Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Claire Coutinho

Monday 17th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

We are confident that the behaviour hubs programme is helping schools to create calm, understanding and positive environments by spreading best practice. The behaviour hubs programme is being evaluated and impact assessed. We will publish an interim report in 2024. I would be delighted to discuss those findings with my right hon. Friend.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Last week I introduced by ten-minute rule Bill on bullying and respect at work. It is not just children who experience bullying in the school environment but teachers and other staff. Will the Minister look at my Bill, which will establish a legal definition of bullying at work and a route to employment tribunal to protect the people who are looking after our children in our schools?

[Claire Coutinho]

I have not seen the hon. Lady’s Bill, but I would be happy to take a look and have a discussion with her.

SEND and Alternative Provision

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Claire Coutinho

Monday 6th March 2023 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank my hon. and learned Friend for everything he has done on children’s policy in his time in government. He is absolutely right that we must make sure the health sector is also held accountable. One thing we have done is to change the area inspection framework, as I mentioned, which means that for the first time we will have a social care inspector looking at the health element. The Health and Care Act 2022 requires every integrated care board to have a named person accountable for SEND, which will take on the statutory responsibilities from clinical commissioning groups.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

The implementation plan will not work if the workforce is not in place. As we know, to be able to achieve an EHCP, the workforce needs to be in place and it takes many years to train. Those professionals are not there currently, so how will the Minister ensure that the workforce is in place not just in the health pathway but in the school? The experience I am seeing in a particular multi-academy trust in York is that it is laying off the staff who would take responsibility for those children, as opposed to providing the therapeutic environment that children so need.

[Claire Coutinho]

The hon. Lady is absolutely right that specialist support is really important. We are working with the Department of Health and Social Care on specialist health support, whether that is occupational therapists or speech and language therapists, but we are also training educational psychologists and changing the special educational needs co-ordinator training. More importantly, we want all teachers to be trained in SEN. That is why we are looking at initial teacher training and the early careers framework. A huge proportion of the school population now has an SEN and we need everybody to be trained in it.

Independent Review of Children’s Social Care

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Claire Coutinho

Thursday 24th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I will be looking at that carefully. The heart of what we want to do is to make sure that all people have these powerful relationships in their lives. As he ably pointed out, that is what we expect for our friends and families and actually everyone deserves to have those people who will go the extra mile for them.

On our ambitions for this area, first, I come to our ambition for families. Many Members spoke eloquently about the importance of families. They are at the heart of what makes us happy and well, so when families are struggling we should provide rapid and intensive multidisciplinary support at the right time to help to fix the issues. Lots of Members talked about early intervention and I completely agree that that is the core issue here. We want to make sure that our programmes improve early help services from birth to adulthood. We want to build a strong evidence base on what works to support families to turn around difficult situations, and I would particularly like to thank the Children’s Commissioner for part 1 of her recent excellent review of family life. There was a comment from the shadow Minister about our lack of ambition in this area. I gently point her towards our ambitious reforms on domestic abuse and on drug and alcohol addiction, reducing parental conflict. We talk about prevention to make sure that people are not suffering from the kind of trauma that the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) set out movingly. These programmes are both important and exactly the right place to start.

[Rachael Maskell]

What keeps me awake at night is knowing that poverty levels are rising sharply. It is those pressures on families that often lead children into the care system. Given that the report did not have the remit to look into the intersection between poverty and the challenges that families face, will the Minister ensure that she puts more pressure on her Government to put the protection around families so we do not see children having to go into the care sector?

[Claire Coutinho]

As someone who has been working on the cost of living challenge for the past 18 months, I can say that it has been a priority of this Government, during the pandemic and into the energy crisis, to support the most vulnerable households. That has exactly been our impetus in these times.

Our second ambition is for child protection. The murders of Arthur and Star have sickened us all. The recommendations of the national panel aim to ensure that such terrible incidents are as rare as possible and, when children are at risk of harm, to ensure that we intervene quickly and decisively through a more expert and multi-agency child protection response. The hon. Member for Bath had a question about developing our understanding of sibling sexual abuse. Nothing in this area should be taboo. We are looking at the evidence base via our child sex abuse centre. I am happy to discuss these things further with her.

Local authorities, police and health services are under statutory duties to work together to safeguard children. We will use the recommendations of all the reviews to support them.

Thirdly, on foster care and kinship care, I agree that the John Lewis advert was touching, providing an exciting opportunity for us to talk more about this area. Where children cannot be looked after safely by their parents, we should properly support wider family networks to step up and family-like environments. At the moment, there are practical, financial and cultural barriers to some of this, particularly some of the ethnic disparities that have been mentioned today. But moving in with a relative or people from one’s own community provides a strong chance of achieving the kind of lifelong stability that children need. We need to encourage the system always to look to wider family before care outside the family and to help to equip families to do this where that is in the child’s best interests. Many Members also mentioned adoption. We set out a strategy last year and that will also be an important part of our solution here.

Our fourth ambition is for the care system. Where family is not an option, the care system should provide stable and loving homes. Again, I echo the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who said that it was very sad that some people do not have what other people have: a loving family home. The care review found that supporting children in the care system also needs to be focused on outcomes. That has been widely discussed today and it is absolutely right. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) movingly set that out, saying that we must focus on the outcomes. I also pay tribute to John from Plan B who sounds like a thoroughly brilliant man in all the work that he is doing to help people in this regard.

The number of times that children move homes was mentioned in a couple of speeches. Care-experienced people whom I have spoken to in the past couple of weeks talked about children moving 21 times. That is not the kind of situation that we need to set up the relationship that we think are so important for people.

While we are considering all the recommendations to support young people and to get those outcomes that we have been talking about, we have also been working in close partnership with Departments across Government and with Ofsted. What is clear is that the continuing status is not an option, although I gently say to the shadow Minister that the trajectory has been positive and that there has been a huge amount of work from dedicated teams to try to get that good and outstanding level from 36% to 55%, and to reduce the number of local authorities that have been judged to be inadequate. I pay tribute to them for their work. Of course, we must continue. We must not accept any failure in this area, but they have done exceptional work so far.

Our fifth ambition relates to the workforce, which the hon. Member for York Central, who I know has great experience in this area, my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who is always so interesting on this issue, all talked about. We must equip the children’s social care system with the people and tools it needs to do a good job of supporting all those who need its help. That means a skilled and empowered workforce, better data and transparency and clear system direction.

We have committed to a national framework for children’s social care and are working to publish a draft of that alongside the implementation strategy. We will also continue to work closely with Ofsted, which plays an important role in the intervention and improvement programme.

Finally, by far the most important factor in achieving success will be the people delivering the vision. I am sure this House will join me in paying tribute to every social worker and all those supporting children, such as workers in children’s homes and foster carers. They are there tirelessly, day in, day out, providing support to children and their families. We will bring forward proposals to support the workforce and foster carers to ensure they have the right skills and strong leadership.

I am proud to be responsible for a system that has been shown to help children to recover from traumatic experiences and often to succeed against the odds, but the children’s social care system cannot do it all. A young person’s success is driven by many different factors and actors. I want other parts of the local council system, the school system, the health service and many others within and outside Government to do all they can to give our children the best possible start in life. Children’s social care cannot do it alone and we cannot do anything at once, but this is a programme for a long-term, once in a generation reform. We will start by laying the foundations for a system that is built on love and the importance of family.

Adoption: Support for Birth Families

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Claire Coutinho

Thursday 17th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on securing a debate on this important subject as well as the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell) on their contributions. I also congratulate Families in Care, which sounds like it is doing tremendous work to try to overcome the feelings that birth parents have of isolation and being stigmatised and overwhelmed. I would love to talk to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central about what more I can do with that charity. I will set out a little what the law says at the moment before turning to some of our work in this area. I assure her that I am incredibly passionate about the matter and working keenly on it.

The law is clear that, wherever possible, children should remain in the birth family and that families should be given extra support to help keep them together. We are carefully considering the children’s social care review by Josh MacAlister, which talks about early family help and better data as well as some of the other points that the hon. Lady rightly mentioned.

Where a child cannot live with their birth parents, local authorities have a legal duty to give preference to alternative care by family and friends before considering adoption. The decision to put a child forward for adoption should never be taken lightly. The ultimate decision rests with the independent court systems, and courts scrutinise the evidence before them. The hon. Lady rightly mentioned that paramount in the court’s consideration is the welfare of the child, with strong checks and balances in the system. Birth parents are supported during the process by having access to legal representation and the opportunity to refute allegations. I very much recognise what she said about birth parents feeling like they sometimes do not have the chance to do those things.

It is essential that we support birth parents and adopted children. My Department funds the Family Rights Group, of which I am sure the hon. Lady is aware. This week, I met a brilliant employee of it who is a passionate advocate for birth parents. It provides independent legal and other advice to families so that, in its own words,

“wherever possible children can live safely and flourish within their family network”.

Many birth parents of children in care will be grieving over the loss of their child or may need support to process what has happened. Adoption agencies have legal duties to provide support to birth parents. I accept that provision can often be patchy and variable, but those agencies must provide counselling services to birth parents when adoption of a child is being considered. Such counselling must be made available to them at any time throughout the adoption process, including when that support has previously been rejected. When birth parents reject counselling, agencies should offer to set up counselling for them with another agency, should they prefer that. Birth parents must be given information about the implications of adoption. Adoption agencies must explain the process of adoption and the legal implications, and birth parents should also receive written information on the implications.

The wishes of birth parents about future contact must be asked for by adoption agencies so that the court can take them into account on applications for a placement or adoption order. Agencies must also ask birth parents their wishes about the religion and culture of their child so that their views can be considered if the child does go to live with adopters.

Ensuring that adoption agencies are running consistent and high-quality services is a key priority for me and the Government. We published a national adoption strategy in July 2021, and some of our work on regional adoption agencies is to try to test that best practice, including in particular some of the counselling and emotional support that the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for York Central mentioned.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am grateful to the Minister for her response so far, but she will also recognise that, such is the churn of social workers involved in the adoption process, that birth parents often have six or seven social workers over the course of an adoption discussion to the point of adoption. Therefore, they do not get the representation and consistency, which is so important to give them the care the Minister talks about.

[Claire Coutinho]

I thank the hon. Lady for that important intervention. Yes, I recognise there is retention and churn in the social care worker system. I am looking at that very closely and am happy to talk to her about it further. Consistency means the ability to build a proper relationship. That means so much in terms of trust, but also in terms of access to the services that we all know are important, because it increases the likelihood of someone actually taking them up.

Part of our adoption strategy includes driving improvement for contact services, which was mentioned. Where ongoing contact with an adopted child is agreed, support for birth parents or family members can help to ensure that the contact is a positive experience for the adopted child. We know that having contact with birth parents is really important for a child’s sense of their past and identity. I spoke this week to birth parents and care-experienced people who talked about the trauma for children of not really understanding where they come from. We are working very hard with regional adoption agency leaders to ensure that contact services provide better support and are a positive experience for all those who are involved, including birth parents.

On top of that, regional adoption agency leaders have established a birth parent reference group. That is really important, because the group will help to shape plans for developing better information for birth parents and family members. It will create resources for other birth parents around letterbox contact, ensuring it is easier to navigate and ensuring that birth parents are involved during the further development of any adoption services who have some of that co-design.

--- Later in debate ---

[Claire Coutinho]

I would be delighted to, so let me take that away and see what we can do.

[Rachael Maskell]

I am grateful to the Minister for allowing another intervention. The Mockingbird set-up that is used in fostering is another example of a network of support built around foster parents. Could that not also be translated into the adoption process, particularly bearing in mind Rachel de Souza’s report on the family and looking at the more extensive family and the opportunity that that brings?

[Claire Coutinho]

I am very familiar with the Mockingbird programme, which I think is excellent, so I will look at that as well. I also agree with the Children’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza’s excellent report on family.

Let me bring my comments to a close, despite all the interventions. We have had a very interesting debate. I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central for securing it. I am particularly committed to this area, as are the Government, and to making sure that it works better for birth parents and adopted children.

Question put and agreed to.