Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gillian Keegan

Monday 29th April 2024 Commons Chamber

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

Coram’s 2024 childcare survey found that just 6% of local authorities are confident that they will have enough childcare places for disabled children. High-quality early years education is essential in ensuring that children’s needs are identified at the most important time for their development. The children’s Minister, the hon. Member for Wantage (David Johnston), did not give a clear answer on this last month and his statement last week made no reference to disabled children. Is the Secretary of State really confident that every eligible family with a disabled child has been able to access a childcare place as part of the April expansion—yes or no?

[Gillian Keegan]

I will expand on the yes or no, as the hon. Lady wants a clear answer and obviously has not heard the clear answer that she been given before. Local authorities have a statutory duty to provide places for all children, including those with special educational needs, but we are working with organisations such as Dingley’s Promise to review special educational needs inclusion, and to see what more we can do to encourage providers to further consider what they can do to provide places. However, we will work with local authorities to make sure that we improve this.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gillian Keegan

Monday 11th December 2023 Commons Chamber

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

Would-be educational psychology trainees for September 2024 have been left in limbo because of delays in the Department confirming the available funding. The number of educational psychologists has fallen since 2010, despite requests for education, health and care plans increasing every year. That national shortage of qualified practitioners is contributing to the crisis in SEND that is affecting so many families across the country. Does the Secretary of State agree that this uncertainty about Government funding for educational psychology training is unacceptable, and when does she expect it to be resolved?

[Gillian Keegan]

We announced in November 2022 that a further £21 million was going to be spent to train more than 400 educational psychologists.

Reform of Children’s Social Care

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gillian Keegan

Thursday 2nd February 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I thank the Secretary of State for advance sight of her statement. The independent review of children’s social care rightly called for a “radical reset” of a system it described as

“skewed to crisis intervention, with outcomes for children that continue to be unacceptably poor and costs that continue to rise.”

The review was necessary because we have had more than a decade of the erosion of services for children and young people in which poverty and inequality have been increasing; preventive services have been stripped away, while the need for crisis interventions has rocketed; and Sure Start centres have closed, while private providers of children’s homes and foster placements have raked in huge profits and teenagers have been placed in unregulated care settings, where 29 have tragically died in the last five years.

I pay tribute to social workers, foster carers, kinship carers, youth workers, directors of children’s services and all who work with the most vulnerable children and their families and advocate for them, especially those who use their own, often painful, experiences of the care system to give voice to the needs of others. Across the country, they will be left asking of today’s plan, “Is this really it?” While some additional funding is welcome, this is not the radical reset that the review demanded and that we need. There is no vision for the direction of children’s social care. There is no ambition for our most vulnerable children. There is no cross-cutting commitment from the top of Government to deliver better for every child and every care-experienced person in every part of our country. This Government have spent months legislating to restrict the fundamental rights to protest and to strike, but they have chosen not to make time to legislate to strengthen protections for children.

The disadvantage and discrimination suffered by care-experienced people is a deep injustice, yet there is no plan of the scale and ambition needed to address the structural issues that fail them so appallingly. Kinship carers have been badly let down by a system that has never properly been designed to support them. While more support for kinship carers is welcome, this plan falls far short of what they need.

There is a workforce crisis in children’s social care, but there is no commitment to a broader workforce plan. Last year, the 20 biggest private providers of children’s homes and private foster placements made £300 million in profits. The Government’s own data shows that six in 10 councils are spending more than three quarters of their funding for residential placements with private providers—providers such as the Hesley Group, where a placement costs £250,000, but instead of high-quality care and support, children were subjected to horrific abuse. I welcome the consultation on national rules for the use of agency social workers, but where is the plan to end the grotesque profiteering in children’s social care and ensure that funding is always spent on the best-quality care and support?

Thirteen years of Conservative Government have been a disaster for our most vulnerable children and their families. Hundreds of thousands of children have grown up in a care system that has failed them. They will not get their childhood back. Does the Secretary of State think that today’s announcements will support improvements in the 43% of children’s services departments currently rated inadequate or requiring improvement? What will the impact be on kinship carers currently gripped by the cost of living crisis? How will the measures announced today deliver meaningful support to 16 and 17-year-olds currently placed in unregulated settings? What meetings has she had with other Government Departments whose policies play a role in the disadvantage and discrimination suffered by care-experienced people?

When will profiteering by providers of children’s homes and foster placements end? How will these piecemeal measures ensure that we see a transformative change in the way we support our most vulnerable children and that the aim of long-lasting, loving relationships for every child is the driving force at the heart of children’s services everywhere? Finally, does the Secretary of State really believe that this is enough?

[Gillian Keegan]

I think I made it clear that this is the start of the journey, to lay the foundations for wider whole-system reform. Many people have had good intentions in this area. Many initiatives have been started after a review. Many things have been tried, and many things have not worked. We need this to be evidence-led. These are very complex cases and situations, and we need evidence to see what really works, not just good intentions, which everybody has in this area. This is the start of that, through the implementation plan. We must put families at the heart of that and change the whole purpose of the system, which is not really focused on trying to get people the help they need, as opposed to just intervening and telling them what they ought to be doing. We need to help people in the first instance to stay with families.

The hon. Lady mentioned the work that had been done on local authority intervention and improvement. Every local authority has specific needs and circumstances, but we have done a lot of work in this area, including a programme to improve the performance of local authorities, which are key to delivering these services on the ground. Since 2017, the programme has provided immediate support to local authorities. The number of inadequate local authorities has gone from 30 down to 14, and the number of local authorities that are good or outstanding in this area has gone from 54 to 85.

For the first time, there is an investment in kinship carers, specifically in training and help to support them, and of course local authorities currently provide a wide range of support to kinship carers. The hon. Lady mentioned excessive profiteering by some children’s homes. We will be introducing a new financial oversight regime, because we are determined to make sure we cut that out. It is unacceptable.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gillian Keegan

Monday 16th January 2023 Commons Chamber

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

Childcare is essential social infrastructure that underpins our economy by supporting parents to work. Yet in 2022, more than 5,000 childcare providers closed, and more than half of all local authority areas saw a net loss of childcare places. The Government have admitted that they pay providers less than it costs them to deliver so-called free childcare places, and with energy bills and wages going up from April, many more providers are at risk of closure. A crisis in our early years sector is happening right now. What are the Government going to do to stop further childcare providers closing?

[Gillian Keegan]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. Actually, Ofsted data shows that the number of childcare places has remained broadly stable at 1.3 million since August 2015. At the spending review in 2021 we announced additional funding of £160 million in 2022-23, £180 million in 2023-24 and £170 million in 2024-25 compared with the 2021-22 financial year. That will allow local authorities to increase the hourly rates paid to childcare providers.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gillian Keegan

Tuesday 19th April 2022 Commons Chamber

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

T10. A survey by the charity stem4 has found that 95% of GPs believe that children and adolescent mental health services are in crisis, with children and young people waiting up to two years for treatment after referral. Will the Secretary of State stop treating children as an afterthought and act to provide open access mental health hubs for young people in every community, to put an end to these agonising waits?

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Lady raises a very important point. I know that children’s mental health services are treating more young people than ever. However, the demand has quadrupled since the pandemic and that is why we have invested £79 million in these services. By 2023-24, an extra 345,000 more young people will be accessing support. I mentioned the call for evidence. It is important that we work through our vision for our 10-year plan. We are also introducing mental health support teams in schools, which will help, plus access to community and mental health hubs, and more young people will have access to eating disorder services, but there is a lot of work ongoing.

Adult Social Care

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gillian Keegan

Wednesday 1st December 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

We will commit a further £573 million per year to the disabled facilities grant between 2022-23 and 2024-25. We are also taking steps to ensure that the disabled facilities grant can benefit more people in need. We will consult on some of those steps in 2022.

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

It has been two and a half years since the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised to

“fix the crisis in social care once and for all with a clear plan we have prepared”.

I think we can all be forgiven for asking what on earth the Government have been doing during that two and a half years—a time when the social care crisis has got worse. Right now, more than 100,000 vacancies exist in adult social care. Care homes are refusing new admissions because of staff shortages. Providers are haemorrhaging staff to better-paid roles in hospitality, retail and distribution. The sector is on its knees as we head into the harshest winter in living memory.

The Minister’s statement today was completely tone-deaf on the scale of the crisis. Can she say, because it was not clear from the statement, how she expects the sector to get through the winter? What does she have to say to the families who are waiting right now for a care home place that simply does not exist under her Government’s failing social care system?

[Gillian Keegan]

The hon. Lady seems to be the only person in the whole world who has missed the global pandemic, but it occurred during the same period. To answer her specific question, she is absolutely right that there are pressures right now. There are pressures continually in the system, because there is always a need for growth every year, but right now the winter pressures are challenging. As we bounce back from the pandemic, everything is opening again and there is a lot of competition for labour—there are 1.2 million vacancies in the country.

We have invested £162.5 million, which is on its way—it has probably just landed in most councils’ bank accounts. That investment is there for short-term fixes, similarly to what we put in place for January to March this year, which was very successful; it brought forward 7.3 million extra hours and 39,000 new recruits. We have invested in that funding for the workforce, and we keep it under review—we get data every month through a capacity tracker system. We work closely with the sector and will continue to monitor its needs.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gillian Keegan

Tuesday 23rd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Gillian Keegan]

As I mentioned earlier, we have sent out £162.5 million, which has not yet been put into effect. For example, Sefton received £1,032,474. That money has only just gone into the bank account, and has not yet been utilised to retain staff, or to recruit agency or other staff. As the hon. Gentleman says, adult social care providers can recruit key adult social carers from overseas from the shortage occupation list. That provides lower fees and a reduced salary threshold of £20,480 for someone to be eligible for the skilled worker visa.

[Helen Hayes]

The adult social care sector faces the worst staff shortages in living memory. A recent survey by the National Care Forum found that one third of managers of registered care homes are limiting or stopping admissions from hospital, due to staff shortages, with direct consequences for both the NHS and for vulnerable people who cannot access the care they need. The care sector needs action now, not warm words and job adverts. Will the Minister commit to paying a retention bonus to frontline care staff, to help stem the tide of those exiting the care sector this winter? Will she commit to a fully funded, permanent pay increase, to bring the minimum level of pay for care workers up to £10 an hour—the minimum rate at which Amazon is recruiting in many areas where the care shortage is at its most acute?

[Gillian Keegan]

We have committed to bring forth new measures in the White Paper, and to spend at least £500 million on recruiting that workforce. To address the emergency now, as I mentioned, there is £162 million. In addition, we have put around £500 million particularly to address discharge processes, and to ensure a discharge to assess process, which means it can be much quicker. We must ensure that those teams work together to shorten the discharge process. There is no doubt that our NHS and our whole system is under extreme pressure this winter, and we thank it for all the work it is doing.

Covid-19: Impact on Schools and Exams

Debate between Helen Hayes and Gillian Keegan

Monday 7th December 2020 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Gillian Keegan)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Gray, and I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Jonathan Gullis) on securing this debate. I am also grateful to the petitioners, Ellis, Libby and Alex, and to the Petitions Committee for giving us the opportunity to discuss these important topics of opening schools and colleges and ensuring that exams can fairly take place in 2021.

I offer my thanks, as I am sure all hon. Members would, to teachers and educational leaders for their phenomenal efforts in recent months as they have adapted to the changing environment we all live in. The work of schools and colleges has been critical to ensuring that students have continued to access education in some way, and have continued to feel connected to the classroom and their peers. We accept, however, that that has not been an equal experience across the whole country.

When developing our approach, the interests of students and teachers have always been our priority. Since the pandemic began, we as a Government have rightly put education first, and we will continue to do so. We cannot and must not let covid destroy this year of education, which is why we have taken steps to keep schools and colleges open and exams on track.

The return to school in autumn was driven by the clear benefits to young people and children of a return to educational settings. Those benefits remain unchanged. As many hon. Members said, keeping schools and colleges open is important to mitigate some of the largest risks that have materialised during this period for children and young people who have spent time away from educational settings.

There is clear evidence of the negative educational impact of missing school for all students, but particularly younger children, as investments in children’s learning tend to accumulate and consolidate over time. School and college closures put educational outcomes at risk, especially for disadvantaged students, due to existing inequalities and attainment gaps being exacerbated. The opportunities for early identification of things such as emerging learning problems are also missed when pupils are not in school.

As was mentioned by many hon. Members, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Southport (Damien Moore), school closures have been found to cause a deterioration in children’s mental health. Evidence suggests that the mental health of adolescents is particularly affected and that their cognitive, social and emotional development outcomes are at risk, as is their physical health. For vulnerable children, the impact of school closures has had an adverse effect on their wellbeing and educational outcomes due to reduced access to essential services. One regional study presents evidence that schools have been the source of 40% of child protection and safeguarding referrals.

Keeping settings open remains the Government’s priority, and we have taken other steps across society to manage down virus prevalence by closing other sectors in order to allow schools to remain open at full attendance. We have prioritised education at all local restriction tiers. The Government’s policy is that education settings will remain open, and parents should therefore continue to send their children to school. Schools have implemented a range of protective measures to minimise the risk of transmission. The risk of children becoming severely ill from coronavirus is low, and there are negative health impacts from being out of school. Senior clinicians, including the chief medical officers of all four nations, still advise that school is the best place for children to be.

To respond to Libby’s specific question—several hon. Members have raised the issue of finishing school two weeks earlier—we will provide guidance to schools and colleges on the end of term and on how to manage the short period afterwards, when their support might be required with contact tracing. Further guidance will be issued, but let us be clear: this will not be a typical Christmas for any of us, and we will all need to take extra care, as the Prime Minister has said. We want to maximise the time in school as much as possible. Young people have missed simply too much of their education.

Let us turn to some of the support that we provide to schools, particularly on their use of technology and on whether they have been able to access technology. The hon. Member for Sefton Central (Bill Esterson), who is no longer in his place, mentioned that. We have taken access to technology very seriously. By the end of this year, over 500,000 laptops, as well as 50,000 4G wireless routers, will have been provided by Computacenter, which has always been on the procurement framework. We have also introduced a service to provide more flexibility and to make sure they get to the right places, if there are specific lockdowns or large areas where kids need them. People can call that service and receive a laptop in just two days—I am sure the people of Darlington will welcome that.

The EdTech strategy, which we published in April last year, set out the Government’s commitment to support and enable schools and colleges to use technology more effectively. Of course, that has been really important, as we have all had to go and do pretty much everything online. The strategy set out the building blocks for effective use of technology in education: good digital infrastructure, capacity building, capability building across the sector, and a better understanding of the things that work in practice.

The same building blocks from the strategy have been an essential part of our response, but at a greater pace than we could have ever anticipated, to ensure that both schools and parents feel supported and that young people continue to thrive. That includes a whole host of measures, such as the introduction of the EdTech demonstrator network, which is a peer support network of schools and colleges that aims to increase expertise in their use of technology. That includes targeted support, weekly webinars and an online library of resources that can be shared. That is to help schools that are not as comfortable or familiar with the technology, so that those that are further ahead on the tech journey can help others in need.

In recent months, the network’s support has included how to maximise the investment that the Government have made to freely access Microsoft 365 or the G Suite for Education digital platform; how to ensure that pupils are safe online, including anxiety-busting strategies and activities; and how technology can help better support pupils with complex needs. There is a lot of work going on in this area. Crucially, that support also considers how our investment in technology can offer long-term benefits for pupils and teachers, as disruption to education could continue. Even after it reduces, there will be a legacy of blended learning.

On 27 November, the Department announced a new covid workforce fund for schools and further education settings to help them remain open. It will fund the cost of teacher absences over a threshold in schools and colleges for those with high staff absences that are facing significant financial pressures. The fund will help schools and colleges meet the cost of the absences that they have experienced from the beginning of November until the end of this term.

A number of Members mentioned budgets and additional costs. Schools have already received payments of £102 million for exceptional costs during the summer months, and there will be a further opportunity later in the year for schools to claim any costs that fell between March and July in the same approved categories for which they did not already claim in the first window. We will continue to review the pressures that schools and colleges are facing in the next term.

[Helen Hayes]

Despite having claimed for costs incurred over the summer, some schools in my constituency have received no reimbursement from the Government. Will the Minister explain why that is happening and how those schools can be expected to balance their books this year?

[Gillian Keegan]

Obviously there are criteria for each of those funds—I do not know the particular situation, but I am happy to write to the hon. Lady—and those schools may not have met them. One of them is to look at the whole of the school budget, and reserves in particular.

Let me turn to exams and Alex’s petition to cancel GCSEs. I understand Alex’s concern and it is admirable that he is concerned, on behalf of others, about the unfairness due to unequal access to education. We are continuing to do everything in our power to ensure that young people are evaluated fairly in the coming year. We have to realise that there is no perfect system. All the other systems have flaws and downfalls. In the current climate, the decision to hold exams demonstrates our commitment to ensuring the fairest possible outcome for all students.

As the Secretary of State set out last week, the fundamental problem with this year’s exams is that we tried to award grades without actually holding exams, and we are not going to repeat that mistake. This is really difficult to do. It got me, like the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), thinking back to my own experience. I come from the same area as Alex—Liverpool. I passed 10 O-levels, and I am sure there was not a single teacher in my Knowsley comprehensive school who would have thought that I would do that. The culture of education was such that we had to hide our homework and what we were doing. I am pretty sure that if I had been in school during this period, I would have been lucky if I had passed four. I was not confident enough to think that I could have passed 10. Exams are a really important way of enabling people to show just what they can do.

Holding a successful exam series in summer 2021 remains a vital component of our strategy to maintain continuity of education and support our young people to ensure they can progress with their qualifications, fairly awarded. We will ensure a successful delivery of the 2021 exams. We will consult with key stakeholders, such as schools, unions and exam centres, to discuss the logistics of the series, in terms of venues, invigilators and so on.

We support Ofqual’s decision that, in awarding next year’s GCSEs and AS and A-levels, grading will be generous and aligned with the overall standards awarded this year. Ofqual is working with awarding organisations to ensure that vocational and technical qualifications—a point raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent North—lead to similar progression opportunities as A-levels and GCSEs, and that students studying them are not advantaged or disadvantaged.

To help students target their revision, at the end of January they will be given advance notice of some of the topic areas that will be assessed in their GCSE and A-level exams. We will also provide exam support material, such as formula sheets, in some exams to give students more confidence and reduce the amount of information they need to memorise for exams. We really are trying to reduce the stress that students feel when taking exams by narrowing what they know to expect in exams and providing aid so that they do not need to worry about memorising the formulas and so on.