Children’s Homes

Patricia Gibson Excerpts

Tuesday 19th April 2016 Westminster Hall

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I would like to express my delight at serving under your chairmanship, Mrs Gillan, and to extend my thanks to the hon. Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) for securing this important debate. I come to the debate with a career of more than 20 years as an English teacher, and the subject of the debate is close to my heart. I have had the experience of teaching young people who have had the misfortune, the upset, of being caught up in adverse family circumstances and have become what we now call looked-after children and sometimes residents of children’s homes.

Putting a child in a children’s home must be a last resort, for reasons that I will go on to explain. It is no great surprise that children who find themselves in children’s homes are often very angry. Despite the best efforts of the well-meaning staff in homes, those young people become angry and disengaged from the world. That is because, regardless of how challenging the home circumstances might be, it is, as we can imagine, extremely traumatic for a young person to be removed from their loved ones and placed with strangers. However much attention, affection or concern is expressed by those people, they are strangers to the young person, and it is a very difficult transition for them to make, even if it is only on a temporary basis.

We know that some homes for children do an excellent job. I have examples from my constituency of North Ayrshire and Arran. But for the young person that is not necessarily the point. It is the strangeness, the unfamiliarity, the confusion and very often the social stigma in their peer group of being removed to a children’s home that cause so much distress, and it is very important to be mindful of that.

Of course, not every looked-after child ends up in a children’s home. There are other options. They may be looked after at home under a supervision requirement. They may be in foster care, a residential unit or school, a secure unit or a kinship placement.

In Scotland we have made some progress, with a 1% reduction in the number of looked-after children from 2014—the third consecutive year in which the numbers have decreased. The numbers leaving care each year are lower than the numbers entering care. The number of looked-after children in England is rising. If the situation were reversed and the numbers were rising in Scotland, I would be taking a great interest in what was happening in England to see what we could learn from that. I would be urging the Scottish Government, of whatever political make-up, to look at the work being done in England to see whether we could apply the same lessons in Scotland, because this is not a party political issue. We all seek the best outcomes for our children, wherever they come from in the United Kingdom. The beauty of devolution is that it allows component parts of the United Kingdom to seek the best solutions, which provides excellent opportunities for us to learn from each other and to look at the different experiences as those solutions are applied. Such opportunities should be seized with enthusiasm and curiosity.

I applaud kinship care. The number of looked-after children in Scotland benefiting from kinship care exceeds the number of children looked after at home. For all the good work undertaken in children’s homes, there is little doubt that kinship care is the most effective way of providing care for vulnerable young people. As a society, we all owe a debt of gratitude to those who assume kinship care roles. Kinship care is a challenging role that does not receive the recognition it deserves, and I am proud to say that the SNP Government in Scotland have provided kinship carers with additional support so that their care allowances are the same as those provided to foster carers.

There is no reason why children living with kinship carers should not be treated in the same way as children in foster care. Their stories are no less traumatic and no less distressing, and their vulnerability is no less real. Supporting families is vital, and it has been the entire approach in Scotland. Action is increasingly being taken earlier in children’s lives to address any concerns before they escalate, which has reduced the number of children on child protection registers by 4%. The way forward must be stable, secure placements either at home with their parents or in a different home environment where the child can benefit from the security and stability upon which child development thrives.

At the end of last year, I was involved in a Backbench Business Committee debate on the sexual exploitation of young people. The Chamber was urged by various speakers to consider examples from Finland, Iceland, Norway, Denmark and Sweden. Name any country in Europe, and good examples of best practice were being held up for the Chamber to consider. Although it is important to learn from other nations, I said that we had some excellent examples in Scotland, where a child in foster, kinship or residential care can continue their residency up to the age of 21 and where support can also be provided to care leavers up to the age of 26 if it is considered necessary and desirable. Although I held up such examples of good practice, I am afraid that my contribution was covered over by the chatter in the Chamber. Of course there are excellent examples in mainland Europe, but we must learn from each other in the United Kingdom because the whole point is to have the best outcomes for all the children of the United Kingdom, wherever they live.

We all agree that we need to ensure that all children who need extra support are able to access it. We need to learn from each other, and we need to keep on learning from each other, about the best way of ensuring that such support is in place. That is the least that our children deserve.

--- Later in debate ---

[Kirsten Oswald]

I will come to some of the points raised by the hon. Lady, particularly the issue of distance, which I know is a concern of hers.

Most looked-after children in England are between 10 and 15 years old. More boys than girls are looked after, and the gender distribution seems relatively unchanging. Although the majority of the looked-after population is white, children from black and minority ethnic backgrounds appear to be over-represented in the looked-after population. Those figures are concerning. Those are our children, and we must be conscious of the impact on their lives.

As the hon. Member for Stockport and my hon. Friend the Member for North Ayrshire and Arran said, things in Scotland might be different—useful progress has been made in recent years—but we must all consider what needs to be done and can be done at any time, because there is always progress to be made. I am pleased that under the Scottish Government, the number of children in the care system has dropped for the third consecutive year. It means that there is a possibility that we are taking action earlier in children’s lives to address some concerns before they escalate.

Between August 2014 and July 2015, the number of looked-after children in Scotland decreased by 1%, and the number of children on the child protection register decreased by 4%. We recently introduced a successful programme to help find permanent homes for vulnerable youngsters, and the Centre for Excellence for Looked-After Children in Scotland will receive around £580,000 a year to support improvements in helping looked-after children find a permanent home, because we have seen the positive outcomes of doing so.

The permanence and care excellence programme aims to find permanent homes for children in care. It has been piloted by Aberdeen city and Renfrewshire councils, and importantly, it brings together multi-agency staff teams to build capacity so that we can continue to improve service and outcomes, which the hon. Member for Stockport was rightly concerned about, for some of our most vulnerable young people. I think we agree that it is vital that, wherever possible, children should be able to achieve a permanent home, including through family rehabilitation where appropriate, at the earliest opportunity.

Of course, there are still children and young people who spend too long being looked after or on the child protection register. Sometimes it is appropriate to consider children’s homes and how we might provide better support, and sometimes we must acknowledge that that support needs to extend beyond what it might have been traditionally. I echo my hon. Friend’s sentiments about the positive impact of extending the right to stay in foster, kinship or residential care settings up to the age of 21, and supporting care leavers up to the age of 26 to help them move to independent living. When children cannot live at home, we owe it to them to help them find a stable, loving environment where possible and move forward in their lives as they get older.

[Patricia Gibson]

Perhaps one of the defining differences between England and Scotland is that in Scotland there has been far greater emphasis in the past five to 10 years than ever before on supporting families, using kinship care where appropriate or foster care, and moving away from children’s homes wherever another solution can be found.

[Kirsten Oswald]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention. I agree with her. The hon. Member for Rochdale also emphasised that it is very important that the whole range of options for each child is fully considered. I acknowledge the great eloquence of the hon. Member for Stockport on the topic of authority placements. I sympathise with her concerns about the potential for increased difficulties for some children who may find themselves in such situations. I think she is correct that children accommodated far from home may be particularly vulnerable. I am concerned about some of the pull factors that may lead them into potentially damaging and dangerous situations. She made the point very well—she was passionate about this—that there is the potential for a significant impact on these children.

However, I acknowledge the point made by the hon. Member for Rochdale that on occasion there may be sound reasons for distant placements. The Education Committee was very thoughtful in its assessment of the situation, and I look forward to hearing more when the report that was referred to earlier comes out.

In contrast with England, I think there has been some progress in Scotland in recent years, which it is useful to look at. The number of children in the care system has dropped for the third consecutive year. However, in our aspirations, I think we are all of one mind here. I hope that our shared desire to see the best possible outcomes for all of our children can lead to further progress and lead us to listen carefully to one another. We must always remember that children who need to be looked after, in care or in the situations we have discussed today, face challenges that we, their peers, and wider society often struggle to understand. We need to make sure that our systems are in place to give them the best help possible at the earliest possible stage to lay the trust and foundation for a successful and happy life.