Point of Order

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 13th June 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker. Last Thursday a BBC investigation revealed shocking abuse and safeguarding failures in children’s homes run by Calcot Services for Children. The report included allegations of grooming, rape, sexual assault and Calcot cutting corners on staffing ratios. None of the incidents revealed by the investigation had been reported to Ofsted despite a statutory requirement to do so. At the same time as these appalling incidents are alleged to have been taking place Calcot Services for Children recorded profits of 36%. There has been no response so far from Government Ministers to the reports of serious failings by Calcot Services for Children. Is it your understanding, Madam Deputy Speaker, that the Government have any plans to update the House on their response to the investigation, the steps being taken to ensure the safety of the children under the care of Calcot Services for Children, and why, despite such serious allegations, Ofsted has continued to rate the homes provided by Calcot as good or outstanding?

[Madam Deputy Speaker (Dame Eleanor Laing)]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving me notice of her intention to raise this point of order. I can confirm that the Speaker’s Office has had no notice of a statement on that matter. I appreciate that it is a serious matter and I am sure that the hon. Lady will seek other means of raising it in the Chamber, and I am certain that if she were to seek the advice of the Clerks in the Table Office they would guide her on how best to do that. I am also confident that the Minister currently at the Dispatch Box, the Minister for Higher and Further Education, will have heard the point made by the hon. Lady—

Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

I thank the Minister for giving me advance sight of his statement today. Labour welcomes the report of the independent review of children’s social care. I would like to add my thanks to Josh MacAlister and his team for their hard work and commitment. I also want to pay tribute to the social workers, support workers, foster carers, children’s home staff, youth workers and everyone else who strives day in, day out to provide safety, support and stability to children who are in need or whose own families are unable to care for them. Their work is vital, it makes a huge difference, and it often goes unrecognised. At the top of my mind today are the group of care leavers I hosted in Parliament earlier this year. They were articulate, thoughtful and kind. All had been through experiences that no child should have to endure, and they all deserved far better than the current system had been able to deliver.

I welcome the review’s conclusion that a total reset of children’s social care is needed. That conclusion is a terrible indictment of the extent to which this Government have been failing children for more than a decade. During those 12 years, we have seen the number of children living in poverty rise to 4.3 million. That is a key causal factor underpinning the Government’s failure of children: the unbearable pressure on families increases the risk of abuse and neglect. We have also seen the number of looked-after children increase continually, up by a quarter since 2010; the number of section 47 inquiries, when a local authority has cause to suspect that a child is in need, has gone up by 78% since 2011; half of all children’s services departments have been rated “inadequate” or “requires improvement”; vacancy and turnover rates for children’s social workers are increasing; and outcomes for care-experienced children and young people are worsening. In the meantime, the 10 biggest private providers of children’s homes and private foster care placements made a jaw-dropping £300 million in profits last year.

We welcome the review’s clear statement that providing care for children should not be based on profit—it should not. The law recognises childhood as lasting until the age of 18, and it is shocking that the Government have continued to allow children to be placed in unregistered children’s homes and other completely unsuitable accommodation. We welcome the review’s conclusion that the use of unregistered placements for 16 and 17-year-olds must stop, and stop now.

At the heart of the Government’s failure is the erosion of early help and family support, which is demonstrated no more starkly than by the 1,300 Sure Start centres that have closed since 2010. We welcome the review’s focus on restoring early help to families so that many more children can be supported to remain and to thrive with their own family, on supporting kinship carers and on seeking to ensure that every looked-after child can build lifelong links with extended family members.

Although the Minister reannounced a series of policies today, there is nothing here that will deliver the transformation in children’s social care that the review demands. Successive piecemeal announcements are yet further indication of what the review describes as

“a lack of national direction about the purpose of children’s social care”.

The Minister does not seem to grasp the depth of change that the review requires, at scale, across the whole country.

Will the Minister commit to a firm date for publication of a comprehensive response to the review and a detailed implementation plan? Does he expect that there will be a need for legislation? How does this square with the Queen’s Speech voted on last week, from which children’s social care was completely absent? How will today’s announcement of early help investment in a handful of additional places ensure that early help services are available in every single area of the country, so that every family who need help can be supported?

What representations is the Minister making to the Treasury in response to the review? Will he commit, as the review demands, to an end to profiteering in children’s social care? How will he ensure that the voices and experiences of children are always at the heart of children’s social care? How will he guarantee that the workforce, who are the backbone of children’s social care, are fully engaged and involved as the reforms are implemented? Finally, how will he ensure that, as the reforms are implemented, the framework of accountability for decisions made by the state about the care of children is strengthened?

This review sets out the urgent need for the Government to put children first and to stop poverty, mental illness, substance misuse, domestic abuse, sexual abuse and other adverse childhood experiences becoming the defining experience of a child’s whole life, so that every child can thrive. Labour will always put children first. We did so in government, and we will do so again. This review represents an opportunity to deliver the total reset that is needed in children’s social care. It is an opportunity that must not be missed, and we will hold the Government to account every single day on the framework of support and the outcomes for our most vulnerable children.

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady asks a lot of questions, and I genuinely mean it when I say that I want to have as much of a cross-party approach as possible in tackling this issue and delivering the review.

I thank the hon. Lady for her largely constructive comments, and I thank her for the tone in which she referred to the review. We all want to act on the review to bring about the change we all want to see. Although I completely understand why she wants to talk about the past, we have to be honest with ourselves that, despite years of real-terms funding increases to children’s social care, too many children and young people have been failed and let down, and are still being failed and let down, by the system. System reform is decades overdue, so I hope she will understand why I want to focus on the future and how we will look to implement the review.

The hon. Lady rightly pushes me on implementation, which is key. The Secretary of State and I are determined that this will not be just another report gathering dust on a shelf in Whitehall—this is far too important. That is why I am establishing an implementation board with sector experts to drive the change that we want and need to see. An implementation plan will be delivered by the end of this year.

Finally, the hon. Lady should not, in any way, doubt my personal determination to implement many of the review’s recommendations. Many colleagues who look at my Instagram feed say I have the best job in Government, and to some extent they are right, but what they do not see is that every weekend I read the serious incident notification report detailing all the children who have been killed, murdered, abused or neglected, or who have taken their own life, during the previous week. It is a harrowing read. I know that no legislation, process, procedure or review—however good it is—can prevent evil, and I cannot promise that there will not be further cases like Arthur, Star, Victoria, Daniel or Peter. However, with this most excellent review—it really is excellent—we have a plan, a road map, and an opportunity that we must and will grasp to ensure that such cases are as rare as they are tragic.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 23rd May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

That is exactly why we spend more than £5 billion a year on childcare and early years, including: the offer for disadvantaged two-year-olds; the offer of 15 and 30 hours for three and four-year-olds, which is worth about £6,000 per child to parents; the universal credit offer, which is worth up to 85% of childcare costs; the tax-free childcare; and the holiday activities and food programme. Of course we take this issue incredibly seriously.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

For families with young children, soaring childcare costs are a huge pressure on the cost of living. A quarter of households earning between £20,000 and £30,000 a year are paying more than £100 a week for childcare. The Government’s only response so far has been a proposed cut to staff to child ratios in early years settings. Parents have not asked for that, and 98% of providers believe that it will do nothing to cut costs for parents and could reduce the quality of care. Will the Minister set out why he believes that asking parents to pay more for less is a remotely adequate response to the rising cost of living?

[Will Quince]

Over the summer, we will consult on moving to the Scottish staff to child ratios for two-year-olds—from a ratio of one to four compared with one to five. I want all parents and carers to receive value for money, and more families to benefit from affordable, flexible and quality childcare. Such changes would help settings to deliver that by handing them more autonomy and flexibility. However—this is important—my priority continues to be to provide safe and high-quality early years provision for our very youngest children; as I have said before, I will not compromise on those things.

[Helen Hayes]

More than half of families with two-year-olds do not access any formal early years education or childcare at all, while a shocking 65% of eligible two-year-olds are not receiving the full free entitlement. Early years education makes a huge difference to children’s development and can have a lifelong impact by mitigating disadvantage. What is the Minister doing to increase the pitifully low uptake of free places for two-year-olds?

[Will Quince]

The hon lady is absolutely right that take-up of the two-year-old disadvantage offer is much lower than we want it to be. In truth, take-up of the universal credit childcare offer is lower than we want it to be and take-up of the tax-free childcare offer is lower than we want it to be. Throughout the House, we all have a duty to promote those offers more widely, and I certainly understand that the House will.

Making Britain the Best Place to Grow Up and Grow Old

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 16th May 2022 Commons Chamber

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

This Gracious Speech should have been an opportunity for the Government to rise to the unprecedented challenges facing our country and, in doing so, to make Britain the best place to grow up and grow old. Its lack of ambition and its stony silence on some of the biggest challenges facing the UK speak volumes about a Government who are out of touch and out of ideas. Worse still, many of the challenges that we need to address are a direct consequence of 12 years of Tory Government—12 years in which, instead of stepping up with ambition for our country, the Government have run down our public services, undermined our economy, negotiated a disastrous exit from the European Union and mired themselves further and further in defending the indefensible current occupant of No. 10 Downing Street.

Our country has been left lacking resilience, both when the covid-19 pandemic struck and as global factors have brought pressure to bear on the cost of living. The Government cannot always prevent international shocks to our economy, but they have a primary duty to ensure that we are as resilient as possible when they come. In that duty, this Government have failed.

The UK cannot be the best place in which to grow up or grow old while households across the country are struggling to make ends meet, while parents wake up in the morning and go to bed at night worrying about how they will feed their children and keep a roof over their head, and while pensioners worry about whether they will be able to eat and keep warm. Knocking on doors in my constituency in recent months, I have been really shocked to see increasing numbers of older people coming to the door wearing a coat on cold days. It is shameful that that is happening in Britain in the 21st century.

The Queen’s Speech includes new Bills to reform the regulation of social housing and private renting. Such legislation is long overdue. Next month is the fifth anniversary of the horrific Grenfell Tower fire, but tenants still cannot have confidence that changes have been made that will protect them. In the private rented sector, I have been calling for an end to section 21 evictions for the past six years, and it is very hard to understand what has taken the Government so long. Alongside the overdue reforms, it is clear that the Government have given up on the large-scale delivery of social housing that is urgently needed to address the housing crisis.

The UK cannot be the best place to grow up while children are condemned to live in poor-quality private rented accommodation that their parents can barely afford to rent or heat. I hope that the Government will consider accepting an amendment to the social housing regulation Bill along the lines proposed in my recent ten-minute rule Bill, the Social Housing (Emergency Protection of Tenancy Rights) Bill, which I called Georgia’s law.

Georgia’s law recognises the devastating impact that a threat of gang violence can have on family life. When a young person is threatened and their family have to move, they can lose all their stability, be placed in temporary accommodation and end up on a waiting list for a new social housing tenancy for years. That is what happened to my constituent Georgia, with catastrophic consequences for her family. Georgia’s law would place new duties on social housing providers to protect the tenancy of a tenant whose family are threatened with violence, helping to limit the harm of gang violence in our communities. It has cross-party support and would make a huge difference.

Finally, as a co-chair of the all-party parliamentary group on adult social care, I want to say how utterly unacceptable it is that this Gracious Speech contains no mention of adult social care. The Government have introduced an unfair and unaffordable tax hike, which they justified in terms of the urgent need to provide additional funding for social care. Funding for the NHS is, of course, welcome, although there are far fairer ways to raise it, but the social care sector, which was ignored, neglected and even blamed by the Government during the covid-19 pandemic, and which faces a workforce crisis and a funding crisis, will not receive any funding for at least three years.

The UK cannot possibly be the best place to grow old while across the country people fear losing their homes to pay for their care, and while the workforce tasked with caring for our loved ones are burned out, with staff leaving in their droves to work in retail and distribution because the pay is better. I ask the Government: where is the ambition? Where is the empathy and insight into the real and intolerable pressures that our communities face? Where are the solutions that we so desperately need to the problems that they have created?

Foster Carers

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this important and timely debate, and for speaking powerfully about her experience. This debate is a welcome opportunity to pay tribute to foster carers across the country for all they do to provide safety, stability, kindness, love and care to looked-after children.

Foster carers are the bedrock of the care system and provide more than 70% of care placements. Fostering is challenging and demanding, but it is also deeply rewarding and can quite literally change the course of a child’s life. Foster carers are both hugely generous and highly skilled, and fostering relationships can last a lifetime—well beyond the duration of a placement, with all the benefits that a stable, long-term relationship of trust can provide.

I am grateful to the Fostering Network for all it does to support foster carers, and for bringing a group of experienced foster carers to Parliament today. It was a great pleasure to meet them earlier, and very moving to hear about their experiences. I thank them for all they do.

We have heard today about some of the benefits and rewards of fostering, but also about the challenges. This has been an excellent debate, and I thank all right hon. and hon. Members who have taken part. I do not have time to mention everybody’s contribution, but the hon. Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath (Neale Hanvey) spoke movingly about his experience as a foster carer. I thank him for mentioning Sinéad Browne, my constituent, whose organisation, Compliments of the House, is also based in my constituency. She is an absolutely remarkable and inspirational young woman.

There are some very significant challenges with the recruitment and retention of foster carers. The Fostering Network estimates that fostering services need to recruit at least a further 8,100 foster families in England in the next 12 months alone. Nine in 10 fostering services report a shortage of foster carers to meet the needs of children in the local population, with particularly acute shortages for teenagers, large sibling groups, children with disabilities and parent and child placements. More than a third of foster carers said that their allowances did not meet the full cost of looking after a child, and only 53% described the support they received from their fostering service as excellent or good.

Although the interest in fostering has been growing in recent years, the current recruitment process for foster carers has an astonishingly low success rate and the number of applications has been decreasing. In the year ending 31 March 2021, there were 160,635 enquiries from prospective fostering families, but only 10,145 foster carer applications were received. Thirty-two per cent. of those applications were approved, so just 2% of expressions of interest resulted in an approved foster family. The Education Committee has highlighted a lack of diversity among foster carers and the urgent need to recruit new foster carers from a more diverse range of backgrounds to meet the needs of looked-after children.

Those challenges must be considered in the context of a wider children’s social care system that, after 12 years of Conservative government, is in a state of crisis. Almost 50% of children’s services departments are rated by Ofsted as inadequate or requiring improvement. That is a national, not just a local, issue and it requires the Government to show leadership to sort it out.

The Competition and Markets Authority has revealed the scale of the scandal of profiteering among some providers of residential placements for children, with the 10 biggest providers of children’s homes and private fostering placements making profits totalling £300 million. Across the country, social workers are raising concerns about workload and burnout, and councils are struggling to fill vacancies.

All those issues have an impact on the recruitment and retention of foster carers. Poor-performing and under-resourced children’s services departments will struggle to provide the level or continuity of social work support that foster families need. Millions of pounds of public money is being siphoned off in profit by private organisations and is not being spent on the wellbeing of vulnerable children.

Foster carers are clear about the things that make a difference. It is absolutely essential, and indeed acknowledged by the Government, that all the costs to foster carers of providing a placement should be covered in full. With that in mind, I ask the Minister how he calculated the new fostering allowance rates, which took effect at the beginning of this month. The allowance for looking after a two-year-old has gone up by £1 a week in London and not at all in the rest of England. The allowance for looking after a child aged 11 to 15 has gone up by just £5 a week. There is a cost of living crisis bearing down on families across the country, with food, fuel and energy costs all increasing rapidly, and inflation set to reach 9%. Can the Minister explain how he thinks such a paltry increase will help with the recruitment and retention of foster carers?

In addition to financial support, foster carers need to be able to access support in many other ways. Foster carers have told me that the continuity of relationships with social workers is vital, both for them and the children in their care. However, all too often they face a constant churn of new social workers, making it really hard to build relationships and trust and for practical support to be provided when needed.

Peer support is also vital. I would like to pay tribute to the Mockingbird constellation model developed by the Fostering Network, which builds networks of foster families in a local area who provide support for one another, replicating the benefits of a large, extended family for children and foster carers alike. Mental health support is also vital. Looked-after children have often suffered significant trauma and need to access therapeutic support. However, across the country, children are waiting months and even years for children and adolescent mental health services. The Government must fix CAMHS so that foster families can access mental health support as soon as their child needs it.

It is no exaggeration to say that we could not do without foster carers. They are absolutely critical to the role of the state as a corporate parent and to the tens of thousands of children for whom they provide a loving home. Foster carers urgently need more recognition for their vital role. Most importantly, the Government must urgently fix the crisis in children’s social care, so that foster care takes place within a system that can readily deliver the wider network of support that children and foster carers should be able to rely on.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 14th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I thank my right hon. Friend for his question and all the work he does in this area. It is so very important that at the heart of the SEND review, we have early identification and early support, and I look forward to continuing to work with him on this important agenda.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The Government’s own figures show that almost 50% of children with additional needs are waiting longer than five months for an education, health and care plan. One in five requests is refused and 95% of those decisions are overturned by the tribunal. Families fighting for support were promised that the SEND review would help, but two and a half years on, they are still waiting, while children are being systematically let down by this Government. What assurance can the Minister provide that the SEND review will deliver timely support for families and an end to fighting at tribunals?

[Will Quince]

First, let me say that in the next financial year, high-needs funding for children and young people with complex needs is increasing by £1 billion to more than £9.1 billion. That is an unprecedented increase of 13%, and it comes on top of the £1.5 billion increase over the past two years, but that is just the finances. Over and above the £2.6 billion we are investing in capital, the SEND review will answer many of the questions that the hon. Lady rightly poses, and she just has to wait a handful more days.

Kinship Care for Babies

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 22nd February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Mundell. I congratulate the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) on securing this important debate.

I put on the record that, until recently, I was an officer of the all-party parliamentary group on kinship care, chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Gwynne). In the work of that group, I met kinship carers regularly, and I was involved in the parliamentary taskforce on kinship care, which made recommendations on the additional support that should be provided to kinship carers.

I am really grateful to all right hon. and hon. Members who have contributed to today’s debate, but I pay particular tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish, who spoke so powerfully about his experience of caring for his grandson Lyle. He discussed the legal labyrinth that kinship carers face and the postcode lottery of support that applies across the country, but he also spoke movingly about the unconditional nature of love that characterises kinship care, and how lucky he is to be able to look after Lyle. I think we would all agree that Lyle is also very lucky to have such a lovely granddad.

Other right hon. and hon. Members have highlighted the time commitments entailed in kinship care; the disparity in entitlement to paid leave between new parents, whether by birth or adoption, and kinship carers; the disparity of access to free childcare affecting kinship carers; the importance of consistency in care and attachment for children in the care system, and how successions of people dropping in and out of a child’s life can compound the original trauma that led to them being in the care system in the first place; and about the negative consequences and costs to individuals and to society of failing to look after children in the care system properly.

I pay tribute to kinship carers across the country who care for babies and children when relatives or close friends are unable to do so. I think every one of us would find the idea of a cherished niece, nephew, grandchild or close friend being taken into care and looked after by strangers, however loving and capable, almost unbearable, particularly since such circumstances almost always result from a tragedy; addiction, domestic abuse or serious mental or physical ill health may have befallen the child’s birth parents. The 180,000 families across the country who have stepped in to care for the children of a family member or close friend know of the enormous personal sacrifice and considerable extra cost involved.

I also pay tribute to the Family Rights Group, Kinship and the Kinship Care Alliance for the work they do to support kinship carers, and also St Michael’s Fellowship, a very special organisation based in my constituency that provides support to very young parents specifically with the aim of reducing the risk of the need for care proceedings.

We know that the number of babies subject to care proceedings is increasing rapidly, from more than 2,400 in 2012-13 to more than 2,900 in 2019-20. Before we look at the support that is needed for kinship carers, it is important to ask why this increase is happening. The Family Rights Group has highlighted the erosion in early help and support for vulnerable women during pregnancy and immediately after childbirth. More than 1,000 Sure Start centres have closed since 2010, and the Government have so far committed to open family hubs in just 75 locations across the country. The National Children’s Bureau estimates that Government funding available to councils for children’s services fell by 24% between 2010-11 and 2019-20, from £9.9 billion to £7.5 billion in real terms, and the impact of the pandemic is likely to have made it even harder for councils to offer early intervention for families. There is a direct link: if support that could be given to vulnerable women who are pregnant is not being provided, the risk that their babies end up being subject to care proceedings will increase.

We know that domestic abuse is a common reason for the removal of children from their parents, yet too often mothers who have experienced domestic abuse feel that they are punished further by a child welfare system that blames them for failing to protect their child while not holding the perpetrator of their abuse to account. The failures of the Government to ensure that early help is always available to the most vulnerable families, wherever they live in the country, has a direct bearing on the increase in the number of babies who are subject to care proceedings.

It is also very concerning that when babies are subject to care proceedings, short-notice hearings are now the norm, with 86.3% of cases involving babies in 2019-20 being heard at short notice, and one in every six cases involving a newborn baby heard on the very same day. Clearly, there are emergencies in which the safety of the baby demands that immediate action is taken, but we must discuss why emergency hearings are becoming the norm rather than the exception, and understand in how many cases involving short-notice hearings there were missed opportunities to identify risks, offer support to parents, or explore kinship care options earlier. Short-notice hearings allow no time for families to prepare, to decide whether and how they can take on the care of a baby, or to ensure they are properly represented and that there are good channels of communication with children’s social services.

Since we know that kinship care delivers better outcomes for children than many other forms of non-parental care, a system that routinely fails to ensure that kinship options for care of a baby are properly explored surely lets down babies and their families. Kinship estimates that for every 1,000 children who are removed from local authorities and put into kinship care, £40 million is saved in placement costs.

The Family Rights Group introduced family group conferences to the UK from Australia in the 1990s. They bring together a child’s family and other adults who are important to the child, to create a plan for the child that addresses concerns. They can result in support being provided to parents, which removes the need for care proceedings, or they can explore care options within the wider family.

Kinship care delivers better outcomes for children and their families and saves the Government millions of pounds each year, but many studies have acknowledged that kinship carers are not well supported. That creates perverse incentives and often unbearable hardships and strain for families who want to do the right thing for the children they love.

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

Order. Ms Hayes, can you bring your remarks to a close? I am keen to ensure that the Minister has enough time to respond.

[Helen Hayes]

I will finish by saying that there is an urgent need for the Government to look comprehensively at the framework of support that is offered to kinship carers in order to enable more families to take on the care and support of a child whom they love.

[David Mundell (in the Chair)]

I call the Minister, but I want to ensure that Dame Andrea has the opportunity to respond.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 31st January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Michelle Donelan]

I know that the Minister for School Standards, my hon. Friend the Member for Worcester (Mr Walker), will be only too happy to meet my right hon. Friend. It is important that I remind the House that schools are subject to political impartiality, and guidance on this will be updated shortly.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

Taxpayer-subsidised childcare is increasingly being taken over by large for-profit companies quartered overseas, according to new research by University College London and the Nuffield Foundation. These companies have growing debts and charge high fees to parents while having among the lowest levels of staff qualifications and pay. They are reinvesting little in childcare provision. Does the Minister believe that repaying corporate debt represents value for money for taxpayers while families across the country struggle to access childcare that they can afford?

[Michelle Donelan]

We are investing additional funding for the entitlements worth £160 million in 2022-23. I know that the Minister for Children and Families, the Under-Secretary of State for Education, my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), will be only too happy to meet the hon. Member to discuss this in detail.

Early Years Educators

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 25th January 2022 Westminster Hall

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Gray. I congratulate the hon. Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) on securing this important debate to mark Childcare and Early Education Week, and on his work with the APPG on childcare and early education to establish and promote this important week to acknowledge, celebrate and reflect on the vital role of the early years sector.

I pay tribute to everyone who works in early years education and childcare. There are few more important tasks than ensuring that every child has the best possible start in life. We owe a huge debt of gratitude to everyone who dedicates their working time to looking after and supporting very young children to grow, develop and thrive, whether as childminders or in nursery settings. It is a vocation to work with children. Across the country, as we speak, hundreds of thousands of early years professionals, the vast majority of them women, are nurturing and caring for children, and supporting them to develop and grow.

The theme for this year’s Childcare and Early Education Week is, “We are educators”. Under-fives learn in different ways from older children, but they are learning voraciously every single day. The best early years provision is underpinned by an understanding of child development and a richness of curriculum, every bit as complex as that found in our formal school system. Early years educators have the capacity to have a dramatic and lifelong impact on a child’s life, protecting against the effects of poverty and disadvantage, and reducing inequality. They can literally alter the foundations. “We are educators” is an important statement of fact, but it is also a challenge, particularly to the Government, to give early years professionals the status they deserve as a vital part of our education system that has parity with post-five provision.

I thank all hon. Members who have spoken this afternoon. We are in danger of an outbreak of consensus on the importance of improvements in the status and pay of early years professionals, of staffing ratios and of good SEND provision and support for kinship carers. I would like to pay tribute in her absence to my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn (Tulip Siddiq), who was my predecessor in this role and who for six years tirelessly showed her dedication to the early years sector. I join the hon. Member for Bury North (James Daly) in paying tribute to Jack Dromey, who was a dedicated champion of early years education and who I know is very much missed by Members from all parties in the House.

Today, we are celebrating the early years and childcare sector, but the speeches we have heard are in stark contrast to the woeful neglect of the sector that we have seen during the past two years of the coronavirus pandemic. Time after time, early years provision has been an afterthought for this Government, considered and treated differently from the rest of the education system, and too often early years providers are left to fend for themselves.

[Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on her powerful speech. Does she agree that the situation she just described is reflected in the Government’s decision to cut over 1,300 Sure Start centres in the last decade? In one year alone in Barnsley, nine were shut and we have a quarter of our kids growing up in poverty. Although family hubs are welcome, does she share my disappointment that we could have prevented there being a need for them by not shutting Sure Start centres in the first place?

--- Later in debate ---

[Helen Hayes]

I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. We had that infrastructure in Sure Start centres across the country, but 1,000 of them have closed, which is a shameful part of this Government’s record. Although it is welcome that they have recognised that terrible mistake with the introduction of family hubs, 150 family hubs across the country are no substitute for the 1,000 Sure Start centres that have closed their doors for good.

Early years settings have been open to all children since July 2020, without access to lateral flow tests or to additional funds for enhanced cleaning or personal protective equipment, despite the obvious inability of staff working with very small children to socially distance. Staff have been left vulnerable to infection and anxious about their own health and that of their families. I have been contacted by many providers in recent weeks who are struggling to stay open because of exceptionally high levels of sickness absence, as omicron has whipped through early years settings. With that coming on top of two years of stress and uncertainty, many who work in early years settings are exhausted and burnt out, and they are quite simply bewildered that the Government have not had their back.

Even before the pandemic, there were deep structural problems in the early years sector. The way in which the Government’s 30-hour entitlement is implemented does not work for providers and it certainly does not work for parents. A freedom of information request by the Early Years Alliance revealed that the cost of “fully funding” the entitlement would reach £7.49 an hour by 2020-21. Knowing that, the Government contribute average hourly funding of just £4.89 for a place for a three or four-year-old. Is it any wonder that the cost of childcare for working parents is spiralling up and up, while thousands of providers have closed and child-adult ratios are increasing in many settings?

The UK is among the most expensive places in the OECD for childcare, despite spending more than £4 billion of public money on it a year. The cost of childcare is a huge pressure on household finances at the best of times, but in the context of the current cost of living crisis, the pressure is unbearable for many families. High costs also deepen disadvantage, creating a system in which wealthier families can afford the highest quality provision, while families on lower incomes all too often have to settle for less.

As we begin to emerge from the pandemic, dealing with the devastating impact that it has had on our children should be a top priority for the Government. The youngest children are suffering the consequences of lockdown in their speech and language development, gross motor skills and social skills, and they have been denied many vital, indeed formative, experiences. In contrast to our Prime Minister, most of our youngest children will not have had a birthday party in the past two years—a contrast that shames him.

As a result of all that has been sacrificed, primary schools are reporting higher numbers of children who are not school-ready when they arrive in reception, and the impacts are worst for the poorest children. There is a gaping disadvantage gap that must be addressed urgently.

However, while the Government are mired in defending an indefensible Prime Minister, they have no vision or plan for the early years sector. There was no plan to support the sector through the pandemic; providers felt, in the words of the Early Years Alliance, as if they were “the forgotten sector”. There is no plan to support families with young children who are struggling with exorbitant childcare costs and who now also face a biting cost of living crisis. Most importantly, there is no plan for children, to provide the additional input that the youngest children need to catch up on all that they have lost during the pandemic.

Labour fully recognise the vital role of early years educators, who deserve recognition, gratitude and support, as well as a plan from this Government. I pay tribute to them today and I hope that this afternoon the Minister will provide the plan that is so desperately needed.

--- Later in debate ---

[Will Quince]

The hon. Lady is right that there are significant issues within the SEND system, which is why we have the SEND review. There are local authorities with significant pressure on their budgets. We are putting more money into the high-needs budget—about 10%, year on year—but we are conscious that money alone will not solve the issue. That is why we have the SEND review. I am working at pace on that as we speak. The SEND review will conclude and we will launch a Green Paper and a consultation by the end of March, so within the first quarter of the year. The hon. Lady’s point is well made.

My hon. Friend the Member for Truro and Falmouth (Cherilyn Mackrory) mentioned people leaving the profession. I will come back to that point, because it is really important. Recruitment and retention are key. I hear her call about the pilots in Cornwall and I will certainly look into that; I am always keen to visit Cornwall, whenever possible, so I will bear that in mind.

My hon. Friend also mentioned a largely female workforce, which is something I want to address. I want to see more men working in early years settings. It is really important. As my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester referenced, the Government want families to stay together wherever possible. Where they do not, there is not necessarily a male role model in the household, so it is really important in education settings that there are good male role models for children to look up to. We have the Pulse survey, which monitors the private, voluntary and independent sector. We meet with the sector regularly to keep on top of these issues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) mentioned ratios, which I will come on to very briefly. I assure him that local authorities can retain only 5% of the funding allocated; they have to pass the rest on. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton South (Andrew Lewer) referenced the whole-child approach, the first 1,001 days and family hubs. I recognise that he welcomes the £300 million investment that the Government are making in this area.

Numerous hon. Members mentioned funding. I agree that high-quality childcare supports children’s learning and development and prepares young people for school, as well as having a huge impact on later outcomes. That is why the sector is working really hard to support children and their parents. It is also why the Government have spent more than £3.5 billion in each of the last three years on early education entitlements, and we will continue to support families with their childcare costs.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester rightly pointed out, we announced additional funding of £160 million for 2022-23, £180 million the year after and £170 million the year after that, compared to the current year. That is for local authorities to increase the hourly rates paid to childcare providers and reflects the cost pressures that are anticipated and the changes in the number of eligible children.

So what does that mean? For 2022-23, we will increase the hourly funding rates for all local authorities—by 21p an hour for the disadvantage entitlement for two-year-olds in the vast majority of areas and by 17p an hour for the entitlement for three and four-year-olds.

I want to come on to the point about recruitment and retention, because they are really important.

[Helen Hayes]

Will the Minister give way on that point?

[Will Quince]

If the hon. Lady will give me time, I will come back to that point if I can.

Recruitment and retention are really important. Early years provision in 2021 was delivered by an estimated 328,000 staff. The majority of providers work to the required staff to child ratios for each age group, with some providers reporting that their ratios are more generous than the statutory minimum. We recognise that recruitment and retention are key issues for the sector, and local authorities are reporting significant pressures on providers. Importantly, we are working with the sector to build our understanding of the situation and how we might better support providers. We have commissioned qualitative research interviews on the theme of the early years workforce and a survey on the impact that covid is having on the workforce. We are working closely with the sector to identify some of those issues.

To aid recruitment and retention, we have also invested £153 million in programmes to support workforce developments as part of the £180 million package that I referenced. However, I hear what my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester said about the pressures and the questions he rightly raised about salary and how that impacts on recruitment. I will continue to listen to him, the all-party parliamentary group and the sector.

On ratios, the statutory framework for early years foundation stage sets out the staff to child ratios to help ensure that there is adequate staffing to meet the needs of, and to safeguard, children. They assume that the youngest children are the most vulnerable—I think that is the right approach—and need the greatest number of staff, but providers may need more staff where other needs are identified—for example, special educational needs. The Government are committed to working with the sector to support covid recovery, as well as on the broader concerns.

I want to clarify that there is a difference in ratios between England and Scotland, and I will look at that closely, but I assure all those who have raised the issue of ratios that I will always take an evidence-based approach. I will be very careful and considered in the way that I approach this and I will always put at the heart of this issue the needs of children and young people and the safeguarding of children. I will of course work with the APPG.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Siobhan Baillie) referenced military-style childcare planning. I very much recognise that myself. Childcare costs and pressures are acute for many families. They are the second highest cost only to their mortgage or rent. We recognise that and it is something I am looking at that closely as part of my portfolio. I am interested to hear about her work on the universal credit offer. At the moment, the take-up for that is, frankly, too low.

With regard to maintained nursery schools, the points were well made and I echo the comments made about the late Member for Birmingham Erdington, Jack Dromey, who was a passionate advocate in this area. He last raised this with me just before Christmas and his voice will be sorely missed. The funding rate for maintained nursery schools will increase by 3.5% next year. That gives them the long-term certainty that they asked for. However, I recognise that they have some unique characteristics, such as a headteacher and a special educational needs co-ordinator, so I am looking at this closely and I will raise this with the Treasury.

Finally, I will touch again on SEND, which is absolutely a passion of mine. As part of the SEND review, we have to get early identification and early action at the heart of that. The earlier we identify the need, the better the support we can put in place, giving parents confidence, but most importantly, providing better outcomes for children and young people with special educational needs.

To close, I am enormously grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester for the support he has given this agenda today and to all those who have contributed to the debate. The steps we have taken underline the importance of early education and the role of educators in that sector. The Government have made a substantial financial commitment that will in decades to come provide the workforce with the skills and expertise to ensure that no child is left behind. I look forward to continuing to work with my hon. Friend, the APPG and the sector to progress these issues further.

Oral Answers to Questions

Helen Hayes Excerpts

Monday 6th December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Will Quince]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. I will tell her exactly what we are doing. We have increased the high needs funding budget by £750 million a year for each of the previous three years. The spending review of 2021 provides a further £1.6 billion to that budget, an extra £2.6 billion in capital funding, an extra £42 million—but the hon. Lady is right: it is not just about money. That is why we have the comprehensive SEND review, which will report in the first quarter of next year.

[Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)]

The past two years have been incredibly difficult for children with special educational needs and disability. While the Government continue to delay the publication of the long-awaited SEND review, families are suffering now. Some 15,000 children with an education, health and care plan are still waiting to receive the provision specified in their plan, and more than 40% of plans are not issued within the statutory 20-week period.

Can I press the Minister again? Families up and down the country with children with SEND are losing confidence in the Government’s ability to deliver. What is the Minister doing now to support children with SEND and their families who are suffering while this Government continue to let them down?

[Will Quince]

I welcome the hon. Lady to her new position. I agree with her that the pandemic has had a disproportionate impact on young people with SEND and their families, and we are committed to helping pupils, including those with SEND, to make up for lost learning. We have provided additional uplifts for those who attend specialist settings; we have invested that extra £42 million. I accept that the SEND review is taking longer than we wanted it to, but it is a priority for me and for the Government, and there will be a report in the first quarter of next year.