Vulnerable Teenagers

Baroness Chapman of Darlington Excerpts

Thursday 26th January 2023 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chapman of Darlington (Lab)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow the noble Lord, Lord Addington. I really enjoyed his speech. He made some very important points and I think—if I can interpret it this way—almost threw down the gauntlet. It is one that I would be only too willing to reach for.

I also commend my noble friend Lady Armstrong not just for securing this important debate but for her leadership on this issue over many years. I hope she knows that she has been an inspiration to me and many others, particularly in the north-east but not only there. The way that she champions these issues, and has done so consistently when they have been in and out of fashion over the years, is the reason we respect her so much. I am going to stop because she is probably blushing—or I am going to.

I also echo her thanks to Anne Longfield for this report. The findings are utterly damning. To draw out a couple of things, 80% of kids who get a custodial sentence have had special educational needs at some point and presumably many opportunities to intervene were missed. Almost 70% of these young people have received free school meals as well. This is not new, as many speakers have said, but things have got worse. Young people are being attacked, knifed, killed and involved in serious crime. There is a glamorising of gang activities, grooming, coercion. Very vulnerable young people are being exploited by criminals and are not in touch with the services that ought to be there to see them. They are too often invisible.

My noble friend Lord Davies of Brixton made a very powerful point about intervening early. It is one that we are familiar with, and I have heard it many times in this Chamber in the short number of years I have been here. He called for a collaborative approach. His call for legislation to support this is a wise one, which we should consider further and develop if we want that long-lasting impact.

Looked-after children are currently being failed. It is worse now than ever. We need a holistic joined-up approach even to begin to have an impact on the challenges that they face.

The plea of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, for support for sports clubs is worth heeding. I was struck too by the account of the noble Baroness, Lady Valentine, of how much the voluntary sector can bring to this agenda. I echo completely—I could not support it more—what my noble friend Lady Blower said about Place2Be. It is doing remarkable work in the schools where it is present.

The private sector can play a vital role too in providing work opportunities, encouraging their workforces to volunteer and providing some services. However, as Josh MacAlister was quite right to point out in The Independent Review of Children’s Social Care that those children’s care must be only in the child’s interests and never in the interests of shareholders. I would appreciate an update from the Minister on whether the Government are doing any work on that. We have debated it before, and I will not go into it all again today. Some of the provision is not as it should be for those most vulnerable children and the Minister knows this so I will not hammer it home yet again.

My noble friend Lord McConnell’s account of a community coming together to inspire and divert young people from crime was instructive. I observe, as he did, that the magic that these kids need is not available consistently across the country. The local leadership he described is now strained beyond purpose, and the services are too often unable to cope even with their core functions, never mind leading the innovation and creativity that we need to see in every community.

Young people are still suffering while being housed in unregulated settings. So when will the Minister finally end the utter scandal of children being abandoned in unregulated placements? This challenge is way too big for the Department for Education; it needs a cross-government partnership approach. My noble friend Lord McConnell used a really good word that we should think about: “stickability”. I know exactly what he means—I think we all do—and it is the right word to apply to this issue. To answer the challenge of the noble Lord, Lord Addington, if the Government took this approach, we on these Benches would not just support the Government but champion it, help to embed it and deliver it in government. I do not know what more I can say by way of encouragement and support for action from the position of Opposition.

The right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Durham spoke specifically about children in the north-east, and so he should, not just because that is where he is based but because child poverty rates have risen to the highest level for over 20 years there. This is not the legacy of the last Labour Government; this is all about political choices. If we are not here to tackle these issues, what on earth are we doing? I know that we are not particularly party political in this House, but the situation we face today, especially in the north-east, is a direct consequence of decisions made by the Government since 2010. The only way we will have any chance of addressing this is if we make different decisions and choices.

Anne Longfield’s Hidden in Plain Sight takes a thoroughly deep dive—that is the beauty of it—into the experience of children with special educational needs and that of their parents, laying down the gauntlet to the Government with several proposals. Yet it too often feels like the Government have nothing of substance to say. The SEND review consultation response is perpetually delayed, and these children are being constantly let down during this delay. When can we and these children across the country finally expect the response?

The report also recommends that

“The Government leads a national mission”—


missions are very fashionable right now; I get what they are, so this is not a bad description and it works for me—

“to identify and remove racial bias in the systems that are currently failing”

too many black and minority ethic children, which is so starkly evidenced in the report’s findings. The Minister probably knows that we on these Benches have already committed to bringing forward specific race equality legislation to tackle this issue. Do the Government intend to do anything similar, even on just this narrow point in the report?

The failure to act early to prevent children and young people falling through the cracks is utterly devasting for the families concerned—of course it is—but, more widely, it exhausts communities. It is a waste of talent and potential, and the institutional safety net, the job of which has always been to help, has worn far too thin: youth services are gone and there is a hollowing out of local government and a lack of strategy. Police are inappropriately getting involved when they are not the best service to be in contact with young people, and schools are fragmented and unaccountable to their communities and to one another. Sure Start is decimated beyond recognition, and the skills and experience that have been lost from that workforce is shattering to think about.

We do not need just another initiative; there has been “initiative-itis” on this agenda, none of which has had an impact. What is really needed, as so many speakers have said, is a long-term strategy devised, ideally, alongside practitioners and service users—and we need it soon. I do not expect the Minister to be able to commit to that this afternoon, but would she at least accept the point we are making again and again, today and in earlier debates, that it is the Government’s job to lead on this and to act?