Children: Early Intervention

Lord Hill of Oareford Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2011 Lords Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Schools (Lord Hill of Oareford)]

My Lords, like others I congratulate my noble friend Lady Walmsley on securing this important debate and on setting out the issues so clearly. It is a subject on which she speaks with great passion and authority, and she demonstrated both again today.

Like other noble Lords, I congratulate the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of St Edmundsbury and Ipswich on his maiden speech. I had not realised the connection at all between St Felix and Felixstowe, and I shall think of him every time I see an advertisement for a well known cat food product on the television. I also congratulate my noble friend Lord Storey, who clearly brings great experience to this House both as a teacher and as a head teacher. I was extremely interested to hear what he had to say in particular about the pupil premium, on which other members of his party have campaigned long and hard. I also agree with him about the crucial role of schools, but equally that we cannot expect schools to put everything right on their own.

Today’s debate follows the excellent debate we had five or six weeks ago led by the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, on the importance of parenting, a point underlined today by my noble friends Lady Ritchie of Brompton and Lady Sharp. Both debates and the large number of speakers in each underline the importance that this House attaches to protecting the interests of children. As usual, today I have learnt a lot from the contributions made from all sides of the House. We have heard very clearly the moral arguments for why early intervention matters, and we have heard compelling financial ones. We have heard about academic research and we have heard about real-life practical examples. We have heard about the benefits for literacy, or tackling problems with speech, as the right reverend Prelate pointed out, and about communication more generally—a point made very forcefully by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock. We have also heard about autism and listened with care to the points made by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones. We have heard about development of the brain, perhaps above all from my noble friend Lady Walmsley. All those pieces of evidence underline the importance of this issue, but common sense and our own experience as parents—and there may be a few grandparents in your Lordships' House—tells that this is true.

I know that the last Government understood these points; I also believe that this Government understand these points. I agreed with the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, on how far collectively we have travelled, and I hope to reassure her that we intend to build on that progress made in recent years. The Government agree that what happens in a child’s early years is crucial to that child’s future achievement, behaviour and happiness. That is why, in a difficult financial situation, we have put resources into the early years, extending 15 hours of free early education to disadvantaged two year-olds; providing an extra 4,200 health visitors; putting in the money to maintain a network of Sure Start centres—and I shall come back and respond to some of the concerns that have been raised about Sure Start centres; doubling up the number of places on the Family Nurse Partnership Programme from 2015; and, as we have already mentioned, introducing the pupil premium to target support in school for children on free school meals to help us narrow the attainment gap which exists between rich and poor.

While I understand the points that the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch, made about money, I thought that she was uncharacteristically grudging about the financial support that the Government have put in at a time when money overall is short. However, it is because this Government, like the previous Government, are committed to making progress on the early years that we are trying to look across the piece, with the aim of publishing a policy statement later this year that sets out our overall approach to early years. That work will be informed by the four reviews that have all been mentioned this afternoon: the review by Mr Frank Field into poverty and life changes, the review into early intervention by Mr Graham Allen, the review into the early years and foundation stage by Dame Clare Tickell, and the review into child protection by Eileen Munro.

I agree with the point that was made forcefully by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, about evaluation. I think she was saying that it is sometimes hard to get one’s hand around and pin down exactly what is being said, and, having looked at some of the research before this debate, I agree. I take the point made by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, that there is a balance to be struck somewhere between the evidence and autonomy, and that we do not all want to become management consultant/KPI-type people, which I know would concern him greatly. However, I think there is a need to try to understand clearly what works and to learn the lessons.

My noble friend Lord Storey made the point about consistency, and I think that we can learn about that from looking carefully at what works.

The noble Earl, Lord Listowel, made a specific point about the Cassel Hospital. I will indeed talk to my noble friend Lord Howe and ask him to write to the noble Earl.

I will now try to respond to some of the concerns that have been raised about Sure Start children’s centres. The centres remain at the heart of the Government’s vision for early intervention. I accept the importance of training for early years, a point that was made particularly by the noble Baroness, Lady Warwick of Undercliffe. I will relay the points that she made to my honourable friend Sarah Teather and follow them up with her. It is because we are committed to a network of Sure Start children’s centres that the Government have, in a difficult financial situation, put resources into the system to maintain a network of Sure Start children’s centres.

We will further set out the role of Sure Start when we publish later this year the early years policy statement that I referred to earlier, and we will develop that in partnership with the sector and set out a vision for Sure Start children’s centres and the practical steps for achieving it. We are keen to try to increase voluntary and community sector involvement with children’s centres, to try to improve accountability arrangements, to increase the use of evidence-based interventions and to see whether it is possible to introduce greater payment by results.

We know that local authorities are looking at their budgets and working hard to make the right decisions. I was struck by the points made by my noble friends on the Liberal Democrat Benches about the record of Liberal Democrat councils in maintaining funding for Sure Start children’s centres. As noble Lords will know, Section 5D of the Childcare Act 2006 places a duty on those local authorities to consult before opening, closing or significantly changing children’s centres, and to make sure that there is sufficient children centres provision to meet local needs so far as is practical.

I do not dispute for a moment that people are concerned. This raises difficult issues, and there is a difference of opinion between the Government and the Opposition about the role of delegating responsibility to the local level. It is our view that it is better to give local authorities that discretion and flexibility so that services can be managed in ways that best meet local needs.

A number of noble Lords mentioned the SEN Green Paper. I recognise the impatience of the noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, for the Government to make progress, and I am sure that his words will ring in the ears of my honourable friend Sarah Teather, who is driving this work forward. I assure him, and I hope he will accept, that she is extremely committed to this area and to making progress. As has been mentioned, we published our Green Paper last week. It sets out proposals for a new approach to SEN to try to make the system less confrontational, to try to give parents more control and to try to give professionals on the front line more space. I agree with the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock, that the proof of the pudding will be in the eating. However, I hope that noble Lords will generally welcome the themes set out in the Green Paper and the direction in which the Government are seeking to move.

We hope to help professionals to identify and meet children’s needs through a new approach to identifying SEN in early-years settings in schools, and to have in place a new single assessment process and education, health and care plan. We want local authorities and other services to set out a local offer of all services available to support children who are disabled and have SEN; to consider the option of a personal budget by 2014, an issue raised in an earlier debate initiated by the noble Baroness, Lady Warnock; to give parents a choice of school, either mainstream or special; and to try to introduce greater independence to the assessment of children’s needs, testing how the voluntary and community sector could co-ordinate assessment and input from across education, health and social care as part of our proposals to move to a single assessment process.

We believe that the Green Paper marks a milestone in the development of the Government’s approach to supporting children and young people with SEN, or who are disabled, and their families. The consultation on these proposals will run until 30 June. I certainly hope that noble Lords will take the opportunity to respond to that. On the specific question about the statutory underpinning of the new SEN assessment raised by my noble friend Lord Clement-Jones, we are looking to test the key proposals in the Green Paper through local pathfinders from September 2011, and we will look to make any legislative changes that may be necessary to secure the new education, health and care plan and the offer of personal budgets, as well as any other necessary improvements to the system identified by the pathfinders from 2010.

We had an interesting discussion about the role of grandparents. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, about their importance, a point also made strongly by the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen. I do not believe that the Government have any plans to move on financial assistance, but I will take that point back. As anyone who has had children knows, the relationship between grandparent and grandchild is a very special one both ways, and is often far less complicated than the one between child and parent. I agree entirely about the importance of grandparents.

As regards the Grandparents’ Association, my understanding, which I will check, is that it was asking for new funding but that it was unsuccessful in its bid. I understand that it was for additional funding and that it has not been faced with a cut in existing funding. The noble Lord, Lord Northbourne, kindly alerted me to this issue and I have spoken to my officials, but having just seen him shake his head I will go back and follow up his points. Having done so, I will get back to him specifically in writing.

The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, raised the important point about funding for services for children with special educational needs under the age of two, and asked whether that could be funded under the dedicated schools grant. The short answer to that is yes. As she pointed out, there is a slightly longer, more technical answer, but I take her point about the need to ensure that local authorities are clear of that. We have written to them, but I am certainly happy to reflect again on whether there are further things we can do to ensure that her important point is properly understood.

A number of noble Lords talked about families with multiple problems. Several figures have been given, all of which have been compelling. The one I have seen is that having one professional working with a family costs on average £14,000 per family per year compared with costs to local services that could be up to £330,000 a year. There is therefore no doubt about the need for addressing these problems. In December, the Prime Minister set out his own ambition to address those concerns. As noble Lords have argued, there is a clear financial sense in that. Equally, and perhaps more compellingly, there is a strong moral need. All Governments have grappled with the problem of coming up with approaches that deal with the needs of these families in the round, rather than the traditional Whitehall way of dealing with things in silos, by department or by institution.

We will try to develop new approaches to support those families, underpinned by freedom for local authorities to establish community budgets, pulling together different streams of money and approaches. We are hoping to set those up in 16 local areas to pool budgets for families with complex needs, and then roll them out to other local areas across the spending review period.

I was asked about help and support for assessment of young children with specific needs. As I said, we plan to expand health visitor services to ensure as a priority that all families are offered the health and development review for children aged two to two and a half, so that children who need additional support can be identified. Where families need additional support, the health visitor service will have the support needed. Where parents have concerns about their child's development, they will be offered that support and, where appropriate, referred to another professional—for example, a speech and language therapist, as was mentioned.

We have talked about the Munro review of child protection. That is due to be completed by late spring. The Graham Allen review has also been mentioned. We had the first report from Mr Allen in January. As noble Lords have pointed out, he argues that we should all be actively promoting the principle of early intervention, particularly in the early years but from conception through to 18. He has given us thoughts on how to take that forward, including through evidence-based programmes and supporting reform. We will receive a second report focused more on social finance models—the point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Whitchurch—this summer. In the mean time, the Government are carefully considering his recommendations and how we can respond to the challenge that he has set us to shift to a culture of early intervention rather than to continue late, reactive spending.

This has been a wide-reaching and thought-provoking debate. As is the whole House, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Walmsley for giving us the opportunity to air these important issues. Listening to the debate, it is clear that there was widespread acceptance of her case; I do not think that a single voice was raised against any of her arguments.

A number of specific points have been made on which I will reflect and respond to noble Lords if I have failed to reply in the time that I have this afternoon. Overall, there has been agreement on the need to focus on the early years and to break down barriers and silos so that children and families are at the heart of early intervention, not structures and systems. A great deal of work is going on in this area on a number of different fronts. The Government look forward to pulling that work together in its early years policy statement, to which I referred earlier, which will be published later this year. When that is published, I very much look forward to the further debates that we will have then.