are looking at individual registration, but I will look carefully at what the hon. Gentleman said about whether there are other mechanisms. The important thing is that we are confident that every person who is meeting the necessary standards is doing so as an individual, as opposed to as part of a team. It is that person’s professional capacity that we are most interested in.
The regulator is not an improvement body; it is purely a regulator. One point I will pick up on for the hon. Member for South Shields is that we want to work with the various professional bodies that support social workers so that we have a single body that can help social workers with their improvement journey through their career, so that they feel supported in the process.
We have established an advisory group that includes the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, the Association of Directors of Adult Social Services, the British Association of Social Workers, Unison, the Local Government Association and the PSA, which will act as our critical friend and provide effective challenge to help us to develop the detail and the practical delivery of the new regulator. The first meeting took place on 9 December. The intention is that the group will meet every six weeks to discuss the challenges that the changes will have for the wider social workforce, and to help support the development and detail of Social Work England. There are requirements in the Bill for Social Work England to consult on its standards, so there is another opportunity to look at those more closely. On that basis, I hope that the clause stands part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 33 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Schedule 2 agreed to.
Clauses 34 to 43 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 44
Fees
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
There are concerns that the new regulator, Social Work England, has been developed without any prior consultation or dialogue with the profession. There is a worry that it is likely to have cost implications for social workers in the form of high registration fees. I hope that the Minister can today confirm that that will not be the case, and that the Government can protect already practising social workers and require that fees for the new regulator’s initial five years of existence be set no higher than the projected fees over that time for the existing regulator.
Social workers are already grossly underpaid for the work they do. The job is done seven days a week. It involves great personal and financial sacrifices and affects their mental and physical health. They should not have to bear the burden of paying for a new regulator that they never asked for.
Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Third sitting)
Emma Lewell ExcerptsThursday 15th December 2016
(8 years, 7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Children and Social Work Act 2017 View all Children and Social Work Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 15 December 2016 - (15 Dec 2016)
The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families (Edward Timpson)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. We are all sad that Mr Wilson is not with us today, but we all agree that you are a fantastic and exemplary replacement.
Clause 8 will expand the factors that courts must consider when deciding whether to make a care order in respect of a child, and it will ensure that consideration is given to the impact on a child of any harm they have suffered or may be likely to suffer; the child’s current and future needs, including any needs arising from that impact; and the way in which the long-term plan for the upbringing of the child will meet those needs. Those are all key considerations when courts are deciding whether to place a child in authority care and are considering all the permanence options available.
The family is, of course, the most important building block in a child’s life—every child deserves a loving, stable family—but it is important that we find children who cannot live with their birth parents permanent new homes without unnecessary delay. It is common knowledge that children who enter care are particularly vulnerable, often having experienced abuse, neglect and disruption—experiences that can have a significant detrimental effect. That means such children have additional needs now and later in life, something I know all too well from my own family.
Research confirms that these children need quality care and stability, in particular, in order to secure their future chances in life. However, there is concern that, at present, those factors are not always at the forefront of decision makers’ minds and, consequently, some children may be missing out on placements that would be right for them.
The Department’s review of special guardianship orders in December 2015 found that potentially risky placements were being accepted. For example, in some cases special guardianship orders were being awarded with a supervision order because of reservations about the guardian’s ability to care for the child in the long term. That was never the intention when the Children Act 1989 was introduced, so clause 8 seeks to ensure that courts also consider the individual needs of the child now and in the long term, particularly in light of any abuse or neglect that they have suffered, and assess how well the proposed placement will meet those needs.
By ensuring that information about children’s current and long-term needs is made available when key decisions are taken, we aim to ensure that the best placement option is pursued in every case—in other words, the placement that is most likely to meet a child’s needs throughout their childhood. Those working with children in this area support the clause. Andy Elvin, the chief executive of the Adolescent and Children’s Trust—TACT—the UK’s largest fostering and adoption charity, has said:
“All of this is eminently sensible. In practical terms it will raise the evidential bar for all care planning.
The biggest impact, rightly, will be on special guardianship order assessments. The logic of this is that these will have to move to be on a par with fostering assessments. The court is being asked to make a decision that will last not only the child’s minority, but impact the rest of their life.”
Dr Carol Homden, the chief executive of Coram, has said:
“Recent research shows that many people underestimate the significance of harm that all too many children experience before coming into care. Therefore, we particularly welcome that this Bill calls courts and local authorities to focus on the impact of any harm a child has previously suffered and their life-long future needs when making decisions about their care.”
These are clearly important measures that have the strong support of those outside the House.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mrs Main. The Opposition do not have a problem with the clause. In fact, when I first entered the House three years ago I questioned the Minister on SGOs, so I am pleased that he has now listened. In practice, I would routinely do this in care plans any way, and I think a lot of social workers do. We welcome the clause.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 8 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 9
Adoption: duty to have regard to relationship with adopters
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
We believe that clause 9 should be deleted from the Bill, because under its provisions prospective adopters could be prioritised over relatives or other carers. That completely contradicts the Children Act 1989. It could lead to children being prematurely placed with prospective adopters even before the conclusion of court proceedings, in order to build a relationship with prospective adopters that is then used to undermine the child’s prospect of going back to his or her birth family, extended family members or friends, who love the child and have been trying to do their best to keep them in their care.
A premature placement with prospective adopters could prejudge the outcome of legal proceedings, causing unnecessary pain and distress to all concerned. It diminishes a child’s right to a family life, risks the early separation of siblings, and inflicts trauma and grief on children and their primary carer, who more often than not is their mother, as well as on other loving family members, especially grandparents.
The clause is a prime example of the Government’s obsession with adoption to the detriment of all other forms of care. The time and money that the Department has spent on adoption is staggering, with more than 20 policy changes since 2010. Back in 2012, the former Education Secretary, the right hon. Member for Surrey Heath (Michael Gove), said:
“I firmly believe more children should be taken into care more quickly…I want social workers to be more assertive with dysfunctional parents, courts to be less indulgent of poor parents, and the care system to expand to deal with the consequences.”
And Lord Nash said in the other place, in the proceedings on this Bill, that
“the Government are strongly pro-adoption.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 June 2016; Vol. 773, c. 1114.]
What the Government should be doing is strongly advocating whatever care is right for each and every individual child, and not what they believe is right.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady acknowledge that the evidence shows that long-term stability is obviously important, and that part of that includes the option of adopting? It is not just adoption that is being promoted; that is but one string to the bow for the Government’s weaponry, if you like, although “weaponry” is the wrong word. Can she not see that adoption is just one part of the Government’s approach—albeit an important part—and that evidence also supports this approach?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. However, the clause singles out adoption for special attention; the issue needs to be looked at in the wider context of overall Government policy relating to children in care and plans for permanence.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
The Government probably have the right intention in trying to put the emphasis on the permanence of arrangements for children, but the point my hon. Friend is making about the singling out of adoption is that adoption has a history, which is also negative.
Anyone who has read the book about Philomena Lee’s experience or seen the recent film of it will know how adoption can be misused, and there is a history to adoption in this country that is not always positive. When we consider the issue of adoption, we should always think about the best interests of the child and not risking lapsing back into bad old habits and bad old days, when adoption was misused and abused in this country.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
My hon. Friend is right—adoption should not be the only option for a child. It is lazy to think that. That approach does not take into account all the other options that are there and that are in the best interests of the child.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
To the best of my memory, “Philomena” is a film set in the 1950s in the Republic of Ireland, so it has nothing to do with the Government of the United Kingdom. If the hon. Lady is really suggesting that her opposition to the clause should be based on the adoption policies of the Republic in the 1950s, parents interested in adoption may look rather askance at that.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I think I thank the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. However, I will not dwell on the point, because I think he has missed the context of what we are trying to describe here.
Kate Green (Stretford and Urmston) (Lab)
Does my hon. Friend agree that our concerns are based not on the history of adoption in the 1950s but on the discriminatory application of adoption proceedings, which often means that children from poorer families and certain ethnic groups and cultures are more likely to go through the adoption process more speedily? If the clause is not removed, it will make that even more likely.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
If the Department had spent this much energy on social worker recruitment and retention and invested in family support and early-years help, we might not be where we are now, with the highest number of children in care since 1985.
The Professional Association for Children’s Guardians, Family Court Advisers and Independent Social Workers commented on the Department for Education’s adoption policy paper this year. It said:
“We note the Policy Paper does not address how to prevent children entering the care and adoption systems in the first place…We are concerned that despite the intention to ‘strengthen families’, no more is said on this point and that there is no discussion of support for disadvantaged families despite the worrying increase in the numbers of children subject to care proceedings.”
Edward Timpson
Will the hon. Lady accept that the adoption paper is about adoption, and that there is another Government paper—we have referred to it previously in Committee—called “Putting children first”, which deals with all children who are going through the care system? It is not unusual for a Government to put forward different policy papers that cover different policy areas.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I completely agree, but if the Minister lets me continue with my point, he will see where I am going with this.
The professional association continues:
“The scale of reduced spending on early intervention in children’s services and the way this leads to greater costs elsewhere is well analysed”
in a number of reports.
“The key point…is that by significantly reducing early preventive work, more public money has to be spent on costly proceedings, foster care, mental health provision, adoption agencies and so forth, which potentially could be avoided by better focused spending at an earlier stage…We strongly warn against an ‘evangelical approach’ to adoption, whereby it is perceived as a good in itself. This perception is contrary to the majority view of European and western thought and jurisprudence, and it fails to appreciate it represents a serious and draconian step and a measure to be considered only ‘when nothing else will do’…We strongly advise against performance indicators that positively promote an increase in adoptions as these inevitably lead to a distortion of professional activity in favour of adoption at the expense of other choices”.
The Chair
Order. Before I call the hon. Lady to respond to that remark, may I draw her attention to the fact that this is a very narrowly worded clause about the duty to have regard to the relationship with adopters during the adoption process? I encourage her not to range too freely about why adoption is not necessarily a good thing.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Thank you for that advice, Mrs Main. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. If the Minister can allay my hon. Friend’s concerns in his comments, we may not have to press the amendment to a vote.
The professional association states that “further tinkering with” the Children Act 1989
“could be unwise and the thin end of the wedge of social engineering.”
More children are adopted in the UK than in any other European country, and 90% of adoptions are without parental consent. One of the major arguments put forward for speeding up adoptions is that it would reduce the number of children in care, but the opposite has been the case. Dr Bilson, emeritus professor of social work at the University of Central Lancashire, has found that adoption policies, rather than reducing the number of children in care, have led to a 65% increase in the number of children being separated from their parents. He feels that that is unlikely to be due to an increase in abuse, because child protection findings of physical and sexual abuse have fallen since 2001, yet child protection plans have increased since 2010.
The majority of such plans are about neglect or emotional abuse, both of which could be better dealt with through family support and responses to poverty and deprivation, which lead to children being over 10 times more likely to be in care or on a child protection plan. Dr Bilson’s research shows that over the past five years, the local authorities with the highest adoption rates also have the largest increases in the number of children in care. In those local authorities with the lowest rates of adoption, the number of children in care had fallen. In other words, prioritising adoption results in more children, not fewer, being taken into care.
The Chair
Order. The hon. Lady is ranging widely off clause 9, which is titled “Adoption: duty to have regard to relationship with adopters”. I ask her to bring her comments back to that. I have allowed quite a lot of latitude.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Thank you, Mrs Main. I will of course sum up very quickly.
The damage caused by the adoption targets is not being considered in the Bill, but it must be. Evidence reported just this week by The Guardian shows that local authorities are using targets, sometimes combined with financial incentives. It is worth remembering that adoption is far cheaper for councils than foster placements, because once a child is adopted, they are off the council’s books for good. Adoption is also cheaper than providing services that might ensure that vulnerable parents can care for their children, but what of the money being saved? What about the lives of those destroyed by the separation?
The Bill is concerned in part with improving the situation of care leavers, which is important, but we make a mistake if we focus on their needs without considering why so many children are being taken into care and what we can do to reduce that. It cannot be right that we are talking about resources for corporate parents while saying nothing about resources for children and families who have been impoverished by austerity policies. The Government need to take a serious look at the patterns and trends in child protection, adoption and fostering, but instead they have continued on this damaging path of pro-adoption, and they are using a small clause in the Bill to strengthen that further. I hope the Minister will explain in his response why, despite evidence to the contrary, they are continuing on that path.
Edward Timpson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her contribution to the consideration of the clause. Mindful of the narrow nature of the clause, I say from the outset that the Government have always been clear that the right permanence option— whether that is adoption, special guardianship, kinship care, residential care or even long-term fostering—will always depend on a child’s individual needs and circumstances. As the law clearly states, the child’s welfare is the paramount consideration, and that is as it should be. That is why I have to say to her that it is a little depressing to see the same arguments and rhetoric on the Government’s plans for children in care, saying that we only have eyes for adoption. That is simply not borne out by the facts.
Edward Timpson
Perhaps the hon. Lady will let me explain. This Government introduced the first ever legal definition of long-term fostering; none existed previously. We brought in quality standards on residential care a number of years ago, and 79% of children’s care homes are now rated good or outstanding. The hon. Lady has already alluded to the work that we do with care leavers to make sure that during the period when they leave care they have much better support.
What we are trying to do with adoption, however, is tackle two issues, which Tony Blair tried to tackle in the late 1990s and early 2000s—not in the way he did it, which was by setting national targets, but by ensuring that when adoption is right for children they can be adopted and by making sure that when that happens it is without unnecessary delay. I do not think that anyone would argue it is acceptable for children to have to wait an average of 26 months from the time of entering care to move to an adoptive placement.
Those are the issues we have been tackling. What we are doing is not based on an ideological fantasy. We know from the research of Professor Julie Selwyn that adoption has a huge number of benefits for the children it is right for. It has the lowest breakdown rate of any permanent placement—about 3%, with special guardianship orders at about 6%. I have seen from my family the huge benefits that adoption can bring, but I have also seen from my family the huge benefits that long-term fostering can bring. I know from personal experience that each child will need to follow a different path.
What we are doing is not a mission to try to ensure that every child who comes into the care system ends up being adopted; we are trying to stay clearly focused on making sure that, where it is right for a child, that is exactly what happens. In the past couple of years, on the back of the Re B-S judgment, there has been a fall in the number of adoptions, not a rise. That is because we have to face up to the fact that there are still people who believe that adoption is not the right course of action for children. I am saying that we should not stand in the way in cases where it is right for them.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Would the Minister share something with the Committee, to support his argument? His Department has made 20-plus changes to adoption since 2010; how many changes has he made to other areas of care, and what is the comparative cost? If adoption is not seen as the gold standard, surely other areas of care will have the same number of policy changes and the same spending.
Edward Timpson
I am afraid I disagree with the hon. Lady’s premise. It is not the number of things that are done, but whether the things that are done have a discernible impact of the kind that we want, and achieve the outcomes that we want to be able to celebrate. I do not accept that the amount of activity created is directly comparable to commitment or achievement of objectives.
I want to make it clear that local authorities’ decisions on the most appropriate permanency option are based on the child’s needs. That is what the law says. That is what the Bill does in making sure that those needs are given full and thorough attention when courts consider not just adoption but all permanent options. Clause 9 will ensure that courts and adoption agencies consider the relationship between a child and their prospective adopters when deciding about the adoption of a child in cases where the child is already placed with the prospective adopters.
That is an important point. It is not a matter of children who have no relationship with the prospective adopters, and have not met them or had time to get to know them. It is about those who are already placed, where there is already a relationship. The relationship between a prospective adopter and a child placed with them will clearly be a fundamentally important and relevant consideration when a court considers whether an adoption should be granted, because, ultimately, it is a court’s decision, based on the best interest of the child, and with their welfare as the paramount consideration.
In the past two years there have been a small number of cases in which decisions have been taken to remove children from settled adoptive placements in favour of alternative arrangements with relatives who have come forward at a late stage. That may have potentially serious implications for the child, given the disruption to the attachments the child is likely to have already formed with their carers. That needs to be taken into account when making that final decision.
Where the making of an adoption order is being considered, in most cases the child will already have been living with their prospective adopters for between six to 12 months. During that time, the prospective adopters and the child will have established a relationship, and the child may have built a significant attachment to their carers. I have met adopters who have told me just that. The Government believe it is important that that attachment should be considered in the balance when final decisions are made about a child’s adoption.
That is not to say that prospective adopters are prioritised over birth parents or other family members in those considerations. The existing legislation already makes it clear that the court is also required to consider the relationship that the child has with their relatives, including their mother and father, and the relationship they have with any other person the court considers relevant, such as close friends or wider family. That express and mandatory requirement is not changing, so there is no hierarchy here—just a fair, balanced consideration of each of the significant relationships a child has, based on their own needs.
I also point out that the court is required to consider the wishes and feelings of family members when making an adoption decision. In addition, the court must consider the value to the child of the continuing relationship with their relatives. That is already clearly set out in the Adoption and Children Act 2002, which was introduced by the last Labour Government, so relationships with the birth family and the child’s relatives are therefore central to the court’s considerations.
Edward Timpson
Clause 11 seeks to retain the Government’s ability to intervene and drive improvement in combined authorities, in the same way that we do now in individual local authorities where children’s social care services are failing vulnerable young people. The motion to transfer this clause is a housekeeping part of the Bill and we propose that chapter 2 of part 1 of the Bill be divided into three shorter chapters with this provision appearing in the third. I move that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 11 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Ordered,
That clause 11 be transferred to the end of line 12 on page 22.—(Edward Timpson.)
This motion would facilitate the division of Chapter 2 of Part 1 into three shorter Chapters, to be entitled “safeguarding of children”, “children’s social care: different ways of working” and “other provision relating to children”. Transferring clause 11 would enable it to appear in the Chapter entitled “other provision relating to children”.
Clause 12
Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I hope to get some clarity from the Minister regarding the industry’s and the Opposition’s concerns about the clause and the introduction of the child safeguarding practice review panel. I will give a more specific analysis when we debate amendments to clause 13, but I will put them into the context of clause 12.
The British Association of Social Workers is worried about the independence of the child safeguarding practice review panel and the possibility that the Secretary of State could use the panel to hammer on local authorities that she would like to take over. There is widespread alarm in the sector that the warnings in the National Audit Office report, which we discussed in Tuesday’s sitting, are being ignored by the Department. Within recent weeks we have seen yet another Labour-led council being told to transfer its statutory duties to an independent trust. I hope that when the Minister responds he will point me toward evidence that trusts do better and can achieve what local authorities could not have done without support.
The clauses also allow for the creation of a national child safeguarding review panel that can choose to identify and review complex or nationally important child safeguarding cases and make recommendations. I completely understand the rationale for overhauling the local serious case review process, as there have been widespread inconsistencies in the quality of such reports. However, while local learning can be patchy and distorted by local political and inter-agency dynamics, local-led investigations also keep local agencies engaged and involved and enable local knowledge to inform the process and the recommendations. I hope the Minister will be able to explain how the local aspect will not be lost.
There are a few examples of independent expert boards set up by recent Secretaries of State and the Department for Education. In 2014, they created the innovation fund to promote new practice within children’s social care, with a board to oversee operations and to set strategic direction. It appointed three people with financial services and investment banking experience, plus the chief social worker for children, who we know sees herself no longer as the independent voice of the profession, but as a senior civil servant, yet she is the only person on the board with practical experience in children’s social care.
When the Government sought to promote and publish more serious case reviews in the same year, we saw yet another expert panel. The four members of the panel were a journalist, a barrister, an air traffic accident investigator and a former career civil servant who had been the chief executive of the Big Lottery Fund. No one on the panel had any front-line experience in child protection or its direct management. It appears that there is a worrying recurring tendency. I hope the Government will reflect, rethink and build relationships with those who know most about helping children. At the moment, it appears that the DFE sees little value in using the professional experience and expertise of those who work to assist and protect families. Can the Minister shed light on how many former or still registered social workers are in his Department? When the Government appoint experts to oversee and direct children’s services, they have consistently considered commercial and financial expertise more relevant than direct experience. That is why there is some wariness about the intention to set up expert panels to advise DFE.
It is also intended that the Department for Education will have control over who can be a social worker, whether they can continue to work, how they are educated and trained and who will provide this education. The current preference is for that to be provided outside universities by Frontline, a fast-track programme that is premised on moving practitioners as quickly as possible from practice into management and threatens the continuation of traditional university courses.
The other big part of the Bill, which was removed in the other place, will create a system of inconsistencies. Rather than innovative, that system might less generously be described as an increasingly threadbare safety net. Control of social work and social workers should be in the hands not of politicians but of the profession itself.
Edward Timpson
Clause 12 requires the Secretary of State to establish a child safeguarding practice review panel. The clause will add new section 16A to the Children Act 2004. The Government first announced their intention to centralise the serious case review process in December 2015. The background to their decision to legislate to introduce such a panel was set out in their response to Alan Wood’s review of the role and functions of local safeguarding children boards. I remind the Committee that Alan Wood is a former director of children’s services at Hackney. His review demonstrates that the Department is more than willing to ask people from the profession to advise and assist it in its decision making. The panel is being established in response to his recommendation that the Government should
“establish an independent body at national level to oversee a new national learning framework for inquiries into child deaths and cases where children have experienced serious harm.”
He suggested that the body that supported a centralised review process should be
“one that is independent of government and the key agencies, and operates in a transparent and objective fashion to ensure learning is the key element of all inquiries.”
The Government agree entirely with that recommendation.
I should add that we intend to establish the panel as an expert committee. I expect its chair’s appointment to be subject at least to a full, open Cabinet Office public appointments process. I envisage that panel members will come from various backgrounds, including social care, and have the relevant expertise and experience to fulfil the role. I expect the number of panel members to be sufficient to enable the panel’s effective operation, and the chair to be able to draw on the expertise that he or she considers necessary for effective decisions and recommendations to be made about cases.
The Secretary of State will be responsible for removing panel members if he or she is satisfied that they are no longer able to fulfil their duties, for example due to a long-term or serious health condition, or if they have behaved in a way that is incompatible with their role, such as by releasing confidential information that is provided to the panel or making use of such information for their own purposes. Those are usual conditions, and while such action is extremely unlikely to occur, it is right to make provision for the removal of panel members should the need arise.
The clause will also allow the Secretary of State to provide whatever assistance is required to enable the panel to carry out its functions, including staff and office facilities. The Secretary of State may pay remuneration or expenses to the chair and members of the panel, and make further arrangements to support the panel’s functioning, including, for example, the production of an annual report.
The establishment of a strong national panel is an essential component of the Government’s plans to develop better understanding of the factors leading up to serious cases, for the reasons that the hon. Member for South Shields set out, to inform policy and practice nationally, and to support local agencies in improving the quality of the services that they provide to vulnerable children and families. The new panel will be independent of the Government.
The hon. Lady quite rightly raised the need to ensure that local learning is not lost. To some extent, there are clear benefits in ensuring that we have a flexible approach, and I assure her that we will increase local flexibility at the same time as creating a national panel. Centralising review decisions will enable the new panel to identify national trends and issues that may benefit from a single national review. At the same time, the bulk of reviews will be local and will address cases that raise issues of local importance and relate to local safeguarding partnerships; that will increase local flexibility. We anticipate that the number of national reviews will be relatively small and the majority of reviews will take place locally. Most importantly, we must not just look at what happens when things go wrong but understand why and spread that understanding much better. I will go into more detail as we discuss clause 13 on how we will go about achieving that.
On that basis, I ask that the clause stand part of the Bill.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 12 accordingly ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 13
Functions of the Panel
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to move amendment 36, in clause 13, page 11, line 9, leave out
“unless they consider it inappropriate to do so”.
This amendment would ensure that the Practice Review Panel publishes a report on the outcome of any review.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 37, in clause 13, page 11, line 11, leave out subsection (5).
This amendment is consequential to amendment 36.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Amendment 36 would ensure that the new child safeguarding practice review panel publishes a report on the outcomes of a review. The current wording of the Bill allows the panel to pick and choose the cases it deems necessary to review, but does not compel it to publish a report if it does not think it is appropriate.
It is not appropriate for a national board to weigh in on highly sensitive local cases and then refuse to publish its findings. If the new panel goes ahead, preferably with guaranteed independence from the Secretary of State, it must do so as transparently as possible. Child death and serious cases of abuse have to be treated very carefully, especially by a new national panel which will naturally be met with some suspicion by front-line practitioners in particular, who might expect the panel to act as yet another mechanism for publically blaming and shaming them when things go wrong. That is not a baseless fear; social workers have had to learn the hard way, with previous instances of central Government interference in local cases. I am certainly not opposed to rigorous national oversight of serious cases—the more we can review and learn lessons, the better it will be for vulnerable children—but if lessons and improvements are very much the purpose of the exercise, the panel must have a duty to publish its report in every case it takes on.
The Government’s reason for creating this new panel is that it will pick up on cases that have wider implications than just those for the local authority, while ensuring that local authorities do not repeat mistakes that might have led to a child death or serious abuse. I want to know how the Minister can ensure that the national or local interest can be served if the reports are kept under lock, in secret.
Subsection (5) of the clause compels the panel to publish any suggested improvements arising from its report, even if it does not think that the publication of the report is appropriate, but that does nothing to solve the problem because improvements suggested out of any context are unaccountable. Who will guarantee that the suggested improvements arise from evidence presented to the panel? Amendments to mitigate the involvement of the Secretary of State in the business of the panel offer some reassurance, but the fact remains that if the mistakes are not published, suggested improvements cannot be properly owned by the managers or front-line practitioners that need to implement them in the local authority in question and nationally.
Under the Bill as it stands, the panel could publish a list of improvements to front-line practice that would leave practitioners open to public blame without recourse to a public document that explains their role. If front-line practice is at fault, that too needs to be made clear. I look forward to the Minister’s comments.
Edward Timpson
I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Shields for the amendments and the important issues that she has raised. As I said a few minutes ago, the Wood review into the role and functions of local safeguarding children boards published earlier this year highlighted a number of long-term issues with the current system of serious case reviews, including reviews being of poor quality, taking too long to complete and failing to identify required improvements to front-line practice.
In response, the Bill establishes a new system of national and local child safeguarding practice reviews to help resolve those issues. National reviews will be undertaken by the child safeguarding practice review panel into cases identified as raising issues that are complex or of national importance that it considers it appropriate to review. Commissioning of local reviews will remain with local areas and will be carried out into cases where local safeguarding partners consider that there are issues of importance in relation to the local area and that a review should be carried out.
Amendments 36 and 37 relate to subsections (4) and (5), which set out the requirement on the child safeguarding practice review panel to publish reports unless it considers it inappropriate to do so. If, on rare occasions, it does consider publication inappropriate—for example, where publication might lead to risk or distress for children or adults involved in the case—the panel is required to consider what information it is able to publish about improvements to be made following the review. As in the current serious case review system, reports commissioned by the panel will need to be written from the outset with the presumption that they will be published, and reports should be written in such a way that publication will not be likely to harm the welfare of any children or other individuals involved in the case.
Edward Timpson
The report that will be published will be the redacted report, which will then be publicly available. We want to ensure that as much learning as possible can be extrapolated from that report. That is why we are setting up the What Works centre, which will be a repository for all serious case reviews. Practitioners and academics will be able to use the findings from those reviews to inform their own understanding and practice.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I will not detain the Committee much longer on this point. I completely understand the Minister’s response that it is not always appropriate to publish such reports, but he did not comment on the fact that social workers are very anxious and scared that this might be used as another stick to beat them with. I hope that he will make some comments in the public domain or make some reference to that later in the Committee.
Edward Timpson
I am happy to repeat what I have said before: this is not a blame game. One problem that has arisen is that in the past, a serious case review, which is about learning from things that have gone wrong and having an open and honest discussion about how things can improve—an acceptance of failure—has turned into a finger-pointing exercise. That is not always in every case helpful in really getting to the bottom of what has gone wrong. We are absolutely not trying to turn the clock back to that type of approach. The aim is to have a very clear way to ensure that we learn and change the way in which we deliver practice for children, so that they are protected as much as possible.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the Minister. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to move amendment 41, in clause 13, page 11, line 30, at end insert—
“(7A) When exercising its functions under this section, the Panel must, in particular, have regard to—
(a) concerns relating to child safeguarding resulting from contact arrangements in families where one of the parents of the child in question has perpetrated domestic abuse, and
(b) the implementation of Practice Direction 12J in child contact arrangements.”
This amendment would ensure that the Child Safeguarding Review Panel must have regard to circumstances around child contact arrangements that involve parents who have perpetrated domestic abuse. Practice Direction 12J (Child Arrangements and Contact Orders: Domestic Violence and Harm) aims to ensure that contact ordered with a parent who has perpetrated violence or abuse is safe and in the best interests of the child.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment 42, in clause 14, page 12, line 13, at end insert—
“(c) the child dies or is seriously harmed by a perpetrator of domestic abuse in circumstances related to child contact.”
This amendment would ensure that local authorities in England have a duty to notify the Child Safeguarding Practice Review Panel when a child dies or is seriously harmed by a perpetrator of domestic abuse in circumstances related to child contact.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Amendments 41 and 42 would strengthen the role of the child safeguarding practice review panel in cases where domestic violence has been a feature. They would ensure that contact was safe for the child, and that in the terrible circumstances where a child dies or is seriously injured by a perpetrator in circumstances related to that contact, the local authority must notify the panel.
Women’s Aid’s recent “Nineteen Child Homicides” report, launched as part of the “Child First: Safe Child Contact Saves Lives” campaign, revealed the scale of the challenge for child protection in families where one parent is abusive. Child contact arrangements should always be made in the best interests of the child and to protect the safety and wellbeing of the child and the parent with care. However, there are significant concerns that the current system managing child contact decisions is not consistently upholding that principle, resulting in significant child protection concerns within families where there is a perpetrator of domestic abuse. The Bill is a critical opportunity to improve child safeguarding practice and help to prevent avoidable child deaths and harm as a result of unsafe child contact with dangerous perpetrators of domestic abuse.
Existing research provides strong evidence that in making arrangements for child contact where there is a history of domestic violence, the current workings of the family justice system support a pro-contact approach, which can undermine the best interests of the child and the safety and wellbeing of the parent with care. That frequently exposes children and women to further violence, causes them significant harm and prevents recovery. The impact of witnessing previous or continuing domestic abuse is in itself a form of child abuse, but the significance of that is often minimised by the family court system. In my experience, that is most likely because those making the decisions in court have never had to witness at first hand the harm that has been done, as social workers have to day in, day out.
On average, only 1% of applications for contact are refused, even though domestic abuse is identified as an issue in up to 70% of family proceedings cases—those are only the cases where domestic violence is disclosed. In three quarters of cases where courts have ordered contact with an abusive parent, the child suffered further abuse. There is nothing worse than having to visit a child who is crying, visibly shaking and terrified and letting them know that the court has ordered they have to see the very person who caused them that harm. Some children have even been ordered to have contact with a parent who has committed offences against them, and in some tragic cases children have been killed as a result of contact or residence arrangements. There are clearly significant safeguarding concerns resulting from the management of current child contact arrangements, which should be considered in efforts to improve child safeguarding practice.
In January this year, Women’s Aid’s “Child First: Safe Child Contact Saves Lives” campaign to stop avoidable deaths as a result of unsafe child contact with dangerous perpetrators launched alongside it the “Nineteen Child Homicides” report. The report highlighted 19 cases of children who were killed by perpetrators of domestic abuse in circumstances related to unsafe child contact. Those homicides took place in England and Wales and were outlined in serious case review reports. All the perpetrators were men and fathers to the children they killed. Later on, I will table new clauses to improve statutory support for victims of parental homicide. I hope the Committee will consider those.
The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who is responsible for family justice, said:
“The Women’s Aid report makes for harrowing reading. No child should ever die or live in such dreadful circumstances, and it is incumbent on all of us to consider whether more can be done to prevent such tragedies. The report underlines the need to prioritise the child’s best interest in child contact cases involving domestic abuse, and to make sure that known risks are properly considered.”—[Official Report, 15 September 2016; Vol. 614, c. 1116.]
The amendments would do exactly what the Minister’s colleague asked for.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
What my hon. Friend talks about is incredibly important. One of the most upsetting cases I ever had to deal with as a Member of Parliament was one where social workers were writing letters in support of a woman’s perpetrator staying in the country because they felt it was in the children’s best interests to remain in contact with their father. As a result, she was put at direct risk, even though he had directly attacked the children, as well as her. We have to get this right and recognise the danger that perpetrators can present to the entire family. We must see it as being in the best interests of the children to keep the mother alive. The amendments would do exactly that and prevent such a scenario.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention and her support for the amendments. She is exactly right. I know from experience of the family courts that parents’ rights can often take precedence over the child’s rights, especially in the realms of who has more in the human rights arena.
The Women’s Aid report examines circumstances in which abusive fathers had contact with their children and investigates the lessons that can be learned for Government policy. Key findings were that two mothers and 19 children, ranging from one to 14 years old, were killed intentionally. Those fathers also had access to their children through formal or informal child contact arrangements. For 12 of the 19 children killed, contact with their father had been arranged in court in a similar way to that mentioned by my hon. Friend. For six families the contact was arranged in family court hearings, and for one family it was decided as part of a non-molestation order and occupation order. In two families, the father was even granted overnight contact. In an additional two families, a father was granted a residence order, which means that the children were allowed to live with him.
All of those fathers were known perpetrators of domestic abuse. Nine of the 12 perpetrators were known to have committed domestic abuse after separation from the child’s mother, including attempted strangulation, sexual assault, harassment, threats, threats to abduct the children and actual abduction. They all indicated high-risk perpetrator behaviour. Of course, I agree that the responsibility for the deaths of those children lies squarely with the person who killed them, but research identifies key lessons for the child protection system in relation to child contact in families where there is one abusive parent.
Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)
The shadow Minister is making a passionate speech about an issue close to my heart and, I am sure, to those of many in Parliament. I want to draw her attention to research on the risks to ethnic minority women in particular, and horror stories about refugee children who have seen their mothers abducted by fathers and abandoned in their country of origin without their children. Is she aware of that research?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank my hon. Friend. I am not aware of that research but would like to discuss the matter further with her. It is critical to the Bill that the aim of improving local safeguarding is based on lessons learned from these tragic cases.
We need to understand that domestic abuse is harmful to children, even when they have not been directly physically harmed. There needs to be a culture change within the family court system to ensure that children’s experiences of domestic abuse and its impact on them are fully considered and that practice direction 12J, which instructs courts to ensure that where domestic abuse has occurred any child arrangements orders protect the safety and wellbeing of the child and the parent with care, and are always completely in the best interests of the child.
Another concern is the professional understanding of power and control—of the dynamics of domestic abuse. Coercive control was a dominant feature in many of those cases, yet the report found a lack of professional understanding in statutory agencies and family courts about how power and control can manifest in an abusive relationship. The report recommends that the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service and child protection agencies and the judiciary should have more specialist training in that area.
There also needs to be an understanding that the point at which a survivor leaves an abusive partner is highly dangerous, yet time and again parental separation is seen by agencies as an end of the abuse and a reduction in the risk, when in fact that is the very time that the risk has intensified. As always in these cases, poor information sharing was identified as a major factor.
We need to support non-abusive parents and challenge abusive parents. In many of the serious case reviews, it was unclear whether the mother had been offered or referred to any specialist support, even when the abuse was known to police and social services. Statutory agencies often put the onus on the non-abusive parent to protect their children and end the relationship, rather than hold the perpetrator accountable. Communication between family and criminal courts must improve, and there must be the safeguard that no unsupervised contact is granted to a parent who is awaiting trial or involved in ongoing criminal proceedings for domestic abuse-related offences.
I know full well that the Minister understands the importance of the amendments. If he does not support them, I hope he will explain what his Department will do to protect children fully from harmful contact, and how we can guarantee that the child safeguarding practice review panel will know about the serious harm done to children by domestic violence.
Edward Timpson
If the hon. Lady was to look at any serious case review now, she would see a clear timeline setting out the facts of the case that stated what the decisions were and what lay behind them. It is up to the panel members to call those who have been part of that particular case to come forward with their evidence, in order to inform that report—subject to any medical reason that would preclude them from assisting. The purpose of the clause is to make sure that we get as full and frank disclosure within the report as possible, to inform both the panel’s recommendations and the subsequent learning that we want to spread across the system.
The hon. Member for South Shields referred to practice direction 12J, which covers child arrangements and domestic violence and harm. It is judicial guidance to the family court on how to deal with allegations of domestic violence or abuse, and is issued by the president of the family division, with the agreement of Ministers and in accordance with process provided for by the Constitutional Reform Act 2005.
The explicit reference in a statute to such a practice direction, which the amendment would introduce, assumes a specific content for the direction. However, practice directions being made in the way I have outlined are open to amendment, revocation or replacement by further directions, so the hon. Lady’s amendment would aim at what is likely to be a moving target. It is worth noting, in this regard, that the president of the family division has already asked a senior High Court judge to review the operation of practice direction 12J in the light of some of the concerns raised by Women’s Aid. I am happy to share any further information I can glean from the Ministry of Justice and my colleagues in that Department with the hon. Lady.
Finally, I turn to amendment 42. It seeks to add to the circumstances set out in subsection 1 of clause 14, under which a local authority must make a notification to the child safeguarding practice review panel. As in my response to the previous amendment, I recognise the concerns about domestic violence and the risks that can be posed to both children and adults by potentially unsafe contact arrangements. The hon. Lady is right to highlight the risks to a particularly vulnerable group of children. Great consideration was given to defining the circumstances under which a local authority must notify the panel in order to come up with the criteria as currently set out in the Bill.
Inevitably, any such definitions cannot be exhaustive, include all circumstances or cover all settings in which children might suffer injury or harm. However, the intention has always been that all cases in which a local authority knows or suspects abuse or neglect, including cases in which factors such as those outlined by the hon. Lady are a feature, must be notified to the panel under the general duty to notify cases of death or serious harm.
With that explanation, and following the helpful debate that explored some of the wider issues around the subject—I am sure we will all want to return to that at a later date, if not in the Committee, then in the House—I hope that the hon. Lady will withdraw her amendment.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the Minister for his response. Like me, because of personal experience he totally understands the complexity of contact between children and parents through the courts. I appreciate that this matter may need discussion with his colleague at the Ministry of Justice. I hope he will commit to that and report back to us.
The reality is that the wrong decisions are being made, and those decisions are costing lives—the lives of children and women. In this place, we should and can always do more. I hope he will give us an update in the near future on what the Government are doing in this area. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to move amendment 35, in clause 13, page 11, line 31, leave out subsection (8).
This amendment would remove the role of the Secretary of State with regards to giving guidance on serious child safeguarding cases to be reviewed, therefore ensuring the local authority’s independence for this process.
We believe it is inappropriate for the Secretary of State to provide any guidance as to which serious cases are to be reviewed by the panel. Policy makers cannot be policy enforcers. There has to be a separation of the two to guard against policy being used to target specific local authorities. The panel will need to tread carefully in order to be seen as a constructive ally and critical friend of children’s services, and therefore political neutrality is vital.
It will be impossible for the panel to make a credible claim of political neutrality if the Secretary of State is able to choose which serious cases are subject to review. For the same reasons, the Secretary of State cannot be seen to interfere in reviews that are under way either by deciding whether a review is making adequate progress or by rubber-stamping reports as being of adequate quality. If the Department wanted to consider an annual audit of all reviews to ascertain quality and function, that would be another matter, but on a case-by-case basis this involvement of the Secretary of State cannot reasonably be deemed acceptable, and I hope the Minister agrees that it could well hinder the efficient working of the panel.
Edward Timpson
Once again, I am grateful to the hon. Lady for her amendment, which seeks to remove clause 13(8), which enables the Secretary of State to give guidance to the panel on the circumstances in which it may be appropriate for a national child safeguarding practice review to be undertaken by the panel. I assure hon. Members that any such guidance will not undermine the panel’s independence. The Secretary of State will not be able to direct the panel to carry out a review, and the panel will have sole responsibility for deciding which cases it should review, determining whom it appoints to carry out the review and the publication of the final report.
Subsection (8) also states the Secretary of State’s ability to set out in guidance matters to be taken into account when considering whether a review is being progressed to a satisfactory timescale and is of satisfactory quality. Earlier, the hon. Lady quite rightly raised, as did I, the two issues of the variable quality of serious case reviews and the length of time many were taking before being published. There are sometimes legitimate reasons for cases not being published in a shorter timescale—for example, because there are ongoing criminal proceedings. However, there are still some unacceptable delays in publication.
We want to ensure the two aspects of the current system that have not been functioning well are kept closely under review, so that we have a better functioning system. As I set out earlier, we are committed to addressing the apparent weaknesses in the current system of serious case reviews, including the poor quality of final reports and the length of time it takes to complete and publish reports. This guidance will help the panel to avoid the deficiencies in the current arrangements, but it will not undermine the panel’s decision-making processes.
Edward Timpson
First, it will be set out in the guidance that accompanies the Bill, so for the first time there will be a clear mechanism with a trigger for a report to be published by a certain date. That does not currently apply and at the moment there can be a drift, without any way to try to bring the process to an end.
The detail will be in the guidance. I am happy to provide the hon. Lady with a draft as we continue to develop it, but the underlying principle remains the same—to get a way of avoiding unnecessary delay in the publication of reports, so we can get the learning out there into the working environment as soon as possible. On that basis I ask the hon. Member for South Shields to withdraw the amendment.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 13 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 14 and 15 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)
Emma Lewell ExcerptsTuesday 13th December 2016
(8 years, 7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Children and Social Work Act 2017 View all Children and Social Work Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 13 December 2016 - (13 Dec 2016)
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
I will be brief in my closing comments. With regard to new clause 13, it appears that the Government are taking some steps in the correct direction with their “Keep On Caring” document. It looks like endeavours are in place to get some action on these long-standing issues, so I am happy not to press new clause 13. However, I would like to put the rest of my amendments to a vote.
With regard to amendment 27 and new clause 16, the fact remains that every care leaver deserves the same provision across the board. They deserve to know what that provision is and financial support is key to that. I acknowledge that the Minister has worked with the Department for Work and Pensions, but I have a strange feeling that the DWP perhaps does not share his sentiments or drive for these issues.
On amendment 26, on unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, I do not feel that the Minister has addressed or acknowledged that those children are being treated differently from other children. Therefore, I would like to press those three to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to move amendment 28, in clause 3, page 4, line 10, after “the” insert—
“physical and mental health, emotional well-being and”.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 30, in clause 3, page 4, line 11, after “child” insert—
“, including their needs as a young parent where applicable,”.
Amendment 29, in clause 3, page 4, line 16, at end insert—
“(5A) The assessment of the former relevant child’s mental health and emotional well-being under subsection (5) must be carried out by a qualified mental health professional.”
Amendment 31, in clause 3, page 4, line 26, at end insert—
“(9) In this section “young parent” means—
(a) an expectant parent,
(b) a parent who has their child or children in care, or
(c) a parent who had a child removed to kinship care, local authority care, or adoption.”
Mrs Lewell-Buck
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship again, Mr Wilson.
Amendment 28 would extend the duty on local authorities set out in clause 3 to include access to a mental health assessment for care leavers. When a care leaver requests support from their local authority and the local authority conducts an assessment of their needs, it must include an assessment of mental health and emotional wellbeing that is carried out by a qualified mental health professional. The corporate parenting principles set out in clause 1 make it clear that local authorities should promote the mental health and wellbeing of care leavers. Currently, there is huge amount of unmet need in the area due to squeezed budgets, high thresholds and the lack of relevant specialism in adult mental health services.
Tulip Siddiq
Is my hon. Friend aware that there are now 5,000 fewer mental health nurses than there were in 2010, and 1,500 fewer mental health beds? The amendment is more important than ever to ensure that mental health does not slip even further down the agenda.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I was not aware of those statistics. I knew the situation was dire, but I did not realise how bad it had actually become.
Young people leaving care are much more likely to have mental health problems than other young people: they are five times more likely to attempt suicide; many have suffered abuse or neglect before coming into care; and they may have moved around several placements, making it hard to form stable relationships with carers, professionals or even friends.
The Government have committed to piloting mental health assessments for children in care, but there was no mention of young people over 18 who have left care. We all know that turning 18 does not mean that people stop being vulnerable and stop needing support. In fact, mental health problems often manifest at the challenging time of transition into adulthood. At 18, young people can no longer access child and adolescent mental health services; they have to rely on adult services—but only if they are lucky enough not to slip through the net in transition. The reality is that if young people with mental health needs are not getting help, it is unlikely that they will be able to make the most of other opportunities such as education, training or employment, because mental health problems can have a debilitating effect on all other areas of their life.
On Second Reading in the House of Lords, Lord Nash acknowledged that:
“All the evidence shows that care leavers are among the most vulnerable young people in our society. Many are still struggling to overcome the impact of the trauma they faced in childhood and, in most cases, they are expected to make the transition into adulthood without the unconditional love and support of a family or close circle of friends. As a consequence, they are far more likely to end up NEET, more likely to experience homelessness or mental health issues, and more likely to end up in the criminal justice system. However, with good, stable care and a more personalised and supported transition into adulthood, those stark facts need not be the culmination of their time in and leaving care.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 14 June 2016; Vol. 773, c. 112.]
Clearly the Government know what the problem is, yet they have still failed to provide a full solution.
If the mental health and emotional wellbeing of every child leaving care is not professionally assessed, how will we know whether they are ready to cope in the adult environment? We cannot just expect them to leave care and cope in a vacuum, without some appraisal of their wellbeing. We would not allow that for a physical problem so we should not allow it for a mental health one. We must put in place measures to prevent care leavers from falling off the cliff edge of care. Assessments would provide a basis for care leavers to address their future needs, albeit under a different system.
Given the vulnerability of the young people in question and the likelihood that they will face challenges relating to mental health or emotional wellbeing coupled with the difficulty of accessing those services, it would be good if the Minister took the opportunity to extend the duty in clause 3 to include mental health. Amendment 29 would extend the duty on local authorities to include access to a mental health assessment for care leavers; and it would ensure that if amendment 28 is agreed, the assessment will be carried out by a qualified mental health professional.
The Conservative-led Select Committee on Education rightly recommended that a dedicated mental health assessment by a qualified mental health professional be completed for all looked-after children, so healthcare professionals and local authorities have a solid and consistent foundation on which to plan the best care for a child. The recommendation was based on an extensive body of evidence from experts that clearly showed why more action and less talk are needed.
The Government’s response to the Select Committee report on mental health acknowledged the vulnerability of looked-after children and the need for timely and effective mental health diagnosis and treatment. The Chair of the Committee said of the Government’s response:
“We are pleased that the Government have set up an expert working group for looked-after children’s mental health and wellbeing; however, having conducted a lengthy and detailed inquiry on the issue, we are disappointed that so many of our recommendations have simply been referred to that group.”—[Official Report, 20 October 2016; Vol. 615, c. 496WH.]
I was similarly dismayed to observe that the Government’s response to the report deflected many answers to the new expert working group on the mental health of looked-after and care-leaving children. Although I make no criticism of the experts appointed to the group, both chairs of the expert panel had already submitted evidence to the Committee, so further consultation seems a somewhat unnecessary duplication. The consultation will serve only to cause further delays, meaning that more children will suffer unnecessarily.
Services are inconsistent across the country, and initial mental health assessments are highly variable. Many local authorities are not meeting their statutory requirements to ensure that all children are properly assessed even when they enter care, so it is important that we get the basics right. We can do so only with professional assessment as children enter and leave care.
It is astonishing that currently children entering care are asked to fill in strengths and difficulties questionnaires, from which it is decided by people who are most likely not medically trained whether the child qualifies for mental health intervention. Administration of the forms from local authority to local authority is patchy, with great variations in timeliness of completing the form. It is not uncommon for the questionnaire not to be completed at all. Only a trained mental health practitioner should be able to assess a patient’s needs; such needs cannot be determined simply from ticked boxes on a form.
It is not enough just to say that help is out there. There are difficulties with the availability of mental health provision for all children, including difficulties accessing and navigating the system. Accessing mental health care, asking for help and overcoming stigma are hard enough for any young person, even those with strong, supportive families; we must acknowledge that. A mental health assessment is one step in ensuring that children get the care and support they need for healing to take place and for them to be integrated into society and feel part of it. That is why they must be assessed on leaving care as well. The whole point is to ensure that care leavers are robust enough to leave care as independent adults who can go out and find work, start families and participate in society fully, like everyone else.
Amendments 30 and 31 strengthen support for care leavers who are also parents. Despite their extreme vulnerability, the particular needs and circumstances of young parents who are looked-after children or care leavers and whose own children are subject to child protection inquiries are not sufficiently identified, recognised or addressed in care planning regulations and guidance. These amendments seek to establish a duty on local authorities to ensure that advice, assistance and support are offered to all looked-after children and care leavers who are young parents. It will help ensure that important information is not overlooked when plans for such young people are made by expressly identifying critical sources of information which should be drawn upon in formulating plans to keep the young parent’s child safely in their care.
Kate Green
Some people leaving care do become young parents very quickly, but that is not always a recipe for problems for themselves or for their children—indeed, those young parents can be very enthusiastic and committed parents, determined to do the best for their child. However, many lack family support. Does my hon. Friend agree that they need help to be good parents, but also encouragement and family assistance of the kind that other parents perhaps draw from their own family members?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Many children who have left care go on to be fantastic parents, but those who need an extra bit of support should be recognised in the legislation. This amendment seeks to achieve that.
While the Government have suggested that existing statutory guidance makes some reference to young people who are young parents, we need to recognise and respond more robustly to the additional vulnerabilities of this group of care leavers in a way which is not presently provided for in primary or secondary legislation. Evidence from the Centre for Social Justice in 2015 based on data provided by 93 local authorities revealed that 22% of female care leavers became teenage mothers. That is three times the national average. The same report identified that one in 10 care leavers aged 16 to 21 have had their own children taken into care. Care leavers are particularly vulnerable to early pregnancy, early parenthood and losing their child to the care system.
A recent research project carried out by Professor Broadhurst based on national records from the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service between 2007 and 2014 examined cases relating to 43,541 birth mothers involved in care proceedings. The study estimated that around a quarter of these mothers who had a child subject to care proceedings will have sequential care proceedings about another of their children. The study found that young women aged 16 to 19 years were most at risk of experiencing repeat proceedings, with almost one in every three women in this age group estimated to reappear. Provisional results from the study’s further in-depth analysis of court files indicate that more than six out of 10 others who had children sequentially removed were teenagers when they had their first child. Of those mothers, 40% were in care or had been looked after in the care system for some of their own childhood.
Like most parents who are subject to the child protection system, young parents often feel lost, angry and scared. However, many of these young parents, particularly care leavers, also have multiple challenges. Some of them are alienated by prior negative experiences of state services in their childhood, making it difficult for them to engage with professionals. At times, this lack of parental co-operation can be a trigger for the issuing of care proceedings. Young parents often feel judged by their youth and background rather than by their parenting abilities. That is particularly the case for care leavers, who often feel that being in care itself counts as a negative against them. Previous childhood experiences including suffering abuse, mental health problems and exclusion from school may adversely impact on their resilience, their resources, their support networks and their ability to deal with both the challenges of transitioning to adulthood and being a parent. Young parents who are care leavers also identify that even where support has been provided to them in their capacity as young people leaving care, the support often ignores their role as parents or fails to assist them in safely raising and keeping their child.
As referred to in new clause 16, a national offer for care leavers would go some way to mitigate the financial challenges that care leavers face, which are only exacerbated when they become parents themselves. Our amendments would ensure that their needs as parents were fully taken into account.
Edward Timpson
I thank the hon. Lady for tabling amendments 28 to 31, which would provide that when a local authority assesses care leavers’ needs, they must take account of that young person’s requirements in relation to their physical and mental health, their emotional wellbeing and their needs as a young parent if that applies. Amendment 29 would require that any mental health assessment should be conducted by a qualified professional. I recognise that these issues are important, and that they could impact significantly on the lives of care leavers, whose health and wellbeing outcomes tend to be worse than for young people who have never been in care. The likelihood of care leavers becoming teenage parents is also much greater than for their peers, for the reasons set out by the hon. Lady in her speech.
There are, however, many other wider issues, such as health and development, education, training and employment, and financial and accommodation needs, which are also vital to care leavers’ transition to independent life and adulthood. All these issues— it would not be practical to list them all—are arguably of equal importance and will be different for every child, so I do not agree with giving some more weight than others. It is also unnecessary because these and other issues are already comprehensively covered in volume 3 of “The Children Act 1989 guidance and regulations”. The statutory guidance is clear that local authorities must produce for each care leaver a comprehensive pathway plan, which must be based on an up-to-date and thorough needs assessment taking into account how to support their health and development and their physical, emotional and mental health needs. I shall read a small extract from that guidance, which states that pathway plans must address the
“young person’s health and development building on the information included in the young person’s health plan established within their care plan when they were looked after”
and that personal advisers, who, under the clause, will cover all care leavers up to the age of 25,
“should work closely with doctors and nurses involved in health assessments and would benefit from training in how to promote both physical and mental health.”
I reiterate that the Government have established the expert group on the mental health of looked-after children and care leavers, and we have asked them to recommend the most appropriate way to deliver the care. The group have already met twice, and I have met them, and they are free to make recommendations during the period of their work. Their remit is substantial and wider than that which they had in relation to the Education Committee, albeit that that also had worth.
On the initial assessment when a child comes into care, it is not just a strengths and difficulties questionnaire, as regulations already require the responsible authority to ensure that all looked-after children have an initial health assessment by a registered medical practitioner, who should cover their emotional and mental health as well as their physical health needs. The reason we wanted the expert group to consider the matter is that there will be circumstances where it is not appropriate for a child coming into care to have a mental health assessment at that specific moment, either because they have suffered trauma at the moment of coming into care, or because they are a newborn baby, or because other elements in their circumstances might require it to be done in a more individually appropriate way. That will ensure that the right decisions are made about how to get to the bottom of what may be underlying issues due to pre-care experiences. We do not want to set a single process that restricts those who are charged with responsibilities to ensure that they take the appropriate action for that child.
Edward Timpson
I have already explained to the hon. Gentleman that the process is clearly set out in law. I am not making that judgment; I am reflecting on the evidence provided by others about the experience of children who are brought into the care system. The whole point of the expert group is to try to ensure that the care pathway that is created for each child coming into care will ensure that they get the right support based on the right diagnosis at the right time. We want to avoid ending up with a process at the inception of a child’s time in care that does not enable that pathway to be created in a way that meets their individual needs.
The hon. Member for South Shields spoke about the most vulnerable mothers who have had multiple children taken into care. As we know, that group includes a disproportionate number of care leavers. I draw the Committee’s attention to the Pause programme, which seeks to break the intergenerational cycle of care, which the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned. Pause has been operating in Hackney for some time and has now been extended to six other local authority areas, with funding from my Department’s innovation programme.
Last month, the Secretary of State announced funding to roll out the Pause programme in a further nine areas, bringing Government funding support to more than £6.4 million in the next four years. The programme works intensively with young women to prevent repeat pregnancies and the subsequent removal of their children into care. The initial findings are extremely encouraging and, by extending the programme, we want to reach out to more parts of the country so that more mothers who find themselves in that situation get the support they need so that they can make good life choices and have a future that is not just about turning up at court once every few years to fight for custody of their own child.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Notwithstanding the good work being done through the Pause programme, does the Minister accept that the work is rather piecemeal? It is not happening in every local authority. As I said earlier, we should be offering such services to everyone across the board, not just to some people who live in certain local authority areas. What happens when this innovation money runs out? Do we just go back to where we were?
Edward Timpson
I will answer that question in two parts. First, interested parties always ask for evidence when we try something new. Before we roll out a programme nationally, we want to be able to demonstrate that it will be effective in tackling the issue that it was set up to try to resolve.
Secondly, of course we want to ensure that we get uniformity right throughout the country, but the only way we can establish whether the care leaving services work well is by having a strong legal framework backed up by strong accountability. When services work well—we now have four or five councils with an outstanding care leaving service—we need to get better at spreading that good practice. The new What Works centre is going to be a good way of achieving that. We must ensure that we find out where local authorities are falling short. That may be in the transitional work they are doing on the care pathway that is put in place to plan for the young person’s future, including the need to secure their emotional and mental health needs.
I do not disagree with the hon. Member for South Shields about the concerns she has expressed, which is why we are trying to tackle the problem through the innovation programme and the extension of the role of the personal adviser, who has an important part to play in providing mentoring support and engaging young people in the services they need, pushing their elbows out on their behalf so that by the time they reach 25 they are in a much stronger emotional, mental, physical and financial state than would otherwise have been the case. I do not think the approach the hon. Lady is suggesting would help in the way that she would hope. For the reasons I have set out, the Government are taking this approach because we want to try to tackle the problem that we both acknowledge remains long-standing. We are determined to do more than ever to put it right.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The other part of my previous question was what happens in the areas we are discussing when the innovation money runs out? I am assuming that each programme is time-limited.
Edward Timpson
Every innovation programme, of which we have more than 50 throughout the country and in every region, is provided with funding for the duration of the programme only if it can show how it will be sustainable in the long term. That is done through an independent panel that makes decisions about which programmes should be supported and which should not. The panel will feed directly into the What Works centre so that other parts of the country can learn from projects that have already demonstrated a discernible impact in the area that they hoped to help through their initial proposal.
Take the example of North Yorkshire, where the No Wrong Door project to support care leavers has been hugely successful in improving support for care leavers. That model is now being shared and replicated—albeit crafted to meet individual need—based on the fact that it is showing benefits not only in North Yorkshire but in other parts of the country. The model is one of creating the evidence base, having the ability to spread best practice, and then ensuring that the sustainability proposed in the original programme is there. On that basis, I urge the hon. Lady to withdraw the amendment.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
If I withdrew the amendments, would the Minister consider updating some of the guidance on mental health assessments? In the pathway plans I have seen in the past they are not given the prominence they should have.
Tulip Siddiq
I echo the shadow Minister’s comments on pathways. In the past three years, the number of female teenagers who have been admitted to hospital with eating disorders has more than doubled. That is particularly relevant for female care leavers who suffer eating disorders such as bulimia, anorexia and binge eating. A lot of these disorders were not reflected in the past and were not at the forefront of the minds of the people assessing not only care leavers but teenagers in general, especially female teenagers. The Mental Health Foundation clearly labels eating disorders as mental health problems. Will the shadow Minister comment on the fact that when we make legislation and take into account society’s problems, we need to be aware that things are changing? Things that did not previously have the prominence they have now must be acknowledged by authorities, especially with the rise of social media—
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I will withdraw the amendment, but perhaps will return to the matter at a later date. However, I wish to press to a vote the amendments on recognising care-leaving parents, who have particular vulnerabilities. The Minister has not satisfied me that they are being provided for in a holistic way, as it seems to depend on which local authority area people live in. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Amendment proposed: 30, in clause 3, page 4, line 11, after “child” insert “, including their needs as a young parent where applicable,”—(Mrs Lewell-Buck.)
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Edward Timpson
Government amendments 1 to 8 would extend the remit of clauses 4 to 6 to include children adopted from the equivalent of state care in countries outside England and Wales. Clause 4 requires local authorities, through the virtual school head, to make advice and information available to parents and designated teachers in maintained schools and academies, for the purpose of promoting the educational achievement of children who ceased to be looked after by the local authority as a result of a permanence order. Clauses 5 and 6 place a duty on maintained schools and academies to appoint a designated teacher to promote the educational achievement of pupils. These amendments will extend these entitlements to children from other countries who are now in education in England and who were adopted from a form of care equivalent to being looked after by a local authority in England and Wales.
While it remains the Government’s top priority to continue to focus on support for children who are looked after by our care system, we understand that children adopted from similar circumstances in other countries are likely to face many of the same issues. In addition, they are living in a new country with a different culture and so they, too, are vulnerable. The Government acknowledged this earlier this year, when we opened up the Adoption Support Fund to these children and their families, giving them access to much-needed therapeutic services. So far there have been 40 applications to the fund from this group. The amendments acknowledge that, like children adopted in this country, children adopted overseas will often be coping with the emotional impact of trauma suffered in their early lives and that that can act as a barrier to their progress at school.
We know that there is an attainment gap for previously looked-after children in this country. It is, therefore, reasonable to deduce that that might also be the case for children adopted from elsewhere. There is, of course, much variation between the care systems in other countries so it is important that we ensure as much parity as possible with the eligibility criteria for children in this country who are eligible for the entitlements in clauses 4 to 6. I believe the amendments achieve just that.
A child who is cared for by a public authority, a religious organisation or charitable type of organisation before being adopted will now be able to access this support in school. The Government will set out in statutory guidance more detail on eligibility and the process for confirming such eligibility, so I hope hon. Members will support the amendments.
I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Shields for amendments 32 to 34, which would extend the duty of the virtual school head and designated teacher to promote the educational achievement of children who cease to be looked after because they returned home to the care of their birth parent or parents. I agree that children taken into care who later return to their birth parent or parents may also be vulnerable and need extra support in education. Many come from disadvantaged backgrounds and it is important that they and their families are given the support that they need.
Where a child ceases to be looked after because they return home, a child will be a child in need and a plan must be drawn up to identify the support and services that will be needed by the child and family to ensure that the return home is successful. That should take into account the child’s needs, the parenting capacity of those with parental responsibility and the wider context of family and environmental factors reflecting the child’s changed status. That would include how the parents can support the child to attend and do well at school and the virtual school head would be involved in those transitional arrangements.
Like other children who are disadvantaged, these children’s needs should be met by mainstream education services. Many will be eligible for additional educational entitlement such as free early education from the age of two and the pupil premium, which provides extra help and support through additional funding for early years settings and schools. Most importantly, these children will continue to have their birth parent or parents who, with the encouragement of schools, should play a full part in their child’s education.
Children who are looked after who cannot return to their birth parents face very different challenges. They are among the most vulnerable in our society because of the neglect and abuse suffered in their early years but also because they have to build new relationships and attachments with new carers. Leaving care through, for example, adoption means children have to start again to begin a new life with new parents or carers. We owe it to the child and the child’s new parents or carers to continue to provide support, whether in education by retaining access to the virtual school head or in other areas to give them the best chance of building a new life that is happy and fulfilling.
We must take care not to dilute the virtual school head’s role as the corporate parent for looked-after children in education to the extent that they are spread so thinly that they have little impact. Virtual school heads want to build their capacity to ensure that they can do justice to their role and ensure that every child under their wing gets the support they need through the pupil premium plus and the work of the virtual school head. I hope, on that basis, that the hon. Lady will not press her amendments.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I welcome the Government amendments—something I hope to do again during the passage of the Bill. We welcome the fact that, when the Government see that the Bill is incomplete or that there are obvious or indefensible omissions, they take necessary steps to rectify them, and we will always support them in that. I hope that we will be able to support the Government at other points during the passage of the Bill.
Extending the provisions of clauses 4 and 5 to apply to children who were previously in state care outside England and Wales is a welcome move. I am sure that the Minister agrees with me that all children, whatever their background, who either need or are leaving care deserve the best opportunities available. Ensuring that those who were previously in care in other countries will receive some of the support outlined in the Bill is a good first step towards ensuring that all looked-after and previously looked-after children get the care that they need. I am sure that the Minister has seen that colleagues and I tabled a number of amendments to the Bill based on those principles, including amendments that would ensure that services provided were in keeping with the UN convention on the rights of the child, and that unaccompanied refugee children were given the support that they need.
Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (First sitting)
Emma Lewell ExcerptsTuesday 13th December 2016
(8 years, 7 months ago)
Public Bill CommitteesRead Full debate Children and Social Work Act 2017 View all Children and Social Work Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Public Bill Committee Amendments as at 13 December 2016 - (13 Dec 2016)
The Chair
Copies of written evidence that the Committee receives will be made available in the Committee Room.
We now begin line-by-line consideration of the Bill. As a general rule, my fellow Chair and I do not intend to call starred amendments. The required notice period in Public Bill Committees is three working days, so amendments should have been tabled by rise of the House yesterday for consideration on Thursday. The selection list for today’s sittings is available in the room and on the website. It shows how the selected amendments have been grouped for debate. Grouped amendments are generally on the same or similar issues. A Member who has put their name to the lead amendment in a group is called first; other Members are then free to catch my eye to speak on all or any of the amendments in that group. A Member may speak more than once in a single debate.
At the end of the debate on a group of amendments, I shall call again the Member who moved the lead amendment. Before the Member sits down, they need to indicate whether they wish to withdraw the amendment or seek a decision on it. If a Member wishes to press any other amendment or new clause in a group to a vote, they need to let me know. I shall work on the assumption that the Minister wishes the Committee to reach a decision on all Government amendments that are tabled.
Please note that decisions on amendments do not take place in the order in which they are debated but in the order in which they appear on the amendment paper; in other words, debate occurs according to the selection and grouping list. Decisions are taken when we come to the clause affected by the amendment.
In line with the resolution of the Programming Sub-Committee, new clauses will be decided after we have finished with clause 57 and before we move on to clause 58 and subsequent clauses. I shall use my discretion to decide whether to allow a separate stand part debate on individual clauses and schedules following the debate on the relevant amendments. I hope that that explanation is helpful.
Clause 1
Corporate parenting principles
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
I beg to move amendment 18, in clause 1, page 1, line 8, leave out “have regard to the need”.
Amendments 18 to 25 impose a duty on a local authority in respect of how it carries out functions in relation to children and young people.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 19, in clause 1, page 1, line 10, at beginning leave out “to”.
See amendment 18.
Amendment 20, in clause 1, page 1, line 12, at beginning leave out “to”.
See amendment 18.
Amendment 21, in clause 1, page 1, line 14, at beginning leave out “to”.
See amendment 18.
Amendment 22, in clause 1, page 1, line 16, at beginning leave out “to”.
See amendment 18.
Amendment 23, in clause 1, page 1, line 19, at beginning leave out “to”.
See amendment 18.
Amendment 24, in clause 1, page 2, line 1, at beginning insert “have regard”.
See amendment 18.
Amendment 25, in clause 1, page 2, line 3, at beginning leave out “to”.
See amendment 18.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. I welcome all Committee members to this sitting. As this is my first time on the Front Bench in a Bill Committee, I ask everyone to bear with me. I am happy to take any guidance from those in the room who are more experienced than I am.
First, I would like briefly to echo some comments made in the other place about the rushed pace and hurried nature of the Bill. Noble Lords expressed concern that the Bill had not been carefully thought out; they were right, of course, because thanks to their diligent work the Bill before us is markedly different from the one that was introduced. The legislation appears not to have been made in response to any particular burning issues or needs—nor, despite its being a Bill about children and social workers, does it appear to be built on extensive consultation with children or social workers.
Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)
My hon. Friend commented on how extensively the Bill has changed; my understanding is that we are on more or less the fourth version. If there was extensive consultation, how come the Minister brought the Bill before Parliament in a condition so inadequate that it needed to be changed so substantially before it got here?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
That is a question that the Minister might answer. I hope that the Bill will be changed again after our deliberations in Committee—so there may well be a sixth or seventh version.
Michael Tomlinson (Mid Dorset and North Poole) (Con)
Does the hon. Lady acknowledge that part of the reason for a Bill Committee, whether in the Lords or the Commons, is scrutiny, and that if that results in change it shows the strength of the system, rather than weakness?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
It shows strength on the part of the Lords who made the amendments, but weakness in the Government who introduced a Bill in need of so many changes.
Since Second Reading last week, I have been inundated with expressions of concern that the Bill has progressed so rapidly to Committee without any sittings to take evidence from the sector or agencies that work closely with vulnerable children. Neither the Opposition nor the sector and the agencies working in the field feel particularly comfortable about the Bill’s passage through Parliament. My amendments would strengthen the wording, in expectation of the local authority’s having an active duty to make the provision in question, and remove the weaker, passive expression, “have regard to”.
Of course, when Labour was last in government, it introduced the first ever statutory framework for care leavers, the Children (Leaving Care) Act 2000, and followed that with the Children and Young Persons Act 2008. It is clear that the party is committed to children who are leaving care. We welcome any measures that make improvements for the thousands of care leavers, whose numbers are due to grow—bearing in mind that the March figures for looked-after children were the highest since 1985, at 70,440. It is more vital than ever to get support for care leavers right.
We also welcome the spirit of the corporate parenting principles, with the clear definition of expectations about how the local authority should fulfil its role in relation to looked-after children and care leavers. We feel, however, that the principles are totally undermined by the fact that the provision will require local authorities only to “have regard” to them rather than have a duty to fulfil them, as is the case in Scotland, for example.
In another place, Lord Nash said the principles are
“about changing and spreading good practice, and making sure that the local authorities’ task in loco parentis does not burden them with a tick-box approach and extra duties.”—[Official Report, House of Lords, 29 June 2016; Vol. 773, c. 1558.]
I have sympathy with that approach, but I fear that, as it stands, it is too woolly and open to interpretation. There is a clear need for the emphasis to shift from the reactive to the proactive. Unless the principles are worded more robustly, local authorities, which may strive to do their best as corporate parents, may nevertheless be obliged to cut corners, especially in these times of stretched budgets. We cannot just rely on culture change or assume that, if there is no duty, new principles will be put into practice just because they exist in theory.
There is already far too much variation in levels of care, because different local authorities have different numbers of looked-after children and children leaving care. All too often, because of the Government’s disproportionate approach to local government cuts, it is the local authorities in the most deprived areas whose budgets have been cut the most. The Government’s misguided idea that they can deliver the outcomes they seek through culture change, without looking at any of the underlying challenges that face councils around the country, is absurd.
Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady take it from me that reductions in local government expenditure have happened across the country? This myth that it is the more deprived, northern towns that have been hit hardest is just that—a myth.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Unfortunately, I completely disagree with the hon. Gentleman. The most deprived local authorities have received the biggest cuts.
Steve McCabe
If the hon. Member for North Dorset is right, perhaps he can tell us how it is that some Tory-controlled authorities up and down the country have seen an 8% increase in their funding, while other parts of the country have seen an 8% reduction.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The fact is that local authority budgets have faced swingeing cuts since the Tories first took office in 2010. The Bill simply passes more roles on to local authorities without ensuring that they have the necessary resources. That reflects the very worst of this Government’s approach to local government: to cut budgets first and to devolve power and responsibility later, without ensuring that the local authorities can properly deliver the services.
I do not wish local authorities to take on their corporate parenting responsibilities as a tick-box exercise. If they did, I fear that that would indicate that they had fallen at the very first hurdle in terms of good practice. I do think, however, that it is important to give the principles the weight that they deserve by ensuring that they are as robust as possible.
Flexibility in practice is important, but strengthening the wording in no way prohibits local authorities from carrying out their functions as they see fit. If a new system is to become embedded in a nationally uniform way and not to become another postcode lottery, it is crucial that local authorities know from the outset that the corporate parenting principles are a priority and not an option. Too often, the services that children most in need of state help receive are reduced to a postcode lottery. That can be seen in the funding for children in need of help and protection: the local authority with the highest funding has available more than 13 times the funding per child than the most poorly funded authority.
We are concerned that the corporate parenting principles as drafted will amount to another postcode lottery. Simply requiring local authorities to “have regard to” the principles of corporate parenting, rather than there being a statutory duty, will add to the risk. When local authorities must only have regard to principles, the serious risk is that only those local authorities with the resources that others do not have will be able to deliver. To address that, the Government should guarantee a legal duty to abide by the corporate parenting principles to deal with the underlying challenges facing local government—challenges of the Government’s own making.
Corporate parenting is one of the most important roles that a local authority has. Local councillors take the responsibility extremely seriously. It is important that the role is not diluted and remains closely linked to democratic accountability. However, the principle of corporate parenting cannot simply end with local authorities. All agencies working closely with looked-after children and care leavers, although they are not corporate parents, should co-operate in support.
Children who rely on the corporate parenting principles will often have complex needs. Local authorities alone will not always be able to meet those needs. A full range of agencies, despite not being corporate parents themselves, will need to work in co-operation to support those young people’s complex needs. In particular, health and education have a vital role in ensuring the best possible outcomes for children in care. Once again, however, the Government have not gone far enough with the principles to ensure that young people in the care of the state will get the support that they need.
We welcome and support the principles of corporate parenting, but the Government seem to be simply hoping that new responsibilities for local authorities “to have regard” will be enough. In reality, unless the principles are a duty, they will for some children remain meaningless—empty words in an Act of Parliament, without any real impact on their lives. Those children need actions and not words, and “having regard to” something rarely translates into real action.
The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families (Edward Timpson)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson, both this side of Christmas and in the new year. In the run-up to Christmas, I am looking forward to a cracker of a Committee, full of joy and, I hope, understanding.
I know the hon. Member for South Shields will be wondering what present I have brought for her this year, but I will wait to hear what she wants first. I apologise in advance if what she asks for is either out of stock or outside my budget range. I will listen carefully to the case she makes and do my best to try and fulfil her wishes.
I am also grateful to the hon. Lady for this opportunity to re-emphasise the importance of clause 1, which in many ways is the beating heart of this Bill. The intention behind amendments 18 to 25 is to ensure that the corporate parenting principles cannot be ignored and are meaningful. I am equally determined to ensure that. That is why the clause states that a local authority “must…have regard to” the needs identified in the clause as the corporate parenting principles, rather than simply “may” have regard to them. A local authority must take account of the needs articulated in subsection (1)(a) to (g) whenever they carry out any local authority function in relation to looked-after children and care leavers.
Framing the duty in terms of “having regard to” is the right approach. Local authorities already have a range of statutory duties in relation to looked-after children and care leavers that derive from the Children Act 1989 and its associated regulation, which set out a long list of statutory duties that underpin our current child protection system and also create a strong and robust system within which the corporate parenting principles may be operated.
Edward Timpson
I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that we have already tightened the rules on the use of bed and breakfast—local government welcomed that—to try to get the right placement for each young person, depending on their circumstances. I do not want him to give the impression that the principles are the only thing the Government have introduced to try to improve experiences and outcomes for children in the care system.
I want to challenge the hon. Gentleman on his point about the health and education of children in care deteriorating during their time in care. That is not what the evidence suggests. He will have seen the report from the Rees centre, whose research showed that care has an overall positive impact on children. Those in care do better than children in need, in terms of educational improvement. There is no evidence that their health deteriorates, although of course there are individual cases where that does happen. They are more likely to have health checks while they are in care than when they are not.
I reassure the hon. Gentleman that my job title, Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families, does not affect my other responsibilities; in fact, I have even more responsibilities than I did when the name of my portfolio did not include the word “vulnerable”. Part of my mission involves the clear and consistent approach that the Government have set out in the “Putting Children First” policy paper, which the hon. Gentleman will have read. That sets out our ambition to improve services in every way, for children in care and for care leavers. [Interruption.] I see that the hon. Gentleman has the paper in front of him—he has made my Christmas.
The paper sets out a clear and comprehensive strategy for the period from now to 2020, across the system, for the people working in children’s social care, the practice system that they work in, and the governance and accountability that will ensure we know what works and what does not. As a consequence, we will have the opportunity to see more children, with the principles in place, being looked after by those charged with the responsibility. That is the right approach.
The hon. Member for Hampstead and Kilburn raised the issue of how local authorities will be able to do what we envisage, at a time when local government funding is falling overall. The amount that local authorities have been spending on child protection has risen in recent years. That is partly because the number of children in care has gone up, but also because local authorities are taking the responsibility seriously. I welcome her support for the principles, but as for the impact of funding on the quality of children’s social care services, she will have seen that there is no correlation that can be determined between the amount that a local authority spends on services, and their quality and the outcomes for children. Some of the lowest-spending authorities have the highest outcomes for children in their care, and some of the highest-spending have some of the worst outcomes.
I suggest that the hon. Lady look at Hackney, not all that far from her constituency, to see how it turned around children’s services to the extent of being able to bear down on the overall cost. The services there work earlier and better with families, reducing the number of children who come into care, which means they can spend the money they have on improving services for the children who are in their care. I challenge the presumption that if we spend more money we get better services. That is clearly not the case. Of course we need to ensure that local authorities have sufficient funding to carry out their functions, but there is also room for them to ensure that they get the best possible value for the children in their care.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The Minister has said that spend has increased and that is not related to quality in some local authorities. How does he explain that? Does he agree with the National Audit Office conclusion that that indicates that none of his Government’s reforms since 2010 have yielded the desired results?
Edward Timpson
The hon. Lady is right to reference the NAO report, because the NAO was the proponent of the suggestion that there was not a correlation between spend and quality of service. We need to understand better why some local authorities are able to deliver better services for less money. As she will appreciate, this is a complex area, and there is still work to do to get under the skin of why the looked-after population is still rising in some local authorities but falling in others. That is partly to do with greater awareness and earlier intervention in families. In the past, particularly in cases of neglect, children were left in the care of their parents for too long.
Edward Timpson
I am trying to give the hon. Lady a full explanation. Different circumstances in different local authorities drive decisions about funding and the outcomes that that funding achieves. We have recently signed a formal agreement with Ofsted so that we can more effectively share our data with one another—the NAO report asked for that—and have much more contemporaneous read-outs of how local authorities are performing, help them make better decisions about how to spend money and understand better as a Department what baseline funding local authorities need to carry out an efficient and effective service.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the Minister for giving way again. He touched briefly on early intervention. Does he accept that one of the reasons why more children are coming into care is perhaps that his Government’s cuts have led to a lack of early intervention services, family support work and Sure Start centres? I know from practice that those things can keep families together and prevent children from going into care.
Edward Timpson
It will be no surprise to the hon. Lady that I do not accept that proposition. As I say, this arena is more complex than that. It is worth reminding the Committee that not every child who comes into contact with a children’s centre inevitably ends up in the care system. Only a small proportion do so and have some support off the back of that. We want to capture those children as early as possible—I agree with her about that—but we must also provide targeted support for children in need who are on the edge of care so that their families get the support they need to keep them together, as Hackney has done successfully, rather those children slipping into and sometimes bouncing in and out of the care system, which is often the worst of all worlds for them.
I pray in aid the work that we have done through the innovation programme to try to improve local authorities’ response to this difficult and complex issue. I accept that there is more work to be done, but the programme that we set out in the “Putting children first” policy paper is a good and strong response to that challenge. On that basis, I ask the hon. Lady to withdraw her amendment.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I have listened carefully to the Minister’s response. The key thing he said, which sticks in my mind, is that these principles should be those of all good parents. Any good parent would therefore see these principles as a duty, not something to “have regard to” or ignore at will. They would not do that, and neither should any of us. I will press the amendment to a vote.
Question put, That the amendment be made.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I beg to move amendment 27, in clause 2, page 3, line 10, at end insert—
‘(6A) The Secretary of State must publish a national minimum standard for a “local offer for care leavers”.
(6B) When developing a national minimum standard for the purpose of subsection 6A the Secretary of State must consult relevant agencies responsible for the provision of services under subsection (2).’
This amendment would introduce a national minimum standard for a local offer for care leavers, which is to be developed in consultation with relevant parties.
The Chair
With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
Amendment 26, in clause 2, page 3, line 20, at end insert—
‘(e) unaccompanied asylum seeking children up to the point that they leave the United Kingdom.’
This amendment introduces an additional definition for “care leavers”.
New clause 13—Review of access to education for care leavers—
‘(1) The Secretary of State must carry out an annual review on access for care leavers to—
(a) apprenticeships,
(b) further education, and
(c) higher education.
(2) The first review must take place by the end of the period of one year beginning with the day on which this Act is passed.
(3) A report produced following a review under sub-section (1) must include, in particular, an assessment of the impact of—
(a) fee waivers,
(b) grants, and
(c) reduced costs of accommodation.
The report must be made publicly available.’
New clause 16—National offer for care leavers—
‘(1) The Universal Credit Regulations 2013 are amended as follows—
(a) in regulation 102(2)—
(i) in paragraph (a) after “18 or over” insert “and paragraph (b) does not apply”;
(ii) in paragraph (b) after “16 or 17” insert “or is a care leaver within the meaning given by section 2 of the Children and Social Work Act 2016 and is under the age of 25”;
(b) in regulation 103(2)—
(i) in paragraph (a) after “18 or over” insert “and paragraph (b) does not apply”;
(ii) in paragraph (b) after “16 or 17” insert “or is a care leaver within the meaning given by section 2 of the Children and Social Work Act 2016 and is under the age of 25”;
(c) in regulation 104(2) after “18 or over” insert “and section (3) does not apply”.
(d) in regulation 104(3) after “16 or 17” insert “or is a care leaver within the meaning given by section 2 of the Children and Social Work Act 2016 and is under the age of 25”.
(2) The Working Tax Credit (Entitlement and Maximum Rate) Regulations 2002 are amended as follows—
(a) in regulation 4(1), Second Condition, after paragraph (b) insert—
“(c) is aged at least 18 and is a care leaver within the meaning given by section 2 of the Children and Social Work Act 2016, and is under the age of 25, and undertakes not less than 30 hours work per week.”
(3) The Housing Benefit Regulations 2009 are amended as follows—
(a) in regulation 2, in the definition of “young individual”, in each of paragraphs (b), (c), (d), (e) and (f), for “22 years” substitute “25 years”.
(4) The Local Government Finance Act 1992 is amended as follows—
(a) in section 6(4) (persons liable to pay council tax), after “etc)” insert “or 10A (care leavers)”;
(b) in Schedule 1 (persons disregarded for purposes of discount), after paragraph 10 insert—
“Care leavers
10A (1) A person shall be disregarded for the purposes of discount on a particular day if on the day the person is—
(a) a care leaver within the meaning given by section 2 of the Children and Social Work Act 2016; and
(b) under the age of 25.”
(5) The Council Tax (Exempt Dwellings) Order 1992 is amended as follows—
(a) in Article 3, Class N, after paragraph 1(b) insert—
“(c) occupied only by one or more care leavers within the meaning given by section 2 of the Children and Social Work Act 2016 who are under the age of 25.”
(6) A statutory instrument containing regulations under this section may not be made unless a draft of the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.’
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Amendment 26 and new clauses 13 and 16, which I shall speak to, also stand in my name.
A child’s transition from being in care to becoming a care leaver is a notoriously difficult process. Supporting care leavers by offering them the relevant information about services they can access is welcome. That, however, will not address the need for proactive support for all care leavers or ensure that they all have the advice and information they need. Without setting a national minimum standard for the local offer, the very real risk is of a patchwork of provision across the country, where children in one area are offered a different level of service from that offered in another.
The Minister knows what happened with his Department’s implementation of a local offer for children with special educational needs and disabilities, introduced under the Children and Families Act 2014; I hope he will tell us why he thinks that the offer for children leaving care will not develop in the same haphazard way. If an idea has failed once and is not working as it should, surely duplicating it is not the best way to proceed.
At the time, we welcomed the principle of the local offer for learners with special educational needs and disabilities. As we recognised, it is important that those learners and their families receive the information necessary to achieve the best possible outcomes. However, two years later we have seen the local offer in practice, and it has not achieved all that it should have. Frankly, because of the lack of a national framework, we have ended up with a postcode lottery—an inconsistent and sadly often inadequate provision has therefore developed across the country.
The fact that the Government have not looked at those issues and taken steps to ensure that the local offer for care leavers operates in a high-quality national framework simply suggests, perhaps, that they are willing to repeat the same old mistakes. I am in full agreement with the noble Lord Watson, who pushed for the amendment in another place. Having no common policy throughout the country is unacceptable. I argue again that the amendment is necessary. A minimum standard for the offer is needed, to serve as a framework, an undertaking, about the availability of services throughout the country.
The Minister will argue against the amendment, perhaps on the premise that the Government feel that they should not be deciding what is best for care leavers in their local area—that the local authorities and care leavers should decide themselves. That, however, is a straw-man argument. What we are asking for is simply a minimum standard so that whatever else is decided, there is a minimum level of protection for our most vulnerable children who are leaving care.
Stella Creasy (Walthamstow) (Lab/Co-op)
I apologise to the Committee; I am afraid the Victoria line was not my friend this morning. I arrived as the shadow Minister was talking about corporate parenting and how the Bill is about what we should want for our own children. Surely my hon. Friend’s argument for a national minimum standard is exactly that; it is about the very basics that we would want for every single child because we would want it for our own child.
The risk of the Government’s approach is that, although there may be examples of good practice, there are also examples of poor practice. A national minimum standard would guard against that and protect every child as we would wish our own child to be protected.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct. We have seen that the implementation of the local offer for special educational needs and disabilities is just that: an inconsistent approach and a patchwork model across the country.
A minimum level would be a benchmark that could never be lowered but could always be built on and improved. Surely that is the gold standard that we would want for all our care leavers. There is no evidence that introducing a set of minimum standards limits innovation and creativity; it is a simply a failsafe level of care. It would give clarity to both the local authority and the care leaver on what they can and cannot expect.
Care leavers often say that they struggle with what they are or are not entitled to. This would give them absolute clarity and help them plan better for independence. In practice, I lost track of the number of times when I dealt with parents who were themselves former care leavers. I went through everything and told them what they had been entitled to and they did not have a clue. This would be a good way to avoid such situations at the outset. Children should know what they are entitled to. If there is a minimum standard, they will always know what to expect.
A minimum standard would ensure that services offered would not be withdrawn when budgets are further cut by central Government and would let the people we are discussing know that their local authority and other agencies in their area really do care about their future and are committed to it wholeheartedly. Leaving the local offer to each local authority would not achieve that. The Minister must agree that we cannot justify a single child leaving care failing to receive the information that they need.
Will the Minister explain how he will ensure that the local offer will be accessible to all care leavers, whatever their circumstances when they leave care? How will he ensure that every single local authority will provide a local offer that meets the standard necessary to ensure the best possible outcomes for care leavers? Will he be taking any additional steps to ensure that there is not simply another postcode lottery that will leave a vast number of vulnerable young people unable to access the resources and support that they need? We cannot allow discrepancies in the level of care of the scale that I spoke about earlier to continue. There is no other practical way to achieve that in a timely manner.
I move on to amendment 26. As I have said, leaving care is a difficult process. Care leavers are faced with a set of difficulties that other children their age simply do not face. Is that in part why the Government introduced the local offer for care leavers that I referred to?
It is astonishing that the Bill is devoid of any mention of unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. There are more than 3,000 such children in the UK care system. According to analysis of Home Office data, nearly all unaccompanied asylum-seeking children under 16 are fostered at some point. I assume that the Committee and others would think that when those children leave care they are entitled to the same support and assistance with their transition to independence as their peers—but they are not, despite being the most vulnerable of care leavers, having fled conflicts and horrors that most us can hardly begin to imagine.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank my hon. Friend for her speech. I agree with her: when we talk about unaccompanied asylum seekers and children, we are talking about the most vulnerable in society. My local authorities, Camden and Brent, have taken in asylum seekers and are looking after children. Does she agree that putting a duty on local authorities across the country to do that would send a clear signal to the rest of the world that we are acting as a leading country and taking charge of a situation where we should be doing more?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I welcome what is happening in my hon. Friend’s area. I agree completely with her comments. Once children who are unaccompanied asylum seekers reach 18, they are treated differently from other care leavers.
I recall working with many children who had escaped from conflict. Like children who have suffered abuse, their skin was grey and their eyes were emotionless. There was a look of permanent fear etched on their faces and they had an intense wariness of adults around them, which was reflected in their every movement and word. I have seen children slowly lose that look after being in placement for a while. The terror and sadness lift from their overall demeanour, because that is what feeling safe and being fed, clothed, cared for and away from a traumatic and ever-changing volatile environment can do for a child.
Steve McCabe
My hon. Friend will be aware that the Home Office is conducting some inquiries into what happens to unaccompanied children who enter this country. The system has not been terribly well supervised over recent years. There is a lot of concern.
Topically, there is a lot of concern about what happens with unaccompanied children who enter this country to attend sports schools and sports colleges—whether those arrangements are properly supervised and whether they could lead to abuse. In view of that situation, is it reasonable to assume that we may see further activity to receive some of those children into care as those inquiries reach fruition? In those circumstances, would it not be wise of the Minister to prepare for that eventuality in the Bill?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I shall come on to the absolute hash that the Home Office has made of the situation later in my comments.
After the children have been settled in placement for however long they have been in the UK, the rug is ripped out from underneath them as they reach 18 years old, when they must apply for extended leave to remain in the UK. The majority are turned down, so the place they understood to be their home is no longer their home. Worse still, the Home Office often does not get its act together and remove them, despite turning them down, so they disappear and are off the radar. The Government do not know how many care leavers are in that situation or where they have disappeared to, but it does not take long to guess that if someone is here illegally and is facing the fear of returning to their country of origin, they will go underground and be susceptible to exploitation, whether emotional, financial or sexual.
Stella Creasy
In our discussions of the Bill, we are going to come on to a number of conversations about how we treat child refugees, but the point my hon. Friend is making is simple: at the stroke of midnight on someone’s 18th birthday, they do not stop being a vulnerable young person. These are young people who we have accepted are vulnerable and should be cared for. The idea that we simply cut off all support at 18 simply does not accord with the principles behind much of the Bill. I hope that the Minister will listen to the case and think again about how we treat these young people. Someone’s turning 18 does not stop them from being a vulnerable young person.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
That is why a lot of support targeted at care leavers lasts until they are 25 years old. Someone does not stop being vulnerable simply because they have turned 18.
I was a member of the Immigration Bill Committee. I do not recall the experience with much fondness. In the consideration of that Bill, which is now an Act, those on the Labour Benches argued against what I am describing. We argued that the provisions in that Act that limit the support for care leavers subject to immigration control undermined children and leaving care legislation, and gave immigration control greater prominence over young people’s welfare.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I am astonished that I had not picked up on what the Minister said. I hope that he will clarify.
Edward Timpson
Dear oh dear, Mr Wilson; we were all getting on so well. I am afraid that what the hon. Member for Birmingham, Selly Oak, has said is not a fair representation of the point that I made. I ask the hon. Member for South Shields to take in good faith the point that I made, which is that children who are in care do better educationally, in terms of improvement, than children who are on the edge of care with child protection plans. It is wrong to suggest that being in care holds back the child’s education. If we compare children in care with the most closely aligned group—those on the edge of care—they do better. That was the point that I made, and I hope that is the point that the hon. Lady will take away.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the Minister for that clarification. I am sure that Hansard will show us all exactly what he said.
Tulip Siddiq
Does the shadow Minister think that the situation that the Minister described in his comparison is one that we should strive for, or should we have different standards?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I think we should all have the highest possible standards for all our children, whether they are care leavers or not. That is something we should always strive towards.
Michael Tomlinson
I am grateful to the hon. Lady for highlighting the unemployment statistics. I am chairman of the all-party group for youth employment. Each month we look at the statistics; we will have a new set of figures tomorrow. She is right to say that the figures are too high. In fact, they are too high across the board at just under 14%. Does she recognise that, under the clause, the local plan that points towards education and employment will help in that regard?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
No, it is not; it is a “time will tell.”
I will not spend much longer on this new clause; it is quite straightforward. It asks that the Secretary of State carries out an annual review on access to apprenticeships and further and higher education, and takes into account some of the barriers that care leavers face around fees, grants and accommodation. We know that such problems have existed for care leavers for a very long time, so it is about time we got on, looked at that, and made policies around it.
New clause 16 seeks to improve care leavers’ transition to independence by proposing various changes to welfare and benefits that would offer much needed financial support at a critical juncture. Without financial support, it is likely that a lot of the Government’s intentions towards care leavers will not amount to any real tangible changes for children leaving care. The national offer for care leavers that I am proposing will ensure that the maximum sanction for care leavers under the age of 25 will be four weeks, in line with the current sanction regime for 16 and 17-year-olds. It will allow working care leavers under the age of 25 to claim working tax credit. It will extend the higher rate of the local housing allowance single room rate to care leavers up to the age of 25, delaying the transition to the lower shared accommodation rate that applies at 22 years. It will also amend the council tax regulations to exempt care leavers from that tax until the age of 25.
The Government’s document, “Keep On Caring”, which was published in July, states:
“Most care leavers who spoke to us talked about the problems they had making ends meet. Paying rent, Council Tax, household bills and transport costs meant that many care leavers had difficulty managing their finances and they had often experienced debt and arrears.”
Research by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation has shown that more than half of young people leaving care have difficulty managing their budgets and avoiding debt. Yet almost half of local authorities in England fail to offer adequate financial support and advice for care leavers. If local authorities are not able to help when a young care leaver needs help, where on earth are they supposed to go? Unlike many of us in this room, they have never had the option of turning to their parents, wider family, or family friends. Often, if the local authority does not help them, nobody does.
The way that the Government have applied sanctions has had a devastating effect on not only the sick and disabled, but care leavers. Between October 2013 and September 2015, 4,000 sanctions were imposed on care leavers. They are more likely to receive sanctions, and less likely to know where to go or how to appeal a decision made against them.
Stella Creasy
It is worth reflecting on that statistic in the context of my hon. Friend’s amendment. We are talking about care leavers being three times as likely to be sanctioned. If we go back to the principles she was talking about of corporate parenting and wanting the same—the best—for every child in care as we want for our own children, that suggests that those children are not getting the help that they need, and that they are also not getting financial education. There is clearly a particular issue about care leavers and the benefit system that we must address. The Bill is the ideal opportunity to do that and her amendment would fit into that metric. I hope that Government Members will think about that. Care leavers are three times more likely to be sanctioned, so clearly something is not working. We need to act.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
My hon. Friend is right. When I have spoken to care leavers who have been sanctioned, often they have not known that they have been sanctioned. What they will say is, “My money has been stopped.” They do not know where to go and they do not know what to do for help. They will sometimes bury their head in the sand, not realising that they could appeal the decision. It is therefore vital that we get it right for them.
For those who were able to get help, 60% of sanctions were overturned, which means that a high proportion of care leavers are having sanctions misapplied. I note Lord Nash’s wish in the other place for sanctions to be reduced, but I was alarmed when he showed concern that a reduction is sanctions towards care leavers might “unintentionally lower our aspirations” for them. When a care leaver has sanctions imposed through no fault of their own—often those sanctions are misapplied—I assure the Minister that their aspirations will not be anything if they cannot afford to heat their home or feed themselves, or if they end up without a roof over their head.
We also wish to make an amendment to extend working tax credit to care leavers under the age of 25. It is right that care leavers should be encouraged to engage in high-quality employment and training opportunities. However, they must be given better support to get into work and to be able to afford to work. Under the current system, only those with children or those who are disabled under the age of 25 can claim working tax credit. An assumption is built into the system that those under 25 on low incomes will be living at home with their family, where they will have access to the extra financial support that they need.
As we are all acutely aware, for care leavers, that it not the situation. It appears that the system penalises—some would even say it discriminates against—care leavers under the age of 25. Currently, care leavers in their first year of an apprenticeship could be earning as little as £3.40 an hour. I am interested to know why the Minister thinks that a young care leaver can manage to pay rent, council tax contributions and utility bills—let alone clothe and feed themselves—on such a meagre income.
For non-care leavers, restricting higher levels of support until 25 has some rationale, as under-25s often have a support network to help them. However, care leavers do not have that support network. It is not right that, when they fall into financial hardship, they suffer a shortfall in support compared with equivalent older workers, especially considering their ineligibility to receive the national living wage until they are 25.
It is estimated that the extension of working tax credit to care leavers under the age of 25 would cost a total of £27.8 million a year. Does the Minister recognise the huge strain of being liable for the full cost of running a household at a young age and the pressure that imposes on the finances of young care leavers? The payment of working tax credit to care leavers under 25 would be a significant step in closing that gap in provision.
Michael Tomlinson
I have the privilege of serving on the Homelessness Reduction Bill Committee, which meets for the fourth time tomorrow. That measure is a private Member’s Bill, as the hon. Lady will know, but it has Government backing. Care leavers are a prescribed group within that Bill, and will be specifically looked after in relation to homelessness advice. The Bill states:
“The service must be designed to meet the needs of persons in the authority’s district including…care leavers.”
Surely the hon. Lady welcomes that, and the fact that the Government are supporting that Bill?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support for my amendment. I hope that he will vote with us. I am proposing a comprehensive package of support for care leavers, and this Bill is exactly the right measure for that. We should not have piecemeal legislation for care leavers; the package should be in this Bill.
Steve McCabe
I, too, welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole. Has my hon. Friend seen the comments of the Birmingham Social Housing Partnership, which warned that very good ambitions of the Homelessness Reduction Bill are likely to be undermined by the wiping out of the supporting people revenue grant, which will mean that we will apply new duties to local authorities and give them fewer resources to manage this issue?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
It is a classic tale of this Government: give with one hand, take with the other, and we still end up in a worse situation.
Simon Hoare
We all have to accept that local government budgets are under pressure, which presents challenges. Does the hon. Lady accept that she is striking at the heart of the Localism Act 2011 and, in particular, the general power of competence? If local authorities such as Birmingham and Wolverhampton decide to set those sorts of priorities, they can do so. That is what localism and local decision making is all about. We do not need the great dead hand of the state and central diktat to allow local authorities to do it.
Tulip Siddiq
I thank the hon. Member for North Dorset for his contribution and his support for the shadow Minister’s amendment. I spoke in the debates on the Homelessness Reduction Bill introduced by the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman). I commend many of the suggestions in that Bill. Is the shadow Minister aware of the Barnardo’s report, which outlines that young people leaving the care system are particularly vulnerable to homelessness because they cannot find appropriate accommodation when they leave?
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I am aware of that report, which makes heart-breaking reading. There are lots of reports out there about care leavers. Following up on the intervention by the hon. Member for North Dorset, I agree that some local authorities have done good things in this area, but there should not be a piecemeal approach; support should be offered to all care leavers across the board. Why should one care leaver in one authority have a different service from another one? Care leavers do not care about localism; they want their local authority to give them the same thing as their friends and other care leavers next door.
Stella Creasy
Dare I suggest that, if we are going to have a discussion about the core principles of our political movements, one of the core principles for me as a proud socialist is value for money? One of the concerns behind the amendment is exactly that. The hon. Member for North Dorset talks about localism, the cuts to local authorities budgets and the need to be parsimonious—some of us might use a different term—but we must recognise that if 60% of sanctions on care leavers are overturned on appeal, the system is not cost-effective. If we are looking at how we might make savings, treating those young people as we wish our own children to be treated, which is a common theme this morning and perhaps for the entire Bill, is not only the right thing to do morally but the most cost effective and therefore—dare I say it?—socialist thing to do.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank my hon. Friend for her excellent intervention. She touches on an important point: elsewhere, if we want to save money, we have to invest. Investing in care leavers prevents them from entering the justice system and from being homeless, which costs more in the long term.
I suspect that the Minister will reiterate what Government peers said in the other place: it is not for the Government to set in statute what local authorities should be doing, and I expect he will get a cheer from the hon. Member for North Dorset—[Hon. Members: “Hear, hear.”] We are not asking the Government to tell our local authorities what they should be doing; we are just asking for a minimum standard for care leavers. These amendments seek that new minimum. Care leavers surely deserve safe, secure, affordable accommodation, but under the current proposals I do not see how they can be expected to make their way in life and deal with the issues of having lived in care with the extra burden of financial difficulty. Does the Minister agree that council tax enforcement undertaken by local authorities completely undermines the principles in this Bill? Does he therefore agree that care leavers should be exempt from council tax until the age of 25?
The Minister is well versed regarding the many challenges that young care leavers face, particularly those of a financial nature. I am sure, deep down, he wants to make sure that the state plays a greater part in supporting care leavers, but the current plans just do not hit it. Last year, almost 11,000 left the care of their local authority and began the difficult process into adulthood. The Government have a duty to those 11,000 vulnerable young people to say that they are not forgotten and that they do not just become another poverty or homelessness statistic on our streets.
Marion Fellows (Motherwell and Wishaw) (SNP)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Wilson. I want to speak to new clause 16, which seeks to make provision for care leavers to help them avoid financial difficulty. We are grateful to the shadow Minister for bringing it forward. Although it would apply to Scotland only in part, I wish to put on the record the views of the Scottish National party.
The Children’s Society points out that young people leaving care struggle with their finances and are at an increased risk of falling into financial difficulty. Our First Minister in Scotland has already acknowledged that we have a duty to protect and help our young people most in need and that those who have experienced the care system will be the driving force of the recently announced independent review of how Scotland treats its looked-after children. Our First Minister has committed to listen to 1,000 people with experience of the care system over the next two years. I hope that some of these concerns will be raised during that review. In making that commitment, our First Minister said:
“If we are to live up to our ambition to be a truly inclusive country, we have a particular duty to those most in need. We have to get it right for every child.”
I think that should apply across the UK.
The part of new clause 16 that would apply to Scotland includes the limit to sanctions, the extension of the working tax credit benefit and the exemption from the shared accommodation rate of housing benefit. Given the barriers to employment for care leavers, providing adequate support and safeguards in the system via these changes would seem to be appropriate. As the Centre for Social Justice outlined in its report, “Survival of the Fittest”:
“Current labour market conditions, such as unreliable hours due to zero hour contracts and low pay for entry level jobs, mean that most 18-25 year olds rely financially, at least to some extent, on either their parents or the benefit system for support. As care leavers are unlikely to have substantial family support, they are much more likely to rely on the benefit system”.
As the shadow Minister outlined, the new clause will apply a limit to sanctions under universal credit, including a higher level, medium level and lower level of sanction. The Children’s Society found that 4,000 benefit sanctions were applied to care leavers between October 2013 and September 2015. As we found out with the National Audit Office report only a few weeks ago, sanctions are not rare and they are not working.
Protecting young care leavers from sanctions is a welcome move, particularly as they would lead to further hardship for those possibly already facing financial difficulty of the kind outlined by the shadow Minister. Although the new clause would not remove sanctioning from care leavers under 25, it would place them in the same regime as 16 and 17-year-olds, meaning that the maximum sanction period under these proposals would be four weeks. The second part of the new clause seeks to extend working tax credit eligibility to all care leavers in full-time work of more than 30 hours per week.
The risk of falling into debt due to the cost of living, which many of these people are unable to cover in full, is a bad and sad reflection on our society. The current system of working tax credit assumes that many of those under 25 and on low incomes live at home and are supported by a family. However, that does not apply to care leavers, so additional support should be given to help these young people face independent lives. Surely the whole purpose of the care system is to enable our most vulnerable young people to go out there and stand on their own two feet equitably with those children who are brought up in caring and loving homes.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell Excerpts(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Justine Greening
The hon. Lady wrote to me on 17 November. I will of course respond to her letter. In addition, we have been very clear that we want to see how we can make progress in this area. However, as many questions have underlined, it is very complex, with many different aspects that we need to work on very carefully to get right. Although I know that within this House there have been some excellent reports underlining some of the areas where the guidance should be updated, there is also a broader debate in the country about the right way to do that. This matter needs to be handled very sensitively. That is why we will make sure we take the time to get the process right and then set it out to MPs.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Andy Slaughter (Hammersmith) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Welfare Delivery (Caroline Nokes)
The Secretary of State for Work and Pensions is fully aware of the issue, which we debated in this Chamber just last week. He has clearly stated that the introduction of further transitional arrangements cannot be justified given the imperative to focus public resources on helping those in most need. There are no plans to go beyond the £1.1 billion concession introduced when Parliament considered the changes.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
I thank the Minister for that response, disappointingly predictable as it was. Will she tell me whether anyone in Government has done an analysis of how much it would cost to implement transitional measures by comparison with what it will cost the Government reputationally and financially when the Women Against State Pension Inequality take them to court and win?
Caroline Nokes
Consistent is how I would prefer to describe my answer. The Government have looked into a variety of different proposals that have come forward in many forms, both from the WASPI campaign and from Opposition parties. As I have very clearly stated, we will not make any further transitional arrangements.
Children and Social Work Bill [Lords]
Emma Lewell ExcerptsMonday 5th December 2016
(8 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Children and Social Work Act 2017 View all Children and Social Work Act 2017 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: HL Bill 69-I Marshalled list for Third Reading (PDF, 80KB) - (22 Nov 2016)
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
As we have already said, Labour will not be dividing the House on this Bill this evening. However, I will take this opportunity to deliver some home truths to the Government. This is a Bill, which, from its very inception, has been ill-thought out and hastily put together without any guidance from children or from the very industry that it purports to be helping to improve. In short, it is a Bill about children and social work with negligible input from children and social workers. By not listening to the profession, the Government have once again shown how little value they see in using the professional experience and expertise of those who work, day in, day out, and often at the risk of their own welfare, to protect children and families.
What social workers want is to be out in the field with vulnerable children and families, because the more time they spend with them the more vulnerable children are identified and supported or saved from harm. It could not be simpler than that.
So far, the Government’s social work reform agenda has been a total failure, rooted as it is in structural system change and in tinkering around with individual, mainly Labour-held, local authorities. [Interruption.] The Minister twists in his place, but he will get his turn soon I am sure. There continues to be an obsession with adoption to the detriment of early intervention and work that can keep families together and children out of the care system. This Government are completely oblivious to the severe impact that their austerity measures and punitive welfare policies are having on our most vulnerable children and families. They are causing untold damage
I remind the Minister, as I have done many times before, that social work is a holistic profession. The Government’s closure of Sure Start units and removal of early years help in family support centres, and the disproportionate cuts to local authorities in the most deprived areas have measurably taken their toll. All this Government seem to be doing for desperate families is turning the screw tighter and tighter, year on year, until they break. As other hon. Members have already said, the demand for help and protection is rising.
Over the past 10 years, there has been a 124% increase in serious cases—where a local authority believes that a child may be suffering, or is likely to suffer, significant harm—and the varied spending on social work has been found to be totally unrelated to quality. In short, all of the Government’s initiatives and changes are not yielding positive results. This is systemic not local failure. In other words, it is the Government’s fault.
Both the National Audit Office and the Education Committee looked into social work reform and noted that there are significant weaknesses in the Government’s agenda, and that the reforms focus on
“changing structures potentially to the detriment of the people delivering this key public service.”
What the social work profession needs is continuity, stability and confidence, and a Government who can hold their nerve on how best to help children and families by putting in place and embedding good policies—policies such as the introduction of personal, social, health and economic education, which was referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow (Stella Creasy), and supported by the right hon. Member for Basingstoke (Mrs Miller).
The Government are failing to get the basics right. They are not reducing social worker caseloads, preventing experienced professionals from quitting the profession or training social workers in a holistic way—they are fast-tracking them, and forcing them to specialise before they have even been trained in the basics. The Government are not amending IT and the bureaucratic process across the board to achieve the goal of getting social workers where they want to be, which is out from behind their desks and seeing the families with whom they work. This Bill does nothing to respond to the crisis in social work and to the hundreds of thousands of children who need better services right now.
Like other Members, I wish to take this opportunity to thank the Labour Lords and other peers whose tireless work has resulted in the Bill before us today being markedly different from that which was first introduced. In particular, I wish to congratulate peers on defeating the Government and forcing them to remove dangerous clauses from the Bill that would have paved the way for the privatisation of children’s social care. It is scandalous that these clauses are soon to reappear at Committee stage. The Government’s proposals will allow local authorities, under the guise of innovation, to opt out of protective primary legislation. That legislation, which has taken decades to achieve, has led to us having one of the safest child protection systems in the world. It was hard fought for by the profession in this place and in the other place. These proposals have caused alarm and outrage in the profession and the sector overall. I have yet to meet a social worker who supports the changes. I have had no clarity from the Minister about where the demand for change has come from and what pieces of primary legislation local authorities and social workers say prevent them from carrying out good social work. Will he tell us today?
This is legislation formed in the worst possible way, without demand and without any evidential basis for fixing the problems it purports to fix. The Government have invented a solution to an invented problem, because the Bill will not solve any of the problems in social work. What I know from my time in social work practice is that the things that social workers find restrictive, such as case recording, derive from secondary legislation, guidance, or the custom and practice in their particular local authority—all of which can be changed without primary legislation.
The Government have denied time and again that the opt-out clauses were about privatisation, yet late last week, two years after it was written and after an inexplicable delay in responding to freedom of information requests, the Department for Education released a report, referred to by my hon. Friend the Member for Ashton-under-Lyne (Angela Rayner), which sets out how children’s social care can be moved out of local authority control—a report which states that independent contractors have said that they are willing to play the long game and wait for councils to hand over the majority, if not all, of their children’s social care services after they have developed their experience in children and families social work. There we have it—independent contractors are going to use vulnerable children and families to experiment with, once the Government allow local authorities to opt out of protective legislation. These are the most dangerous changes to child protection that I have ever seen.
Labour, bolstered by the support of the profession and related stakeholders who have expressed outrage at these plans, will fight the Government every step of the way on these clauses. Vulnerable children are not to be used as market experiments, and any child protection strategy that requires the dispensation of the law to achieve it is counter-productive and downright dangerous.
Of course, there are parts of the Bill that we can support. The introduction of detailed principles of corporate parenting, the extension of the personal adviser role to care leavers up to the age of 25, and the local offer for care leavers are all steps in the right direction. Our concern is whether the Government can deliver it. For example, they promise in the Bill to promote the physical and mental health of looked-after children, but on their watch child and adolescent mental health services are in meltdown, with many looked-after children waiting not just months, but years, for specialist help. Changes need to be properly resourced, otherwise they are warm words and nothing more, so can the Minister confirm that these proposals will be properly resourced?
The Bill establishes a new social work regulator. In Committee we will carefully consider this change and those that relate to local safeguarding boards and the child safeguarding practice review panel. We share some of the concerns of the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton). We have ongoing concerns about the independence and impact of the proposed non-departmental public body model, especially the lack of detail in the current proposals which envisage Government appointments directly to the leadership of the organisation. Can the Minister please explain why the social work profession is treated so differently from other health and care professions?
Finally, the Bill is impotent in its response to unaccompanied asylum-seeking children. These children are experiencing the most immense suffering and trauma. Thanks to Lord Dubs forcing the Government’s hand and reminding them of this crisis, we will see a strategy in May next year, but these are urgent and pressing matters and deserve further debate in this place. We fully support the amendments so eloquently and passionately outlined by my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow.
In essence, what we have here is a Bill with some nice-sounding elements that do not appear to be fully resourced, and are therefore not guaranteed, and the continual threat to open up children’s social care to the market by allowing opt-outs from legislation. In fact, we will be presented with a Bill in Committee that local authorities could, in theory, dispense with if it became law. That is a completely ridiculous approach to legislation and an insult to the House.
I know that getting things right for children and families in the social work arena is not an easy task—it is difficult and complex, and many Governments have grappled with it. But trust me, this Bill is not the answer. We will seek significant amendments in Committee and make sure that the Government understand that privatisation and micromanagement are not the answer to every problem. Labour will never allow the Government to use our most vulnerable children as experiments in Tory ideology.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
Despite investment, the National Audit Office has judged child protection services to be “unsatisfactory and inconsistent”, which suggests systemic rather than local failure. Six years of Tory tinkering, rebranding and outsourcing has resulted in too many children’s services being deemed simply not good enough. Can the Minister tell us how much longer children will have to suffer because of his Department’s failures?
The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families (Edward Timpson)
I realise that the hon. Lady wants to press the Government to do right by vulnerable children, but I am sorry that she has tried to create a division on something about which we agree. In fact, over the past six years the Government have intervened in 60 failing local authorities, 34 of which we have turned around, and we are now investing more than £300 million in an innovation programme to ensure that we can do right by children in our care and provide them with the best possible outcomes. I hope the hon. Lady will agree that we should never, ever settle for second best for children who are vulnerable. The work that we are doing is intended to ensure that we give them everything they deserve.
Looked-after Children/Social Work Reform
Emma Lewell Excerpts(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I thank the hon. Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael) for opening this important debate, and his colleagues on the Education Committee for their excellent work on the two reports that we are discussing. I of course acknowledge the Minister’s commitment in this area, and I know that he and everyone in the Chamber are dedicated to improving the lives of our most vulnerable children. That is why it is all the more disappointing to read the Government responses to the reports.
The Committee based its recommendations on an extensive body of evidence from experts in the industry—evidence that clearly showed why more action and less talk are needed. In the “Mental health and well-being of looked-after children” report, the Committee rightly recommended that a dedicated mental health assessment by a qualified mental health professional be completed for all looked-after children, so that healthcare professionals and local authorities have a solid and consistent foundation on which to plan the best care for a child.
The report further recommended that all children who need access to child and adolescent mental health services get it in a timely fashion. That makes total sense when we consider that almost every looked-after child has endured some form of trauma, from those who have suffered the most unimaginable brutality to those whose parents, for whatever reason, cannot care for them or protect them from harm. In fact, as the hon. Member for Stroud said, at least 45% of children entering care have a diagnosable mental health condition, and 75% of children in care have some kind of emotional or behavioural difficulty. It is therefore astonishing that the recommendation was not accepted.
The Government’s record overall on CAMHS is dire, with children waiting years for specialist help. With that in mind, will the Minister tell us what the ratio of CAMHS workers to looked-after children in England is, and whether he think that the number of CAMHS workers is high enough? Will he also tell us what impact he thinks his Government’s cuts have had on CAMHS overall?
I was similarly disappointed that the Committee’s recommendation that CAMHS be made available to all care leavers up to the age of 25 was rejected. The Government believe that the configuration of local mental health services is a matter for commissioners to decide, on the basis of local need. Even the statutory guidance, however, is clear: decisions on the transition between services should be based on the needs, wishes and feelings of the young person concerned, not the cost considerations of local commissioners. Once a young person turns 18, they are referred to adult mental health services, and we all know that the Government’s record on adult mental health is even more concerning, and that budgets for mental health trusts continue to be slashed.
The Government response does not specifically answer the question of how CAMHS provision will be improved, or how they will tackle the huge waiting lists, which lead to unnecessary suffering. From my own experience, I know that there is nothing worse than working with a child or young person who is desperately crying out for professional help that is simply not available. The social workers and carers who have to deal with these situations day in, day out, have to watch the young person in their care suffer while they feel completely helpless. That is why the Government’s rejection of the Committee’s recommendation that foster carer and residential carer training be supplemented with mental health and emotional wellbeing modules is disappointing. If carers are not fully equipped to do their job, their ability to sustain care for a child can be reduced. That could have a devastating impact on a child, who is left to forge—sometimes many—new relationships with different carers.
I noticed that the Government responses deflected many answers on to the new expert working group on the mental health of looked-after children. I make no criticism of the experts appointed to the group, but further consultation is wholly unnecessary, as the hon. Member for Telford (Lucy Allan) said, especially since both the co-chairs have already submitted evidence to the Committee. Consultation will simply cause further delays, and delay means that more children will suffer unnecessarily. Will the Minister tell us how many children he thinks will be left suffering on waiting lists while that review drags on? Does he accept that the condition of many of them will deteriorate as they wait for services? I have seen that myself in children waiting for long-term fostering or for adoption. A child’s pool of potential carers will decrease as their condition worsens, and as the years go by and he or she gets older, the pool decreases even more. For far too many children, that means never getting to feel the security and stability that long-term fostering or adoption can bring—all because of unnecessary delay.
Heartbreaking as that is, there are far worse scenarios for children in the system, which is why social work reform is so important. The Committee’s report on social work reform makes a number of common-sense suggestions. I appreciate that the Minister has a difficult job. Getting things right for children and families is not an easy task; it is difficult and complex terrain. Successive Governments have battled with how to provide the best and safest social care system for children, but now there is an abundance of official and other expert advice to draw on, so we should see some action and results—but we do not.
I imagine that the Minister in his response will tell us about the Munro report, the Step Up to Social Work programme, Frontline, the Innovation programme, What Works centres, partners in practice, the intervention regime and “Putting children first”, the Government’s vision for excellent social care by 2020. What the Minister might not speak about is the recent National Audit Office report, “Children in need of help or protection”, because it finds that actions taken by the Department for Education over the past six years to improve the quality of help and protection services delivered by local authorities for children have not yet resulted in services being of a good enough quality, suggesting systemic rather than only local failure.
In fact, the demand for help and protection is rising. Over the past 10 years, there has been a 124% increase in serious cases—ones in which a local authority believes that a child may be suffering, or likely to suffer, significant harm. Furthermore, the varied spending on social work has been found to be not related to quality. Will the Minister explain why he thinks that all the Government’s initiatives and changes over the past six years are not yielding results? Many of the NAO’s findings certainly echo the Committee’s analysis that there are significant weaknesses in the Government’s agenda, and that the reforms focus on
“changing structures potentially to the detriment of the people delivering this key public service.”
What is needed in the social work profession is continuity, stability and confidence, and a Government who can hold their nerve on how best to help children and families by putting in place and embedding good policies. The Government are failing to get the basics right. Those basics are: reducing social worker case loads; preventing experienced professionals from quitting the profession; training social workers in a holistic way; not fast-tracking them, and forcing them to specialise before they have even been trained in the basics; and amending IT and the bureaucratic process across the board to achieve the goal of getting social workers where they want to be—out from behind their desks and seeing the families with whom they work.
It is an absolute must that we start looking after social workers. A new professional body could go some way to assist us in that. It is simply no good demanding excellent social workers and excellent practice if social workers are not appropriately supported, including with safe working environments. Social work is a dangerous profession, with unmanageable case loads, impenetrable bureaucratic structures and poor pay. It makes me angry that social workers are not afforded the same protection and status as other professionals. We all need to remember that for every social worker who becomes unwell and cannot do their job, there are sometimes up to 40 children who lose the help and support of that social worker, who, for many of them, is the only constant in their life. Such a working environment would not be tolerated in Parliament; Parliament should not tolerate it for our social workers. Why will the Minister not implement the Select Committee’s recommendation about the wellbeing of the workforce?
A common feature of the Government’s response to the Select Committee’s recommendations on social work reform was deflection to future initiatives and reports, and future analysis of initiatives that are already in place. All I know about the future is that our children’s futures are at risk under this Government. The overall fact remains that the Government’s response does not tackle the crisis in social work because it does not address how to deal with the significant increase in the sheer number of people accessing the service. To do so, the Minister would need to admit what we all know: that the Government’s closure of Sure Start units and removal of early years help and family support, and their cuts, punitive welfare policies and austerity measures, are impacting everywhere, and nowhere more starkly than in the children and family social work arena, which by its very nature is interlinked with wider societal and economic issues. The Minister does not need to take my word for it; he could listen to the chair of one of the Government’s expert panels, who has said that
“investment is welcome, but we have to recognise that is against a backdrop of other financial pressures…and a history of disinvestment across the system for quite a number of years.”
The Opposition welcome the Select Committee’s work, but not so much the Government’s response, or their inability to accept the overall consequences of their policy making, and the drastic impact that those policies are having on everyone, but most importantly, vulnerable children and families.
The Minister for Vulnerable Children and Families (Edward Timpson)
It is a pleasure, as ever, to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gapes. I welcome this debate and the interest that the Chair of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Neil Carmichael), has shown in prioritising these issues for inquiry by that Committee.
There is a lot of ground to cover. It is always encouraging to get a ringing endorsement of everything that the Government are doing, but there are clearly still some elements of concern that I need to address. In so doing, I recognise, as others have, that hon. Members who are present share my commitment to improving the lives of vulnerable children. That is our joint mission and the underlying motivation for everything that we do in our privileged roles.
The Government have participated in and responded to the Select Committee’s inquiries, but I want to take the opportunity to provide some further detail and, I hope, reassurance that we have a comprehensive, considered and compassionate plan to help to bring about the improvements that we all want to see to vulnerable children’s lives. I remind hon. Members that in July this year we published our “Putting children first” strategy. I am grateful to the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for reminding everyone of that important document, which I believe represents the most thorough and ambitious reform agenda in this area for some considerable time. I am not complacent, and neither is that report, but it is a serious attempt to try to get children’s social care to where it needs to be.
The strategy sets out fundamental reforms across each of the three pillars on which the social care system stands or falls. The first and foremost of those is people and leadership. I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) that our system stands or falls on the quality and commitment of the people driving it. The second pillar is practice and the environment that we create for that practice to be able to improve, which we must do in a way that does not stifle practice through over-regulation and process-driven activity. Again, I agree with the hon. Member for South Shields that we do not want social workers sitting behind computers; we want them to work face-to-face with families to try to improve their lives, and we want to avoid risk-averse behaviours, of which process-driven activity is often a part.
The third and final pillar is governance and accountability. We need to be sure that what we are doing is effective and actually works. We must develop innovative new models for the pursuit of practice excellence, which has to be at the heart of this work, and remain firmly focused on improving outcomes for children. Only by taking action across those three fundamental pillars will we bring about the kind of transformational change that is needed in children’s social care.
As other Members have acknowledged, children’s social workers can have a genuinely life-changing impact on our most vulnerable children. Our vision is of a social work profession made up of fully confident and highly capable social workers who have been trained in the right way and have the right knowledge and skills, and access to the right supervision and support.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The Minister may be coming to this, but I am curious: how will the Government measure the success of “Putting children first”?
Edward Timpson
I will come to how we will ensure that we are making progress. Several milestones are set out in “Putting children first”, which is a programme of work through to 2020. We will be able to measure progress by whether inspections of children’s services and our outcome measures for children in care improve, and we will have a whole suite of indicators that will give us a strong understanding of whether the work we have done and the measures we have put in place are having a positive influence.
Over the last six years, we have begun to lay solid foundations for achieving that vision. We have appointed a chief social worker, who has introduced the first definitive statements of child and family social work knowledge and skills. Working across Government with the Department of Health, we have developed the first four teaching partnerships, whereby employers and universities work together to ensure that university courses provide students with the right on-the-job skills. One of the problems in the past—I have seen this for myself—has been that too many social workers have come into practice without any first-hand experience of what it is like to be in a child protection situation. We need to change that.
We have invested almost £50 million since 2010 in Frontline and Step Up, which I make no apologies for mentioning. Those programmes have brought more than 770 high-calibre recruits into social work. We have expanded our assessed and supported year in employment programme to support newly qualified social workers entering the profession. To help the Chairman of the Select Committee on whether ASYE should be mandatory, I can tell him that 151 of the 152 local authorities take part in that course. We want to review that and see whether that level is maintained, because we think ASYE is an important part of social workers’ early experience of gaining professional knowledge.
We are under no illusions about the remaining challenges; there is still much more to do. The recent National Audit Office report on child protection performance was a timely reminder that the performance of children’s social care services is still far too variable across the country. We must acknowledge that although many local authorities provide a consistently effective core social work practice, the majority still struggle to do so.
The reviews by Professor Eileen Munro, Sir Martin Narey and David Croisdale-Appleby, among others, have given us a much deeper understanding of the issues faced by children’s social care. They describe a system in which initial social worker training is not universally preparing students for the challenges of the job, as I alluded to, and those already doing it often lack the time, specialist skills and supervision needed to achieve real change for children and families. The reviews also describe a system that focuses too much on management and is governed by prescribed approaches rather than excellent practice, and conclude that services have not always been designed around vulnerable children and that innovation has not been given enough space to thrive.
We are determined to address those challenges, as outlined in our “Putting children first” strategy. Going further and faster on our plan to drive up the skills and status of the children’s social work profession is central to that endeavour. To that end, I am working in partnership with my colleagues in the Department of Health to establish a new, bespoke independent regulator for social work that will set higher standards for social work both in what is expected of professionals in order to practise and in what is expected from universities and others providing initial social work education. It will also create a more rigorous approach to continuing professional development in social work—an area the Chairman of the Select Committee rightly raised—ensuring that social workers continue to develop throughout their careers, as called for in the report. In the past there has been too little recognition of the role this area has to play.
I am also bringing forward a new system of post-qualifying assessment and accreditation for child and family social workers. That is a key plank of our reforms, because it will provide, for the first time, a consistent way of ensuring that child and family social workers have the right knowledge and skills to do their jobs well. The new assessment will incentivise employers to invest properly in the development and support of their staff, as well as ensuring a mechanism for recognising the specialist skills that child and family social workers possess. Again, that work aligns with the recommendations of the Select Committee’s report. The consultation, which hon. Members are keen to see, is planned for publication before the end of the year, and I am sure they will want to contribute.
The assessment and accreditation system will also, for the first time, establish a consistent, clearly structured and well supported career pathway for child and family social workers, which will allow them to deepen their skills as they take on additional responsibility and, crucially, keep them in touch with practice. One of the problems we can all recognise is that in the past too many good social workers, as they gained experience, rather than remaining close to families and working their own cases, moved into management and behind desks. We therefore lose that expertise and the new crop of social workers coming through do not get the support they could have gained from those experienced social workers if they are no longer working with them.
Practice skill and expertise will be the most highly prized and rewarded asset across the whole career, from newly qualified social workers all the way through to practice leaders. Together, the reforms provide an opportunity and a solid platform from which to raise the status of child and family social work in the way the profession needs and deserves. They create the conditions for a strong, confident social work profession where practitioners are properly supported to thrive in very challenging front-line posts. The profession, and the children and families it serves, should expect no less.
I want to address the point made by the Chairman of the Select Committee about a professional body. It is right to say that over three years the Department for Education, with support from the Department of Health, spent more than £8 million of public money trying to set up the college of social work, but despite that significant investment the college was unable to secure the sufficient membership required to make it sustainable. However, I re-emphasise, as I did in evidence to the Select Committee, that it is important that there is a strong professional body for social work. It has to be sustainable, but also have a sense of ownership by the profession. It cannot be top-down; it has to be a bottom-up organisation. We want to continue to work with the British Association of Social Workers, other representatives of the workforce and the Department of Health to see how we can start to nurture and craft a professional body in that mould so that we have something that truly represents social workers and can go into bat for them when they need that.
It is also important to recognise that giving social workers the right knowledge and skills and setting high standards for practice will not on its own bring about the step change we need. Excellent social workers need to work within supportive and permissive organisations where they are given the flexibility to use their expertise in ways that have the greatest impact on children and families. As Eileen Munro identified, good social work is not about following processes and procedures, but too often that is what we have turned it into. We need a dynamic practice system where testing and evaluating new ways of working and learning from the best is the norm. We see that in other parts of public service, so why not in children’s social care?
It is our children’s social care innovation programme that is starting to foster that way of working. We have already funded over 50 projects and announced £200 million more for the future. We are also developing the first ever What Works centre for children’s social care. That is an important development, because for the first time there will be a repository of good practice for social workers to use and have confidence in for the work they do. We are also overhauling the serious case review process to better extract national learning when things go wrong.
We want to go further. The Children and Social Work Bill, which is currently before Parliament, includes a new power to innovate. Through that power, we are looking to say that, ultimately, excellent front-line social work practice should be defined not by the Government or Parliament but by local practice leaders, with more freedom to operate within a clear, safe statutory framework. Our “partners in practice” local authorities—eight of the highest-performing authorities—see the power as an important and potentially transformative opportunity.
The power has been criticised by some in the Lords. It is right that we debate that and that the quality of debate in Parliament is strong, but let us have a debate based on facts, not on unfounded propositions. Let me be clear: we do not want to privatise child protection services and we will not privatise child protection services. Indeed, there are already clear legislative restrictions on the outsourcing of children’s social care functions. It was never the intention to use the power to innovate to revisit those. However, to put it beyond doubt, we are amending the Children and Social Work Bill to rule out any use of the power in that way.
We will not remove fundamental rights or protections from children either. Our aim is to strengthen, not weaken protections. We want to let the best local authorities, led by leading-edge practice leaders, work in ways with more potential to make an actual difference for children instead of watching and waiting, hamstrung by excessive prescription.
I will quote from Eileen Munro, because we still value her views on how we are performing and the work we are doing:
“I welcome the introduction of the power to innovate set out in the Children and Social Work Bill. This is a critical part of the journey set out in my Independent Review of Child Protection towards a child welfare system that reflects the complexity and diversity of children’s needs. Trusting professionals to use their judgment rather than be forced to follow unnecessary legal rules will help ensure children get the help they need, when they need it.”
She is not a lone voice: the Children’s Commissioner, the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives, the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service, Catch22, Achieving for Children and the children’s social worker all hold similar views.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
The concern about the Children and Social Work Bill seems to be that the Government have been completely unable to say exactly which functions local authorities will be able to opt out of. Bearing in mind that a lot of the functions they have around children protect them from harm and keep them safe, is it not understandable that there is huge concern out there about where the Government are going with that?
Edward Timpson
Perhaps I can give the hon. Lady some examples of primary legislation where local authorities have asked that they be able to use the power to innovate where that is currently restricted in law. Under section 25 of the Children Act 1989, independent reviewing officers must be appointed for every looked-after child and they have to have regular reviews. We know that children often say that they do not like that. There are children who are in very stable placements for whom that can be disruptive and they ask for that not to happen, whereas other children need more intense oversight from an independent reviewing officer. That is one example of where local authorities want to have that flexibility.
There are also some anomalies that I am not sure many people appreciate. For instance, under section 66 of the 1989 Act, any child who is not cared for by a family or a guardian for 28 days counts as privately fostered and as such receives the same duties as other looked-after children, with visits and so on. That ends up capturing children coming over to language schools, which the local authority have to go and visit, to check on their welfare, despite those children being on a foreign exchange trip. Those are just some examples of measures where the local authorities that have shown an interest—we have to remember that this is a permissive power—would want some flexibility, in a safe and controlled environment, to test to see whether there is a different way of providing services that is absolutely focused on improving children’s outcomes more than anything else.
Edward Timpson
Briefly, because I want to make sure I finish my speech. I have not got on to mental health yet.
Mrs Lewell-Buck
Just one quick point for clarity: am I right to assume that the Minister is saying that anything is open as long as the local authority applies to the Secretary of State, or will it be just the two examples he has given? I am struggling to see what exactly is in the mix. This seems to be open to anything.
Edward Timpson
There are restrictions to the legislation that local authorities can apply to be disapplied. A local authority has to make the application itself and it has to consult with the local area. It then has to submit that application to an expert group, which will consider it and publish its findings. Even then, there has to be an affirmative resolution in both Houses before that local authority can test out that new way of working. I met the hon. Lady yesterday to talk a little bit about this and other areas of shared interest. I am happy to provide her with more details and I also suggest that we agree to meet again, so we can make sure that all of the information is provided.
The chairman of the Education Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Stroud, raised the issue of trusts, which I will touch on briefly. I in no way think that creating children’s social care trusts is a panacea for all ills. In most cases, when a local authority fails it will be able to improve its services with the right support, as is happening in Cumbria, Surrey and Buckinghamshire at the moment. However, where failure is persistent or systemic, it is right that we look carefully at whether the capacity for improvement exists in the local authority. We now have commissioners who go in and undertake a three-month review before reaching their conclusions and recommendations on the way forward.
Leaving services within council control is sometimes found to be the best approach to securing improvement, as in Bromley and Dudley, for example. In other cases, local authorities themselves agree that an independent trust model will create extra improvement capacity and help to turn things around, as is the case in Birmingham and Sunderland. Sometimes, where failure is deep-rooted and an authority does not have the capacity to improve itself, service control must be removed by my Department. I will not apologise for doing that. We cannot simply sit back and watch authorities fail over and over again, year after year, without trying new ways to bring about improvement. There is a growing bank of evidence following recent Ofsted inspections in Doncaster and Slough of services improving following the move to a trust after years of failure. Ofsted has particularly highlighted the strengthening of leadership and management in those trusts, which are critical components of any successful organisation.
To give the Chairman of the Committee an opportunity to respond and conclude the debate, let me now turn to my hon. Friend’s interest in the mental health and wellbeing of looked-after children and care leavers. I thank members of the Education Committee for their insightful report and commend them for their ongoing interest in this important area. I know all too well, from my personal experience, the nature of the challenges that children in care often face and the impact that can have on their mental health and the health of those who care for them. That is why my Department is taking strong action to improve support for children in care and care leavers, including the introduction of the staying put duty, so that all young people leaving foster care can continue living with their foster families after the age of 18. More than 50% of 18 year-olds in foster care have taken up that opportunity.
We are also undertaking a national stocktake of foster care to better understand current provision and how needs are matched with skills. I look forward to working with the Education Committee in looking at the evidence it gathers for its own report in this area. We are piloting the staying close programme, which enables young people leaving children’s homes to maintain links with those homes, as recommended by Sir Martin Narey’s review of children’s residential care. We published a new, cross-Government care leavers strategy, “Keep On Caring”, which sets out what we will do right across Government to ensure that care leavers get the support they need and also outlines our ambitions for trialling new and innovative ways of working. We are also taking legislation through Parliament that will, for the first time, define what it means to be a good corporate parent for children in care and care leavers.
When the state decides a child’s needs are such that we must take on parental responsibility, it has an overwhelming duty and responsibility to be the very best corporate parent it can be. It is right that, like all good parents, that responsibility continues when young people reach early adulthood. The new corporate parenting principles ensure that responsibility is given the weight and significance it deserves across the whole country. I hope hon. Members will support it.
Central to delivering our responsibilities as corporate parents is the promotion and support of the mental health and wellbeing of children in care and care leavers. That is an issue we take very seriously and on which we want to make timely and sustainable progress that tackles the shift in mindset needed around mental health and brings improvements to practice. Only this week, my noble Friend Lord Nash introduced an amendment to the Children and Social Work Bill that will explicitly capture the role of local authorities in promoting the mental health of looked-after children as a core part of the definition of a good corporate parent, which is significant.
I share the concerns of the hon. Member for South Shields about child and adolescent mental health services. They have been undervalued and underfunded for far too long, and we need to do far more to tackle that. The Government are investing £1.4 billion over the life of this Parliament to drive improvements in mental health services for children and young people. In addition, we are making a specific investment of more than £10 million to support the mental health of young people in secure children’s homes, who are some of the most vulnerable people in our society.
In order to get mental health support for children in care right, the Department of Health and the Department for Education have, as hon. Members have said, established an expert group to ensure that the emotional and mental health needs of children and young people in care and adopted from care and of care leavers are better met. It is a collaboration between social care, education and health colleagues, parents and carers and care leavers themselves. It is a comprehensive piece of work to map out the care pathway for a looked-after child in need of mental health support; it is not just looking at the point of entry into the care system.
The principle of having a mental health assessment for all children being brought into care is instinctively attractive, but I know—and I know others who share this view—that we have to look at each child individually. There will be some children who, at the point they come into care, are still suffering great trauma from an event that has led to them going into care. That is not the right moment for them to have such an assessment. There are other children, such as newborn babies and others, for whom it would also not be appropriate.
The expert group is gathering pace and gathering that evidence. As my noble Friend Lord Nash said on Report, we will take seriously its recommendations. Those may come during the duration of the group’s work and may also include potential changes to legislation. That is a commitment we have made, and we want to make progress and make sure we do not lose this opportunity.
The reports discussed today pose a range of challenges to the Government. I welcome the healthy debate they have generated, because they help to keep the issue at the top of the agenda and maintain the momentum, not just for me and my Department but right across Government. I share the ambition of other hon. Members, and we are united in our commitment to improving the lives of our most vulnerable children. Hon. Members should be in no doubt that I recognise and accept that there remain deep-seated issues we need to resolve, but I and the Government are more determined than ever to show the resolve and commitment needed to rise to those challenges with our clear and ambitious plan for fundamentally reforming the system. Our vulnerable children deserve no less.
Oral Answers to Questions
Emma Lewell Excerpts(8 years, 9 months ago)
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Edward Timpson
My hon. Friend is right that we have managed to secure more than £200 million of capital funding for special schools to increase the number of placements in his area and many others. We will be giving more details shortly, but I am sure that many people not just in Newark but right across England will be looking forward to seeing how they can improve the facilities and support that are available for children with special educational needs.
Mrs Emma Lewell-Buck (South Shields) (Lab)
I heard the Minister’s response to my hon. Friend the Member for Stretford and Urmston (Kate Green), but I was dismayed that in the “Schools that work for everyone” Green Paper there was not one single mention of children with special educational needs or disabilities. Is it not true that this Government have simply forgotten about them?
Edward Timpson
I welcome the hon. Lady back to the Front Bench. I know that she has had a number of epiphanies in the past few months, going from a remainer to a leaver to a returner, but I am pleased that she has taken up her present role, where I know she is a good fit. It is Dyspraxia Awareness Week, and I know that she is a very strong supporter of the work that the Dyspraxia Foundation and others do. She knows a lot about that issue and I wish her well in her role.
The Green Paper looks at raising standards across all schools for all children, and it includes, as I said previously, children with special educational needs. I hope that the hon. Lady will work with us to make sure that they get the best possible deal.