Children’s Social Care

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Thursday 17th January 2019 Commons Chamber

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

I rise to speak about three matters in particular, but I first thank the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton) for his dogged pursuit of this debate. Waiting for it has been like a game of pass the parcel; it has been going around and around, and I am glad that we have had it today.

Contributions from both sides of the House have helped to show the seriousness of this matter. As my hon. Friend the Member for West Ham (Lyn Brown) said, cuts to children’s social care have reached crisis point. I have been asked to speak in this debate on behalf of the councillors on Plymouth City Council, who want to raise the seriousness of the crisis around children’s social care—an area that has not always got the attention that it has deserved. Rightly, adult social care has taken the lion’s share of headlines and funding in recent years, but the crisis in children’s social care has been growing because of a mix of austerity, poverty, cuts and growing demand. It is a poisonous situation that has left some of the most vulnerable children in the country in the worst possible state.

As we have already heard today, analysis from the LGA shows that we need further funding of £3 billion if we are to keep children’s services standing still by 2025. There are more looked-after children being cared for than ever before, and that number is only going to increase. Early intervention is so important, but funding for early intervention programmes is being cut. The expertise of our social workers and charities at a local level is being removed by slow attrition and cuts. People are losing faith and confidence that this system is one in which they want to play a part. But we need the system to work like never before. In Plymouth, as in many other councils across the country, councillors—of all political parties, to be fair—are putting more and more money into children’s social care because there is more and more demand. There are more children in care in Plymouth than ever before, and that will only continue to eat up more and more council funding. Plymouth City Council has lost £350 million in revenue support since 2013, and losing 60p in the pound of funding means that the urgent care needs of our children are sometimes being neglected.

As my hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mohammad Yasin) said, we need to do more to care for the children, particularly 16 and 17-year-olds, who frequently get left out of the system, being put in semi-supported situations where they are left to fend for themselves without the wraparound care and support that they really need. Many of those young kids are at a crossroads in their lives. If they receive the support that they deserve, there is the potential for them to lead full and productive lives. However, far too many young people who have been in care and looked-after children in semi-supported states will not go on to fulfil their potential, because of cuts. Far too many of them will enter the criminal justice system. We can stop that if we take serious steps to do so. I welcome the extension of local councils’ responsibility for people who have been in care up to the age of 25. That is exactly the right thing to do, but it cannot happen unless the funding goes along with it, because having additional responsibilities without additional funding loads more and more pressure on to an already pressurised system.

I want to raise an issue that has not been spoken about so far—exceptionalism in our children’s social care system. One reason why funding for Plymouth’s social care system has been sunk in recent years is the exceptional costs of funding care packages for a very, very small number of children. I want to choose my words carefully, because it is really important that in discussing and debating these issues, at no stage is any blame attributed to the children who need multimillion-pound care packages. Plymouth City Council has lost legal cases about how those care packages are funded. I know that the Minister will be aware of that, and I would be grateful if he could agree to meet the council to discuss how the huge number of those exceptional cases is basically sinking our budget. It is exactly right that the children with the most complex and urgent care needs get that care, especially in a region like the south-west where complex care facilities are not our doorstep and children need to leave the area and the support networks in their locality. However, we cannot defund the needs of the many just to fund those of the few. That is really important. I fear that in a funding situation where there is more and more demand, difficult choices will need to be made. When local councils have lost so much of their funding, exceptional care packages risk really undermining the quality of care that can be given to every child. The Minister is nodding—I am grateful that he will meet to discuss that.

There are so many good people working so hard in children’s social care, and they do not get the praise or the thanks that they deserve. Sometimes in this place it is not fashionable to praise local councils, but I want to thank them. I thank local councillors of all political hues, who are going the extra mile to support urgent children’s social care issues. I thank the care workers and the charities that we heard about from my hon. Friend the Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Laura Smith). I thank foster carers, who are the fundamental bedrock of this issue—I know that because my dad and my stepmother have been fostering children since I was at an early age. Since being a young boy, I have had around the house a constant stream of kids about yea high who have been beaten, abused, starved, neglected or ignored. We need to create a system where those children are given a chance to fulfil their potential. That can come only when the funding envelope for children’s social care is adequate for the urgent needs that we have, and when sufficient political priority is put on all aspects of the children’s social care debate.

There is an urgent need for us to continue this debate. I encourage the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham to secure another debate, because we need to keep this in the headlines and on the agenda. If we do not, it risks slipping off. Adult social care takes the headlines and the need. As we have an increasingly old population, adult social care will take up a bigger share of the pie, and we need to ensure that looked-after children—some of the most neglected in our society—are not ignored by this place in favour of other areas.

I want to thank all the people who work so hard on children’s social care, including our local authorities, careworkers, charities and the individuals and families who are trying so hard, but we need to do better, and the best way is by funding this work properly.