Care Crisis Review

Lucy Allan Excerpts

Wednesday 5th September 2018 Westminster Hall

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Before we begin the debate, I alert colleagues to the fact that a Division is expected at 4.48 pm, at which point we shall adjourn for 15 minutes if there is one Division or 25 minutes if there is a second Division. We shall still have the full hour of the debate.

[Lucy Allan (Telford) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the findings of the Care Crisis Review.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir David.

I take the opportunity to put on record my thanks to the Minister for his recent announcement about the new exploitation unit. I know that he will continue to work closely with the Home Office on the exploitation of vulnerable children, and I am extremely pleased with how well he understands his brief. When he has appeared before the Select Committee on Education, he has been passionate about his commitment to children in care. He shares my passion, I know, to do everything possible to support and strengthen families. That is why he has engaged with the findings of the care crisis review. I would like to build on that and ask the Minister to acknowledge the scale of the problem, with alarming numbers of children being taken from their families and placed in state care. I would also like him to acknowledge the apparent lack of a long-term strategy to address the problem.

Although money is never the whole solution to any problem, I urge the Minister to commit to funding early support for struggling families and to ensure that the funding is ring-fenced so that it is not eaten up by statutory crisis interventions. The care crisis review was facilitated by the excellent Family Rights Group, which does so much important work in this area, and funded by the Nuffield Foundation. It was undertaken in response to the unprecedented increase in the number of children being taken into care, as a way of finding a series of solutions to bring about change. It has come up with 20 solutions—I will not go through all the findings because the Minister is familiar with them, but I will highlight one or two that I urge him to take on board.

Over the last 10 years, in the wake of the tragic case of Baby P, there has been a dramatic and consistent increase in the numbers of children being taken into state care. The figures show something like a 151% increase in 10 years of children in child protection investigations, and 73,000 young people in care in 2017—those figures are higher for 2018, although the numbers are not yet out. That translates into 90 children a day being taken into care. That is not sustainable and it is not necessary. Often, taking children into care helps councils and social workers to be protected from any accusations of failing to act, but sometimes it is not necessary.

[Anna Turley (Redcar) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. She makes a really important point about the number of children being taken into care, sometimes unnecessarily. Does she agree on the importance and value of kinship carers and wider family support networks? At the moment, there is patchy and inconsistent support for those families. Many do not get the financial support and counselling they need to take care of their children and to keep them out of the care system.

[Lucy Allan]

The hon. Lady has done wonderful work in Parliament promoting the role of kinship carers. She is absolutely right: the opportunity to explore other avenues before taking children into care is often overlooked. Too often, social workers say, “This person won’t be suitable,” but they have not actually done the due diligence to determine whether extended family can be supported to help keep a child connected with their identity, school, friends and network. All those things are so important to the stability of children. I hope that the hon. Lady will continue to do work on kinship carers. If I can assist her in any way, I would be more than delighted.

It used to be considered that increasing the number of children in child protection investigations or taking more children into care was a good thing. Thank goodness we no longer think that way. Clearly, it places intense pressure on children’s services and on the family court system. Too often, statutory intervention does nothing specific to help a family and is more punitive than supportive. Often, it is all that is available at the end of a long process. If all we can offer struggling families is care proceedings, of course they will not engage and work collaboratively with social workers.

[Mr Jim Cunningham (Coventry South) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on this timely debate, which in actual fact has been a long-running debate for a number of years. When we talk about problems that social workers have and criticisms of them, we tend to forget that a social worker probably has too many cases on their hands, which does not allow them to concentrate in the way that they should concentrate. Of course, there is a lack of resources.

Often, police are called to a house about an issue that has nothing to do with childcare, only to discover some appalling situation affecting children, and have to get on to the relevant authorities to try to sort it out. We have had one or two cases in Coventry like that. There is a need for a more joined-up approach. We can have as much legislation as we want, but if we do not have a proper joined-up approach, we will get nowhere fast.

[Lucy Allan]

The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. One of the issues raised by the care crisis review was the intense pressure on social workers and the need to work in a problem-solving way rather than in the process-driven way that is so often their focus. They often find themselves in a blame culture where they are quite defensive, and therefore focus on getting the process right rather than finding the right solution for the child. The hon. Gentleman makes a very important point.

Placing children in care or triggering forcible state intervention is never a solution to a family’s problems. Too often, it is evidence of our failure to support children before problems escalate so they can stay safely at home or, as the hon. Member for Redcar (Anna Turley) said, with a wider family network. Time and again we hear that action is taken only at the point of crisis, and often only in the form of assessment, judgment, monitoring or scrutinising a parent’s ability to parent. The action taken is not practical support for the drugs, alcohol or mental health issues that are the cause of the crisis, but simply saying that the parents are not really good enough, and all the state can offer is removing the children from the family. Meanwhile, people often overlook the role that the extended family and the community can play in supporting families.

For all those reasons, I invite the Minister to take very seriously the solutions that the care crisis review has put forward. There is an emotionally damaging cost to children, families and to society, as well as a financial cost to the state. That is why we must have an overarching long-term view on the problem—a longer-term strategy, rather than sitting back and saying that this is a local issue for councils to decide locally what is right for them. They are on very tight budgets that often are taken up with statutory measures rather than being available for early intervention and preventive measures.

[Mike Hill (Hartlepool) (Lab)]

I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this important debate. On funding, Hartlepool council’s children’s social care services have been rated by Ofsted as good, and outstanding in some areas such as children in care. Spending on that allocation has gone up by 27%, yet they face an overall council deficit of £6 million. Does she agree that there are long-term financial difficulties to resolve in local authorities’ funding?

[Lucy Allan]

The hon. Gentleman makes an excellent point that perfectly illustrates my argument about the duties of local authorities to spend on the statutory crisis intervention measures they are required to take by law. They have nothing left in the pot for the preventive measures that would reduce in the long term the need to spend on crisis funding. It is difficult for a local authority to have the flexibility to do what it knows would work in the long term, because it is a statutory requirement that it uses its budget primarily to meet the statutory needs of the most vulnerable children in the borough.

That is a big issue that we neglect. If there are tight budgets for children’s services, councils have to take an increasing number of children into care, which costs more, and there is less chance of reducing that number through early intervention and support. That is why we have to think and act for the long term. If we believe that families do a better job than the state, we must work with families to support them, not just judge them and find them wanting—that helps no one. The Minister will agree because, like me, he has a wonderful family. The greatest gift he could give to any child to secure their life chances is a strong family.

Anyone who works in the system will say that the short-termism that they are forced to work with is wrong, and that instead of being able to fund early help, most authorities have to proceed with the statutory interventions that so many families experience as oppressive and destabilising. My plea is to invest in early help to make long-term savings. I am thinking not just of the huge financial savings, but of the emotional cost to a child of being removed from their family and losing their home, their siblings, their friends and their school. We know that happens. The Education Committee hears too often about fostering breakdowns, which cause children to go through a whole series of placements. Time and again, children feel abandoned and isolated, and have to put their possessions in a black plastic bag to move from foster home to foster home. They never quite feel that they belong.

I know that every Member would want to prevent that from happening to any child if possible. That is why I believe that the Government could be doing so much more to set the direction and insist on a ring-fenced element of funding for early intervention and prevention. As a Conservative Government, we care about families. We care about people being able to help themselves. We believe in helping people to help themselves, but we are not doing that. We are simply saying, “The state will take care of this, because you have failed as a parent.” What message does that send about our vision of society? The number of children in care goes on increasing while everyone takes a back seat and says, “Well, it’s not really central Government’s problem, because local authorities have to make these decisions on a case-by-case basis. It just so happens the numbers are going up.” We have to look at why that is, and that is exactly what the care crisis review did.

[Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con)]

I declare an interest, which is detailed in the Register of Members’ Financial Interests. I agree with much of what my hon. Friend says, although I take issue with some of her analysis. Does she agree that the early help recommendation of the Munro review back in 2011 was crucial to allowing more preventive work to be done to keep families together? Alas, that recommendation never became reality. She will also be mindful of the worrying finding in the “Storing Up Trouble” report by the all-party parliamentary group on children, which came out at a similar time to the care crisis review and to which the Minister contributed, about the huge differences in intervention outcomes between authorities. A child in one local authority can be seven times more likely to be taken into care than one in another. That causes great concern.

[Lucy Allan]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for that contribution. He has a long track record of expertise in this area, not least as an excellent Children’s Minister. His point about different treatment in different local authorities is vital, because it demonstrates that with the right support for families there is less need to take children into care. With the right support, children are more likely to be able to thrive safely at home. That illustrates my argument.

All Members would agree that taking children from their families must be a last resort. Indeed, the Prime Minister said exactly that when I raised the care crisis review at Prime Minister’s questions a few months ago. However, if nothing else is on offer to support a family in crisis, it suddenly is not a last resort—in some cases, it becomes the only tool a local authority can deploy. As I said, that will be of huge consequence to children, society and the state if we continue down the path of saying simply, “Let’s not invest in the long term and enabling children to stay safely at home with their families.”

Had I not seen it for myself, I would not have believed the cost of care proceedings where parents object, or the agonies they go through to keep their child with them. I have seen cases where the legal process has cost the state millions. Just think of the difference we could have made if only we had been able to support such families before they reached crisis—not only to the children’s lives, but with the millions of pounds we have spent on the court process, which is the most awful process for any family to have to go through.

I pay tribute to Edward Timpson, another excellent former Children’s Minister, for the work he did and for his knowledge and understanding of this area. He initiated fantastic projects such as Pause, which works with women who have repeatedly had children taken from them and put into the care system. To deal with their loss and grief, women continued to have children, which the state simply took away from them one after another without doing anything whatever to help them get out of the situation they were in. The futility of all that anguish seems senseless, so I am grateful to Edward Timpson for his legacy.

The only thing I would say about such projects is that, admirable as they are, they too often tinker at the edges rather than setting an overarching, long-term view of what could be done differently. That is why I welcome the suggestions in the care crisis review. Yes, some of them are about funding, which I have touched on, but the review contains all sorts of other suggestions. The Minister is very familiar with them, and I urge him to consider which ones could be implemented and which he could put his weight behind. It is important that we do not just have debates in which the Minister says, “I’m going to consider it,” and then the proposal dies a death. I have seen that happen many times. This is a real opportunity to use work that has been done for the Government by experts in the field to look carefully at what the Government can do to improve the system and make things better for children and families.

The cost to the state of a child being in care is enormous. We all know about the outcomes for care leavers and the huge challenges they face when they leave the care system. We know the statistics about the make-up of the prison population. Too often, people who have children taken from them are care leavers who did not have a parenting role model. The state deems that in itself to be a risk factor when assessing their suitability to parent. In too many cases, there is a self-perpetuating cycle of misery, and the Government do not intervene in the way they could to do amazing good. We have seen from the great projects I mentioned how much good can be done, but there does not seem to be an overarching, long-term Government strategy. Instead, understandably, the point is made that local authorities have to act on a case-by-case basis and the Government cannot intervene.

[Mr Jim Cunningham]

The hon. Lady is being generous in accepting interventions. She has worked hard on issues such as child abuse, which are related to this debate. One of the big problems is that successive Governments—not just Conservative Governments—have passed legislation but have not provided the funding to see it through. That is why we often get situations where things are botched, for want of a better term. We all know that local authorities have been starved of resources. Whether we accept the figures or not, that is a fact, and it puts another burden on local authorities. If we are going to have a proper strategy, it will have to be properly funded and we will need cross-party consensus to ensure that whichever party is in power sees it through.

Timpson was one of the very few Ministers I knew who actually understood the problem. I met him many times because of the problems we had in Coventry. I hope the present Minister, whom I do not know too well, has the same depth of commitment as Timpson. If he has, I am sure he will realise what the hon. Lady advocates. That will be the test for him.

[Lucy Allan]

I am very grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his comments and for echoing what I said about Edward Timpson’s contribution. He is correct about funding. I am not one who thinks the solution to a problem is just to throw money at it—never, never, never—but in this case, where local authorities do not have funding for early intervention, prevention and support for families, they will only be able to keep coming back to the Government and asking for more money for statutory services. There will be a cumulative effect. That will happen unless the Government step in and say, “Right, we’re going to ring-fence funding to ensure there is at least an attempt to provide adequate support, particularly where we can see a family is struggling.”

We know that if a crisis is not addressed it continues to escalate. We must be able to act. We must be able to say, “Okay, that’s no good.” People normally end up in court proceedings, where the judge says, “Ah yes, the mother needs to have therapy, she needs to go to counselling and there needs to be”—[Interruption.]

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

Order. There is a Division in the House. The sitting is suspended for 15 minutes or, if there is a second Division, for 25 minutes.

--- Later in debate ---

On resuming—

[Lucy Allan]

Before the Divisions, I was talking about a situation where a family was in court proceedings and the judge told them to get counselling, but it was too late, because the timeline for the mother is not fitted to the timeline for the child and therefore the child is going into care. My point is that acting sooner is for the good of all, and particularly for the good of children, who need to be brought up in strong families.

Before I conclude, I want to say something about the role of social workers and the local authority. As we mentioned, the care crisis review refers to the risk-averse blame culture and the focus on correct processes rather than a collaborative problem-solving approach. We have to understand the difficult challenge social workers face. If a social worker has little else to offer a struggling family, of course they will be more likely to conclude that a child would be better off being removed, because they cannot take the risk of doing nothing.

As a Government, we cannot just sit back and say that these decisions must be made by the local authority, because that is a little bit too hands-off. I am not usually one to say that Government should do more, but we recognise that all social workers have a professional obligation to adhere to statutory requirements and guidelines and they simply do not have the flexibility that we imagine they do. They also have their own professional reputation to safeguard and that of their children’s services department. The local children’s services department has to fund statutory services, which speaks to the point about there being nothing left in the budget.

One important point, which I hope the Minister will take away, is that we cannot just say it is someone else’s problem. We need clarity from central Government. There are alternatives to care proceedings and some local authorities use them very effectively; we have to look at what works and encourage other local authorities to implement it. The care crisis review has come up with helpful options for change. It has specifically drawn attention to the need to tackle root causes and address the issues that children and families face on a cross-departmental basis. I am sure the Minister agrees that we should have a Children’s Minister in the Cabinet, because that cross-departmental approach is really important. The Minister has been working effectively with the Home Office on child sexual exploitation and I am grateful to see effective cross-departmental working on that issue; I know there is more of that to come under this Minister. I want to emphasise the point about ring-fencing funding for early help. We do not want to lose all the funding for children’s services to cover statutory interventions when other activities could support the families and help children to stay safely at home.

I know the Minister will have listened carefully and that he has already considered the conclusions of the care crisis review. What plans does he have to adopt any of the recommendations? Will he ask his officials to take a long-term, overarching, strategic approach to the problem? If we continue to take more children into care, the funding gap will increase. It is a sticking plaster, which will not solve anything in the long term. I know it is difficult for a Minister who is only in his post for a year or two—I hope this Minister will remain a great deal longer—to think long-term. If he implemented the strategic direction, which is currently lacking, that would be a tremendous legacy.

I believe Government have to be active in formulating direction, because there are too many legislative restrictions on local authorities. There is too much that they have to do, so they do not have the choice to operate in a more flexible manner. I know we all agree that no child should be in care if they can live safely at home, and if the Minister agrees with that, I know he will take action to make it an objective for Government. I thank everyone for taking part and the Minister for listening to me on this subject, which I have raised with him many times.

[Sir David Amess (in the Chair)]

I have to advise the House that the debate must finish at 6.1 pm.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lucy Allan]

I thank all Members who have contributed to this extremely important debate. I value in particular the reminder from the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that these children are not statistics; these children are our children. I know that everyone present shares that view.

I am grateful and glad that the Minister will meet the Family Rights Group tomorrow. That is excellent news. The group will tell the Minister many of the things that I and others have said today.

The issue of funding is not one that can be so lightly skated over. I hesitate to say that, because I never think that funding is the solution to problems on its own, but the Minister may need to reconsider ring-fenced funding for early intervention. If nothing is left in the budget, there is no choice for local authorities to spend on early intervention. The LGA, Barnardo’s and Action for Children all say the same thing. He will listen to what I have said and to what others have said. Cathy Ashley will also put him right on that point tomorrow.

I am glad about the good news on children’s social care—there is lots of it, but I will continue to raise it with the Minister. There is a well of support for it on the Education Committee too, and he will be back before us to answer our questions. I am grateful to him, and I know that he has a passion for the sector, that he cares deeply about children and children in care, and that he will do everything possible to ensure that children have the opportunity to be brought up in a safe and strong family.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the findings of the Care Crisis Review.