Foster Carers

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Thursday 21st April 2022 Westminster Hall

[Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Robertson.

I start by paying tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this vital debate on the foster care system. I reiterate much of what she said. Although Members in the main Chamber have rightly been debating the very serious issue of whether the Prime Minister is fit for office, it is equally important that other serious issues of the day are not forgotten, and there are few matters more important than the impending foster care crisis.

As a councillor, I served on Gateshead Council’s adoption panel, which is closely linked to the foster care panel, so I have some knowledge of the foster care system. First of all, I must say that I have an enormous amount of respect for foster carers and, having been a carer myself, of a daughter with severe disabilities, I particularly thank those foster carers who look after and care for children with additional needs.

Like all carers, foster carers fulfil a role on behalf of the state, offering children a safe home, and often providing them with a nurturing environment and a surrogate family. At times it can be challenging, but when it is supported properly, it is a role that is deeply rewarding, giving foster carers the knowledge that they have made a real difference in the lives of the children they welcome into their home.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Jarrow (Kate Osborne) for securing this debate today. I also thank and pay tribute to all the wonderful foster families in my constituency of Liverpool, West Derby, and indeed beyond.

Does my hon. Friend agree that fostering can bring much fulfilment to the lives of all involved? I say that with total confidence after speaking to my good friend Kevin, who has become a foster carer, with his family. He said that it was indeed positively life-changing.

[Mary Kelly Foy]

I could not agree more, and I am sure my hon. Friend will join me in thanking Kevin and the foster carers here today, and indeed the Members here who have been foster carers themselves, as well as foster carers up and down the country. Given the importance of foster carers and the difference they make to society, the data on the number of foster carers makes for difficult reading and lays bare the scale of the impending crisis. Simply put, there are not enough foster carers to meet the demand.

There are two main reasons behind the shortage. The first is the rising number of children entering care. We have touched on some of the reasons for that today. A 2021 report by the Social Market Foundation found that, based on an average of 2.9% year-on-year growth in the number of children requiring foster care over the last five years, the number of children in need of care could rise by 33% by 2030. Combined with that is the equally pressing issue of the number of foster carers leaving the system, with 30% of deregistrations taking place within the first two years of approval for foster care. Those issues are as significant in County Durham as they are in local authorities across England, and we now face a huge deficit in foster carers.

Research by the Social Market Foundation suggests that more than 63,000 new foster carers need to be recruited in England by 2026 to meet the demand of the rising numbers of children entering care and to replace the foster carers leaving the system. Estimates suggest that fewer than 40,000 new foster families will be recruited in that time, leaving a recruitment deficit of around 25,000 foster care families. I truly worry that we are sleepwalking towards a foster care crisis.

With those issues in mind, it is clear to me that much more needs to be done to improve the recruitment of new foster carers as well as retain existing ones. Although there is much that can realistically be done, I want to state my support for two measures in particular. On the issue of recruitment, it is worth noting that there is not necessarily a lack of interest. In 2021, 160,000 individuals inquired about fostering, yet only around 2,200 were approved as foster carers. It is important that we recognise that not everyone who withdraws from the fostering process does so because they are disqualified. Many do so because personal circumstances make them temporarily unsuited to the role, yet they remain open to foster caring. We cannot allow those people to believe that they are unwanted by the system. We should make it clear to them that the door is not closed to them. It would therefore be useful if the Government could work to develop mechanisms for keeping in touch, with the permission of those involved, with those who inquire about becoming foster carers.

On the issue of retention, we should all be concerned by the fact that a third of former foster carers aged 18 to 54 cited a lack of training and support as the reason they stopped fostering. At the minute, the quality of the training provided to foster carers lacks consistency, and often fails to prepare people for the specific challenges of the children who will be placed in their care. It is therefore important that the existing training process is improved, both during the assessment period and throughout people’s time as foster carers. The training and support must be tailored to the needs of the children in their care so that foster carers feel valued and supported by the system and not forgotten about.

To finish, I want to reiterate my concern that the Government are sleepwalking into a crisis in foster care. People get into foster care for many reasons, but chief among them is a desire to provide a safe and nurturing environment for vulnerable children. Yet instead of that desire being nurtured by the authorities, foster carers are too often met with a lack of support and are weighed down by the challenges of the role. If we do not treat this problem with the severity it deserves and take steps to tackle the issues now, it is the most vulnerable children in society who will suffer the most.

Budget Resolutions

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd November 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Worsley and Eccles South (Barbara Keeley). Unsurprisingly, I have a slightly less rose-tinted take on last week’s Budget than Conservative Members. I see a Budget constructed by a Government who do not care about the hardships that the 15 million people and rising in poverty face.

This Budget comes from a multimillionaire Chancellor with a personal housing portfolio so large that he could potentially solve the country’s housing crisis. To him, the word “hardship” means not having a pool in his country mansion, something that he took decisive action to fix over the summer. Unfortunately, he failed to take similar decisive action for the nation in the Budget. He did not fix the issues facing millions: insecure work, an insufficient welfare safety net, low pay, a lack of safe and affordable housing and rising utility bills. They are fuelling the huge inequalities that we see in 2021.

Let us look at what the Budget means for my constituents. The average state pension is £8,000 a year, which is the lowest in the industrialised world. With the suspension of the triple lock, it is expected to rise by 3.1% from April 2022—an increase that is wiped out by inflation. The Government have refused to honour the triple lock, and the old adage “Never trust a Tory” will ring true for many pensioners.

A 1.25% increase in national insurance from April will remove between £16.7 billion and £18.2 billion a year from household budgets. The universal credit cut will leave 4.4 million families worse off by £4 billion a year, and there is still no justice for the people receiving legacy benefits who were denied the £20 uplift. The people who can least afford it will bear the brunt of the Budget while the bankers receive £4 billion in tax cuts.

My city of Liverpool continues to suffer from £500 million of cuts since 2010, which the Budget does nothing to address. Tory austerity has caused real misery in my city. A £2 million empty trinket thrown to tee up a hollow PR exercise by the Minister for the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport means nothing to the many in my city who see it for what it is and who remember what the coalition Government started in 2010.

Professor Ian Sinha, a paediatrician from the fantastic Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in my constituency, points out that a train journey of 15 minutes on Merseyrail through our city region represents a 15-year difference in life expectancy. That encapsulates the inequality and its consequences that we saw even more starkly in the teeth of a pandemic. The Budget does nothing to fix them.

There are no long-term funding promises to help to combat those inequalities; indeed, further austerity is being forced through by the Government, with another £33 million of savage cuts mooted in Liverpool. Austerity is a Tory decision and a political choice that keeps people in poverty—and poverty kills. More than ever, post covid, we need the ability to invest in our infrastructure and in our social care, mental health and domestic abuse services to rebuild our communities. To tackle the health and social economic inequalities we face, we need council housing, Sure Start centres, libraries, leisure centres and education facilities fit for the 21st century, not further austerity. We need a real levelling-up, not weasel words.

Why did the Chancellor, in his much-lauded levelling up agenda, not choose a different path? Lord Prem Sikka, my good friend in the other place, has outlined an alternative vision. By taxing capital gains at the same rate as earned income, some £17 billion a year could be raised. By extending the 12% rate of national insurance to incomes above £50,000, £14 billion could be raised. Of course, a wealth tax could also raise up to £304 billion over five years. What a difference a Chancellor who followed that ideology would make to so many lives and to the future generations of our nation.

Last Saturday marked five years of Fans Supporting Foodbanks collecting food outside football stadiums in communities across the UK.

A fan who donates religiously asked me to pass on this message to the Chancellor:

“Seeing as he likes quoting the Beatles, how about this from the great John Lennon? Imagine a country where no child goes hungry. Imagine a country without food banks. Imagine a country with fairness at its heart, not inequality. Imagine a country governed for the many, not the few.”

Investing in Children and Young People

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 9th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to pupils, parents, teachers and support staff in Liverpool, West Derby for their efforts during this difficult period and for the support they give our communities. The pandemic has seen the growth of existing inequalities that children and young people face, caused by a decade of austerity and Government cuts to vital services.

The Government have clearly learned nothing from the past year, as we can see in the lack of funding for millions of working-class children who have suffered through no fault of their own. The Government’s plans for education recovery, announced last week, are inadequate, incomplete and frankly immoral. The £1.5 billion offered is way below the £15 billion that Kevan Collins, the former education recovery commissioner, judged was needed. No doubt he walked away from his position because he had listened to the teachers, trade unions and parents and understood the gravity of the situation and the inequality it would cause the next generation of working-class children.

The Government have continued to ignore the opinions of the people who devote their lives to trying to deliver the education that the children in our communities deserve. In England, the Government’s pledge amounts to just £50 per pupil per year for education recovery—one fiftieth of what the Netherlands is delivering and one tenth of what was recommended by their own commissioner. We can spend £37 billion on a failed privatised track and trace system, but we cannot invest in our children’s future? Shameful! The inadequacy of that £1.5 billion will not affect the children of Eton, but it will impact the children at Lister Junior School in my constituency for years to come.

Let us touch on the Government’s record and the impact it has had on communities like mine in Liverpool, West Derby. Some 4.3 million children are living in poverty, including 34% of the children in my constituency —children left without digital devices and without free school meals in the middle of the pandemic because of the failure of the Government’s food voucher scheme delivered by Edenred, with teachers delivering food parcels and schools setting up food banks. Yes, you heard that right—schools setting up food banks. Maybe the Minister can join the National Education Union and support the Right2Food campaign, which calls for universal free school meals for every child in this country.

There is an attainment gap of 9.3 months for primary pupils and 22 months for secondary school pupils in Liverpool. The Government have forgotten about kinship care throughout the pandemic, but figures show that a third needed access to digital equipment that was never offered and half now believe that their children need additional support to catch up on education. There has been an increase in the number of children with mental health conditions, with NHS data now showing that one in six young people in England were experiencing such a condition in 2020. Youth services were on the brink of absolute collapse due to Government cuts. In Liverpool, 86% of spending was cut between 2011 and 2020—it is unforgivable.

As I finish, my question to the Minister is simple: in the light of everything that I have just outlined, why do the Government treat the working-class kids of this country so appallingly?

Child Food Poverty

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Monday 24th May 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab) [V]]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) for introducing the petition to the House.

Today we are debating the need to end child poverty, how we have reached this point and how we can fix it, because of the efforts of a footballer from Manchester who experienced poverty growing up and never forgot. I pay tribute to Marcus Rashford for his transformative work, which has put child poverty right at the top of the political agenda and which has resonated with and united people across the country. In Liverpool, West Derby, 6,487 children live in poverty—a heartbreaking 34%. That figure, which is from the Child Poverty Action Group, represents the level before the pandemic, and the effects of the virus and attempts to control it have hit the poorest hardest in terms of jobs and income. The picture is likely to be even worse now.

As parliamentarians, we must act, and we must push for systemic change. The Government must tackle the root causes of food poverty, such as the current system of universal credit and legacy benefits, which we know provides nowhere near enough support for families to afford food, and which has built-in delays that leave people with no means of support for weeks on end. We must tackle the current system that led to the Government initially denying children free school meals during the holidays—a system that has still not fully met the asks of the petition, as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North outlined in her speech.

Part of that systemic change includes putting our “right to food” submission into the national food strategy, and then into legislation, so that the Government are obliged by law to ensure nobody goes hungry, and so that they are never able to deny children their right to food again. We should guarantee universal free school meals, including a breakfast and a lunch, for every child in this country. Universal provision would avoid the bureaucracy and stigma of means testing our school-age children and would help all to achieve their full potential.

As I have said, we need systemic change in order to achieve the end of child food poverty. The great Nelson Mandela said:

“Overcoming poverty is not a task of charity, it is an act of justice. Like slavery and apartheid, poverty is not natural. It is man-made and it can be overcome and eradicated by the actions of human beings.”

The time for sticking plasters is over, and the Government must listen to the voices of the 4.3 million children in poverty. That is when the heartbreaking figures will shame the Government.

Special Educational Needs

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 21st April 2021 Westminster Hall

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Edward. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi) for securing this hugely important debate.

The covid-19 pandemic has further exacerbated many issues that already existed in the Government’s system of support for children and young people with SEND—issues that families, campaigners and workers have been raising repeatedly with Ministers for many years. Covid has shone a stark light on the inequalities in society. For those children, young people and their families the inequality already faced was amplified.

Along with the injustice of inequality, another theme that is hardwired into the issues raised during the pandemic is the indifference to the seriousness of the situation shown by the Department for Education. Support during the pandemic from the Government and from the Department for Education, as the APPG for SEND summarised in its recent report, did not do enough to support children and young people with SEND. Our most vulnerable children were failed, and schools and families left to pick up the pieces.

Issues have been raised with me by Autism in Motion, a fantastic, committed, parent-led organisation in my constituency of West Derby, that provides support, advice and guidance for families in our community. I do not have time to do justice to their range of concerns in this debate, but I would welcome a meeting with the Minister to go through them in more detail.

Issues include a lack of funding and support from the Government for schools and services for children who have fallen through the gaps, such as children with SEND in mainstream schools who need that extra funding and support to thrive and maximise their educational attainment; a lack of funding for the comprehensive training needed for all teachers and school staff nationally; and the lengthy wait for vital services during covid-19, made worse by the hollowing out of NHS and local authority services through austerity and spending cuts over the past decade. We have seen how austerity measures have decimated our public services when we have needed them most during the pandemic.

I am lucky to have six SEND schools in Liverpool West Derby, which have been remarkable during the pandemic. I pay tribute to the staff. I have met with the heads throughout the period, and the following finding in the APPG’s report captures perfectly what I was told:

“The government guidance for special schools and alternative provision was frequently published later than guidance for mainstream schools. This led settings and young people with SEND to be seen as, and feel like, an ‘afterthought’.”

On behalf of my constituents and many families in Liverpool West Derby, I hope the Minister will today be able to answer these questions. What can be put in place for parents of children and young people who do not have an EHC plan and may have slipped through the net in terms of the support that is needed? Many children and young people cannot be catered for remotely and families have struggled during the last year. How will increased needs resulting from that be addressed and what support will the Minister’s Department provide? Furthermore, what plans will be put in place to assess the needs that will emerge as a result of the disruption to SEND children’s education, mental health and wellbeing caused by the lockdown?

Finally, do the Government have any plans to ensure that the views of children and young people with SEND and their families are heard at this stage in the pandemic? And if they do, what mechanisms will be employed locally, regionally and nationally to capture those views?

Education: Return in January

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 30th December 2020 Commons Chamber

[Gavin Williamson]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the wonderful work that educators, teachers and support staff have done in providing the Rolls-Royce education that we want all children to benefit from. We have already published considerable guidance and support for schools as they roll out mass testing; we have also published information about the funding that they can receive, so that they can properly budget and provision for the type of support that they need to roll out that mass testing. With respect to the—I hope—small number of schools that have particular problems in establishing a testing regime, the armed forces have kindly stepped forward, along with Ofsted, to provide and establish support in the exceptional circumstances in which schools and colleges are having real problems.

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab) [V]]

I thank the Secretary of State for his kind words about the educators and teachers in Liverpool, who have done such an outstanding job.

Hundreds of thousands of working-class children educated in the state system are facing exams in complete despair. The inequality of opportunity for those children is due to the ineptitude of the Government’s response, including a lack of resource allocation and a complete failure to listen to teachers’ concerns. Will the Secretary of State meet me and headteachers in Liverpool, West Derby as soon as possible to discuss the resources and measures that are urgently needed from the Government?

Free School Meals

Ian Byrne Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2020 Commons Chamber

[Ian Byrne (Liverpool, West Derby) (Lab)]

I pay tribute to Marcus Rashford for his incredible campaigning on this issue, which meant that 1.3 million children were able to receive meals over the summer. The unbelievable prospect of a Manchester United player having his name sung on my beloved Spion Kop at Anfield would now not be beyond the realms of possibility. I also thank my hon. Friend the Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) for her School Breakfast Bill and her tireless efforts to get it through Parliament.

The crisis of food insecurity is having a devastating impact in my community. In August, 2.3 million children were living in households that experienced food insecurity. In Liverpool, West Derby, figures show that even before the covid-19 pandemic 37% of children were living in poverty. If the Government do not provide free school meals over the school holidays, 4,155 children in Liverpool, West Derby will be at risk of going hungry in the middle of winter and in the middle of a pandemic.

As someone who received free school meals as a child and who serves as a school governor in one of the most impoverished wards in the country, I can say from first-hand experience that the difference that passing this motion would make to struggling families cannot be quantified in sheer monetary terms. The mental pressures of worrying about whether your child will have a hot meal a day should not be experienced by any citizen in our nation.

The fact that we have to hold this debate today, and that we have to ask the Government for such a vital provision as free school meals, is quite frankly shocking given the scale of food insecurity in this country right now. Ensuring that millions of our fellow citizens do not go hungry is the Government’s moral duty, and it should be a legal right. As I did in my Westminster Hall debate this morning, I call on the Government to introduce the right to food into UK legislation. That would oblige the Government to make sure that people do not ever go hungry and would mean that measures such as the five-week universal credit delay or the refusal to provide free school meals would be subject to legal challenge. The Prime Minister would not be able to refuse to provide meals to children living in poverty.

I will end by urging the Minister to think again and to support this motion.