Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill

Sally Jameson Excerpts

Wednesday 8th January 2025 Commons Chamber

[Sally Jameson (Doncaster Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

All children deserve the very best start in life, and I will vote in favour of this Bill today on behalf of all the children in Doncaster Central who deserve just that. Along with many other measures, I am pleased that the Bill acknowledges the immense challenges faced by care leavers and care-experienced children, and that it will set a higher bar for councils to support young people who have left care. In Doncaster there were 542 looked-after children in 2023. The Bill’s success will be measured by their outcomes, which have long been ignored.

As a former prison officer, I have worked with many care leavers in the prisons system and heard their experiences, some of which were harrowing. The statistics speak for themselves: it is estimated that around 50% of young offenders in custody and around 29% of the entire prison population are care-experienced. That fact is most sobering when highlighting the significant failures in the current system, and it serves as a reminder to us all that change must come. It signifies a consistent and enduring failure to support young people in the care system, and tells our young people that if they need to be cared for by the state, they are less likely to lead a positive and stable adult life. It is the taxpayer, frankly, who is picking up the bill. According to research from Become, the number of young care leavers aged between 18 and 20 approaching local authorities as homeless has increased by 54% over the past five years, and they are nine times more likely to face homelessness than other young people.

I wholeheartedly welcome the measures in the Bill that strengthen arrangements to support and assist care leavers in their transition to adulthood, and I hope that legislating for local authorities to publish a full local care offer for care leavers will offer much-needed clarity and direction, which can often be uncertain. I hope the Government will consider the recommendations from Barnardo’s, which suggest that the Bill should extend corporate parenting principles to a greater range of public bodies, including the Home Office, the police and healthcare providers.

Finally, I want to refer to something that has been raised by a number of colleagues today: the disgusting and excessive profiteering that exists in children’s social care. People and private providers who have no business in this area have been charging extortionate rates to councils and taxpayers while delivering the appalling outcomes that I discussed earlier.

Change is much needed, and I am pleased that the Bill is finally here. It has been a long time coming for many vulnerable children across the country, and I look forward to seeing it progress.