Children and Social Work Bill [ Lords ] (Second sitting)

Steve McCabe Excerpts

Committee Debate: 2nd sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 13th December 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Tulip Siddiq (Hampstead and Kilburn) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Walthamstow for her passionate speech. Even though she was interrupted mid-flow, she has summed up very well. It will not come as a surprise to the Committee that I wholeheartedly endorse her speech and the amendment on the national minimum standard for care leavers. I want to point out that we cannot just rely on local authorities to make specific decisions, because there are different standards across the country for different local authorities, as I saw as a councillor before entering Parliament.

Various policy concerns can be addressed by introducing a national minimum standard, but I want to focus specifically on people’s mental health, especially that of vulnerable people leaving the care system. One early study of care leavers in England that I found interesting found evidence of a range of mental health problems for care leavers. One in five care leavers reported long-term mental health problems. Everyone here will be aware of the stigma surrounding mental health. One in five is probably not a true reflection of how many mental health problems there really were among care leavers, because some of them would not want to report problems for fear of being stigmatised.

The mental health problems that the care leavers spoke about included eating disorders, bipolar issues, depression and serious phobias that haunted them later in life. In addition, there were shocking statistics: a quarter of care leavers reported heavy drinking on a regular basis and two thirds admitted that they used drugs regularly. It is no surprise that many of the care leavers who spoke about their experiences said that their mental health problems originated in the life that they led before they, in a sense, entered adulthood. They said that a lot of their mental health problems came from the poor housing that they had experienced and the lack of finance and intimate relationships in their life.

The NSPCC rightly pointed out in its 2014 report that leaving care is an extended process rather than a single event, which I wholeheartedly agree with and which speaks to our amendment. Care leavers face the significant challenge of psychologically moving forward towards adulthood, often trying to make sense of their past life experiences. With the withdrawal of care services, support services and care placements, they have to test out the reliability of their network of friends and family. The shadow Minister has made the point over and over again that we should not have a postcode lottery when it comes to care and the future of care leavers. Nor should we have a lottery of personal circumstances, where those who are lucky have a network of family and friends to rely on, but those who are not often fall into either depression or a life they would not have wanted to lead.

The Opposition acknowledge that multiple changes to someone’s living circumstances will affect them, but change cuts across every aspect of the lives of care leavers; we need to be aware of that, because we are dealing with the most vulnerable people in society. Those changes relate to their finances, access to housing and search for jobs, and care leavers confront those challenges while experiencing a withdrawal of care placements and social support services as they turn 18.

I point to a few stats from the Children’s Society that I thought were particularly striking: 63% of care leavers entered the care system because of abuse or neglect, which is a figure that should put us all to shame; 50% of children in care had emotional and behavioural health that was considered normal, while 13% were borderline and 37% gave cause for concern. I am sure that everyone agrees that those statistics are worrying. They should trouble us all, and they should compel us to act in the interests of the nation.

National minimum standards will allow for a fairer system overall, for which the cost will be wholly outweighed by the benefit of ensuring that the most vulnerable people across the country are treated equally. I trust that Members across the House and from different parties will agree with that after hearing some of the shocking statistics that I have outlined.

[Steve McCabe (Birmingham, Selly Oak) (Lab)]

I will briefly comment on the part of clause 2 that relates to the local offer, before turning to the amendments and new clauses. I will try not to detain you for too long, Mr Wilson.

I am not really clear on the local offer. The Minister has a great deal of experience of the local offer; he pioneered the approach in the Children and Families Act 2014. I am not entirely sure how different what he proposes in the Bill is from the offer in that Act. I took the trouble during the lunch break to look at the rather helpful report from the Children’s Services Development Group entitled “The Local Offer, Children and Parental Rights”. It has a nice foreword by the right hon. Member for Chesham and Amersham (Mrs Gillan), who is the chair of the all-party parliamentary group on autism. You will be delighted to know that I will not read the report to you, Mr Wilson, but there are some things in it that are worth noting.

The offer, as it exists in the Children and Families Act, was intended to help local authorities to identify gaps in provision and to make sure that they were addressed, and the report assesses how successful that has been. It found that there are significant variations in the offers made across the country, with some quite good examples in east midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, and some very poor examples in the west midlands and the south-west. It also found that less than 4% of local authorities have a named person whom anyone trying to understand the local offer can contact, while less than half of all local authorities listed independent specialist schools on their website, despite that being a requirement that the Minister set out in the Act. There is also a significant variation in the information that is provided on those websites. The Children’s Services Development Group says that a best practice guide for local authorities and a mandated template for the local offer would be helpful.

I draw the Committee’s attention to that because the Opposition suggest that it would be helpful to the local offer in the Bill if there were minimum standards by which we could judge the progress of the Minister’s proposals. I asked him to look again at the experience of the local offer in the Children and Families Act and to check whether there is a risk that local authorities will simply seek to replicate that kind of approach in this piece of legislation. I am not saying that that approach is useless, but I am sure the Minister will share my disappointment that it has not been as successful as anticipated in its operation so far.

I turn to the question that my hon. Friend the Member for Hampstead and Kilburn has just been tackling about the needs of children leaving care. The Minister and I obviously got into the wrong place before lunch when I thought that he was telling me that I should not be too concerned about the educational and mental health outcomes for children leaving care. If that is not what the Minister was saying, I am more than happy to accept that.

However, I took the trouble to go back and have a quick look over lunch at some of the things that we know. I looked at the report by Saunders and Broad which examined long-term mental health conditions—the very things that my hon. Friend has just been talking about—with a greater propensity among children in care and leaving care, who suffer from depression, eating disorders and phobias.

I looked at the mental health and wellbeing report produced by the Select Committee on Education in the fourth Session of Parliament. The first line of that report says:

“The mental health of looked-after children is significantly poorer than that of their peers, with almost half of children and young people in care meeting the criteria for a psychiatric disorder”.

That report, as the Minister knows, went on to recommend that child and adolescent mental health services should be made available for all looked-after young people up to the age of 25, in recognition of the distinct issues which this vulnerable group of young people experience as they attempt to leave the care system.

I also looked at the situation on employment. As I understand it, these are the Government’s figures: three-quarters of care leavers are inclined to leave schooling without any formal qualifications. Of the Government’s study of 26,340 former care leavers aged 19, 20 and 21, 40%—nearly 10,500 young people—were not in employment, education or training, compared with 14% of all 19 to 21-year-olds. The percentage of care leavers who could be described as NEETs has risen by 1% in the past two years.

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[Edward Timpson]

I am explaining the current situation. As the law stands, the local authority will continue to provide the same care-leaving service for those children and young people until all their appeal rights have been exhausted. There will be a period following a decision during which every effort will be made to repatriate them to their country of origin. Of course, that will not happen immediately after the courts have made a final decision.

The local authority can, of course, continue to provide ongoing and further support in such circumstances, which may include the continuation of a foster placement or continuing support from a personal adviser, where it considers that appropriate. The Department for Education and the Home Office will continue to work with local authorities and relevant non-governmental organisations on the development of the regulations and guidance required to implement the new arrangements for support set out in the Immigration Act 2016. Those regulations will be made under provisions that will be subject, in due course, to debate and approval in both Houses of Parliament under the affirmative procedure, which I suspect will be the forum for Opposition Members to continue pressing on the issue. I have set out the Government’s position and the rationale behind it.

New clause 13 would require the Secretary of State to undertake an annual review of care leavers’ access to education. I reassure the Committee that we already publish such information, and I will set out the measures we have already taken to better support care leavers into education, employment and training. As the hon. Member for South Shields said, the high proportion of care leavers who are not in education, employment or training is a long-standing problem.

Of course, there are many reasons for the NEET rate being higher for care leavers than for young people in the general population, not least the impact of pre-care experiences. That is why, earlier this year, we published “Keep on Caring,” our new cross-Government care leaver strategy. One of the five outcomes we set out in the strategy is to improve care leavers’

“access to education, training and employment”.

A number of new measures were announced in the strategy that are designed to turn that ambition into reality, including: a commitment to provide funding for a new approach to helping care leavers into education, employment and training by using social investments to fund “payment by results” contracts that reward providers only when care leavers achieve positive outcomes; and a pilot work placement programme to provide care leavers with opportunities to work in central Government Departments.

Care leavers have already been recruited to work in the Department for Education, the Department of Health and the Department for Work and Pensions. Indeed, a new member of my private office is a care leaver, and she has been a fantastic acquisition for the team. Through our new care leaver covenant, we are also encouraging organisations from across society to offer work opportunities to care leavers and to work specifically with FE and HE providers to set out a clear offer of support for care leavers studying in further and higher education.

Financial support is also already provided to care leavers in education. Where care leavers are in higher education, there is a duty on local authorities to provide a £2,000 bursary to help with the cost of studies and a requirement to provide accommodation during university holidays. Care leavers in further education can also receive financial support through the 16-to-19 bursary, for which care leavers are a priority group. The bursary provides up to £1,200 a year to support the cost of their studies. Through DWP’s second chance learning initiative, care leavers are able to claim benefits while studying full time up until the age of 21.

The Government also publish data on the activity of care leavers aged 17 to 21, which previously were not available. The data identify the proportion of care leavers at each age point who are in higher education, other non-advanced education, employment or training, and those who are NEET, which provides the information necessary to track progress over time and will be a key way of ensuring that we can tell whether our changes are having the desired impact.

[Steve McCabe]

The Minister is describing the various things that the Department is doing to try to improve the situation. Does he recognise that a problem that young people themselves regularly identify is the number of school changes they experience as a direct result of being received into care? The Barnardo’s study says that care leavers are saying that they have experienced five changes of school, which makes life difficult for them. Does he have any plans to encourage or persuade local authorities to seek to restrict those movements between schools, which is clearly impairing these young people’s education?

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[Edward Timpson]

I do not have those figures to hand. One of the issues I raised earlier is around identification and knowing who is accessing benefits and is also a care leaver. We need to improve that information, hence the additional data we are now collecting as a Department. That will give us a more granular understanding of who these young people are and how they have come into contact with the benefits system. I will write to the hon. Lady with more details about that, so she has as much information as we can give.

It is important we start to understand where this leads, what the destination inevitably is and what we could have done in the intervening period to make the direction in which a young person goes different. I am happy to give the hon. Lady further information about that.

[Steve McCabe]

This is a minor point on the same sort of area. As I understand universal credit, where that applies to the youth obligation, that obligation will be available to young people only in areas where universal credit is fully operational. In those circumstances, what will be the provision for youngsters leaving care? We could end up in a situation where youngsters leaving care in some parts of the country will be entitled to a different set of opportunities from those in areas where universal credit is fully operational. Has the Minister had an opportunity to look at that, or will he look at that and come back to us? It has not been presented quite like that, from my understanding.

[Edward Timpson]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point. Any roll-out as wide and as significant as universal credit is going to have various knock-on effects, depending on what other initiatives fall off the back of those changes. I will take that away and talk to my colleagues in the Department for Work and Pensions to see whether that has been factored in as part of the roll-out through to 2018.

I want to reiterate that care leavers cannot currently claim working tax credit. Anyone over 18 on universal credit will be able to claim in-work benefits. We want to ensure that care leavers are aware of that and that they get the necessary support that falls off the back of that change.

I turn to the issue of paying council tax. We believe, as a long-standing position, that local council tax support is and should be a matter for local authorities, hence the Government giving councils wide powers to design council tax support schemes that protect the most vulnerable. We know that authorities such as Birmingham and Wolverhampton have already taken the decision to exempt care leavers from council tax and I applaud them for doing so.

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[Edward Timpson]

I thank the hon. Lady for tabling amendments 28 to 31, which would provide that when a local authority assesses care leavers’ needs, they must take account of that young person’s requirements in relation to their physical and mental health, their emotional wellbeing and their needs as a young parent if that applies. Amendment 29 would require that any mental health assessment should be conducted by a qualified professional. I recognise that these issues are important, and that they could impact significantly on the lives of care leavers, whose health and wellbeing outcomes tend to be worse than for young people who have never been in care. The likelihood of care leavers becoming teenage parents is also much greater than for their peers, for the reasons set out by the hon. Lady in her speech.

There are, however, many other wider issues, such as health and development, education, training and employment, and financial and accommodation needs, which are also vital to care leavers’ transition to independent life and adulthood. All these issues— it would not be practical to list them all—are arguably of equal importance and will be different for every child, so I do not agree with giving some more weight than others. It is also unnecessary because these and other issues are already comprehensively covered in volume 3 of “The Children Act 1989 guidance and regulations”. The statutory guidance is clear that local authorities must produce for each care leaver a comprehensive pathway plan, which must be based on an up-to-date and thorough needs assessment taking into account how to support their health and development and their physical, emotional and mental health needs. I shall read a small extract from that guidance, which states that pathway plans must address the

“young person’s health and development building on the information included in the young person’s health plan established within their care plan when they were looked after”

and that personal advisers, who, under the clause, will cover all care leavers up to the age of 25,

“should work closely with doctors and nurses involved in health assessments and would benefit from training in how to promote both physical and mental health.”

I reiterate that the Government have established the expert group on the mental health of looked-after children and care leavers, and we have asked them to recommend the most appropriate way to deliver the care. The group have already met twice, and I have met them, and they are free to make recommendations during the period of their work. Their remit is substantial and wider than that which they had in relation to the Education Committee, albeit that that also had worth.

On the initial assessment when a child comes into care, it is not just a strengths and difficulties questionnaire, as regulations already require the responsible authority to ensure that all looked-after children have an initial health assessment by a registered medical practitioner, who should cover their emotional and mental health as well as their physical health needs. The reason we wanted the expert group to consider the matter is that there will be circumstances where it is not appropriate for a child coming into care to have a mental health assessment at that specific moment, either because they have suffered trauma at the moment of coming into care, or because they are a newborn baby, or because other elements in their circumstances might require it to be done in a more individually appropriate way. That will ensure that the right decisions are made about how to get to the bottom of what may be underlying issues due to pre-care experiences. We do not want to set a single process that restricts those who are charged with responsibilities to ensure that they take the appropriate action for that child.

[Steve McCabe]

I understand the Minister’s point about a relatively young child or a baby not necessarily having a mental health assessment, but who would make the decision whether it was appropriate for a child to have a mental health assessment? Would it be a qualified mental health practitioner who would have the ability to make that judgment, or would it be a member of the local authority, or a member of the residential home, or the social worker? There is clearly a temptation for people to say, “Well, it is not appropriate at the moment.” Given what we now know about the longer-term effect on the mental health of many of these children, who is the most appropriate person to make that judgment, and at what stage?

[Edward Timpson]

As I set out a few moments ago, the regulations make it clear that the health assessment is carried out by a registered medical practitioner.

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[Steve McCabe]

That’s not what I asked.

[Edward Timpson]

The hon. Gentleman asked who makes the decision, and the regulations are clear about who carries out the assessment. He knows as well as I do that local authorities have a responsibility to triage cases according to the law and the regulations that apply. If he is suggesting that it should or should not be a certain person, I would be interested to hear his views.

[Steve McCabe]

That is not quite what I asked. It is all very well to say that, at the moment, a child coming into care has a regular health assessment, but the Minister then told us why it would not be appropriate at certain stages or certain ages for children to have a mental health assessment. He is making that judgment at the moment. I am asking who is entitled to make a judgment about a child’s mental health, given what we now know about the long-term consequences for many of these children.

[Edward Timpson]

I have already explained to the hon. Gentleman that the process is clearly set out in law. I am not making that judgment; I am reflecting on the evidence provided by others about the experience of children who are brought into the care system. The whole point of the expert group is to try to ensure that the care pathway that is created for each child coming into care will ensure that they get the right support based on the right diagnosis at the right time. We want to avoid ending up with a process at the inception of a child’s time in care that does not enable that pathway to be created in a way that meets their individual needs.

The hon. Member for South Shields spoke about the most vulnerable mothers who have had multiple children taken into care. As we know, that group includes a disproportionate number of care leavers. I draw the Committee’s attention to the Pause programme, which seeks to break the intergenerational cycle of care, which the hon. Member for Stretford and Urmston mentioned. Pause has been operating in Hackney for some time and has now been extended to six other local authority areas, with funding from my Department’s innovation programme.

Last month, the Secretary of State announced funding to roll out the Pause programme in a further nine areas, bringing Government funding support to more than £6.4 million in the next four years. The programme works intensively with young women to prevent repeat pregnancies and the subsequent removal of their children into care. The initial findings are extremely encouraging and, by extending the programme, we want to reach out to more parts of the country so that more mothers who find themselves in that situation get the support they need so that they can make good life choices and have a future that is not just about turning up at court once every few years to fight for custody of their own child.