Safeguarding Children

Jessica Lee Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

I am going to tread carefully on that issue. I am being advised to say yes by my esteemed colleague in the shadow team, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy), but I recognise that that would be a change from the position that my predecessor took. I will undertake to look at it and get back to the hon. Gentleman.

Let me finish by saying something about the Government’s broader policy with regard to children and families. When the Secretary of State took over two years ago, he renamed the Department, removing the words “Children” and “Families”. I am a passionate advocate of innovation, rigour and high standards in our schools and colleagues.

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

rose—

[Stephen Twigg]

I apologise to the hon. Lady, but I am going to finish because I have spoken for quite a long time.

There is no contradiction between high standards and promoting the well-being of children; indeed, the two can and should go hand in hand. That was the core ethos of Every Child Matters, yet this Government have moved away from that. An internal DFE memo in 2010 said that reference to the five Every Child Matters outcomes was now forbidden and that the rather nebulous concept, “Help children achieve more”, was to replace it. Achievement is important, but so too is the broader well-being of children and young people. I urge the Government to think again on this. The principles of Every Child Matters are as relevant and powerful in 2012 as they were in 2004. Indeed, they are the principles that lie at the heart of this very important debate. It is a debate that enables the House to consider the Government’s proposals, gives Members in all parts of the House an opportunity to raise questions and concerns on behalf of our constituents, and, above all, should send out a clear, cross-party message that Parliament is determined to do all that we can to safeguard and promote the welfare of all children.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jessica Lee (Erewash) (Con)]

Thank you for calling me, Mr Speaker, to speak in this extremely important and timely debate on safeguarding children. I, too, welcome the motion, which is wide-ranging and will enable Members from across the House with different expertise and experience to contribute to what we all wish to do—protect children. I also welcome the timely statutory guidance that the Minister set out yesterday for bringing together the threads of the Government’s work on child protection. I must also declare an interest, having had 12 years’ experience as a family law barrister specialising in child protection, which although not making me an expert, has given me an insight into the work of child protection professionals.

Let us consider why the Government are prioritising child protection. A couple of startling statistics speak for themselves. Last year, 382,400 children-in-need requests were recorded and more than 600,000 referrals were made to social workers. Those are huge numbers that we all must reflect on. I know that all Members will be working with families and social work professionals, through their constituency casework, in trying to combat the problem of damaged children.

I want to cover early intervention, on which Members have already commented, the sexual exploitation of children, and the need to inform young people of the risks and to empower child protection professionals to provide the necessary support to vulnerable families. It is difficult to go much further, however, without mentioning the report by Professor Eileen Munro. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) and my hon. Friend the Minister for covering the report in detail—there is little to add to what they said. We all welcome the detail of this wide-ranging report, which I understand was the first to be commissioned under the coalition Government by the Department for Education. That sent out a clear signal that the Government intended to prioritise child protection and, in particular, to support the professionals.

I do not want to go through many more statistics, and certainly I do not want to emphasise the differences between the main political parties. So far, the debate has brought us together on this important issue, and I wish to continue with that. It is right, however, to give examples of why these changes are needed. In family courts over the years, I have represented hard-working social work teams, children themselves, through their guardians, and the parents, and too often I have seen social workers desperately trying to complete the paperwork necessary to facilitate a child’s move into care. At these crucial times, however, those social workers need the ability to exercise their professional judgment in weighing up the options for the children—possibly the division of a sibling group—and assessing the emergency situation.

Perhaps one of the most extreme examples of where a court has to consider a child’s future is the grave situation where there is a risk of harm right from birth. Such cases are extremely troubling and distressing for everyone concerned. They involve not just questions of logistics, but the exercise of professional judgment on the part of the social work team about how to plan and facilitate the removal of the child from birth, if that is required. Such cases require the ultimate exercise of judgment by professionals, at a time when they do not need to be worrying about the paperwork that goes alongside such decisions. I hope that the reforms will go a long way to change that.

Both Front Benchers raised concerns about child neglect. In my experience, the cases involving neglect are often the hardest to read—that is, to determine the chronology and the facts. That is probably because complex cases of sexual abuse are so far removed from the experience of most people in this country that they are difficult to relate to. However, unclean clothes, not being washed, a lack of love and care in the home, feelings of hunger—something I always try to avoid—and physical neglect are concepts that, on some level, we can perhaps all relate to, and we all know what they must be like for a young child with no ability whatever to protect themselves. The emphasis on child neglect and the need to empower professionals to sustain change within homes—not just to make referrals, but to keep supporting families—is extremely important. Tackling neglect is also about encouraging all adults across society and about not being frightened to make referrals. All of us can do more on this issue. I know that social work teams would rather have 10 calls about a family when there are concerns about neglect than have no calls at all.

That brings me to another aspect of this debate: the need for a multi-agency approach, which is also highlighted in the motion. In my experience, improvements have already been made, following the baby Peter Connelly case, to address the need to bring multi-agency work together at the earliest stage. However, we now need to look at sharing paperwork and information. Is there anything more we can do to make the system effective for the longer term? Neglect is also related to the need for early intervention, which has also been raised this afternoon. It is an issue that I have mentioned in the House on a number of occasions. We are grateful for our experience of addressing the issue and for the reports that hon. Members have prepared on it.

I see that time is against me. There is more that I wanted to say, but to conclude, I see genuine momentum in the safeguarding of children. We now have an evidence-based approach supporting the social work profession and the toolkit to move things forward, so that we can assist the professionals and parents in the community through early intervention. Ultimately, that will protect the children who need the help which all of us in this place are concerned about.