Pat Glass
Main Page: Pat Glass (Labour - North West Durham)
Mr Stuart
I thank my hon. Friend for his question and for his hard work and commitment in this area and others on the Committee. I know he would join me, as would Members across the House, in recognising the personal commitment of the Minister to make a difference in this area, and that significant improvements have been made under this Government. None the less, outcomes for young people in care in this country for far too long have been bleak, as my hon. Friend the Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker) puts it. When we look at how many people who have been in care end up in prison, in prostitution, or struggling with drug and alcohol dependency, that does not say a lot about the parenting that we have put in place for those young people, and we know that other countries manage to do a lot better, both educationally and in broader terms, to prepare people for adult life.
What better test of a civilisation than how it looks after young people whose families may have disintegrated and failed to provide them with support? What better way to judge that civilisation than by its ability to meet the needs of those young people and make sure that those most vulnerable people get a fair crack at life and are supported all the way into adulthood, rather than too often abandoned at a young and vulnerable age?
Pat Glass (North West Durham) (Lab)
I associate myself with the comments of the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Craig Whittaker). I am particularly proud of this report, which I think is one of the most important that the Committee has produced over the past four years. It contains many recommendations, and I am looking for positive responses from the Government on all of them, but I will mention the two that I think are most urgent. First, we recommend that Ofsted should inspect provision for children leaving care at 16. As the Chair of the Committee said, we would not allow schools, further education colleges or children’s homes not to be subject to inspection by Ofsted, so why should we allow provision for our most vulnerable children leaving care not to be? Secondly, we recommend that Staying Put should also be available to children in children’s homes, who are often taken into care late and are often the most vulnerable. They are the most likely to end up unemployed, homeless, in prison, subject to substance abuse and so on. I am particularly concerned that we get a positive response to those two recommendations and hope that the Chair of the Committee will support that.
Mr Stuart
I very much agree with the hon. Lady. I am pleased to see the newly promoted Financial Secretary to the Treasury on the Front Bench. Even if we were to view that group of people in the driest economic terms, we would see that investing to save by ensuring that they get the stability and support they need when they are at their most vulnerable, which is when they are young, would pay off in the long term. That would reduce the number of people in prison or calling on other services because their lives have not worked out right. I know that Treasury Ministers are always told to invest to save, but here we have a moral need to do the right thing by those young people but also, when we consider how catastrophic the outcomes are for so many of them, an overwhelming economic case. Even in these tough times, we should find the resources and focus them on that group, because we will make proper improvement on every front, as the hon. Lady rightly points out.