Children and Families: Cross-Government Strategy

Debate between Vicky Ford and David Simmonds

Wednesday 14th July 2021 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Vicky Ford)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Dowd. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) for securing this important debate about how we work across Government to improve outcomes for children and their families. I am also grateful for the focus on this topic through the Lords Public Services Committee. The Secretary of State for Education is the lead Cabinet Minister for families and has spoken about the critical importance of families in ensuring the best start in life for children and young people. The Government have been clear that providing the right support for children and families is a priority across policy and decision making, particularly for those with vulnerabilities. We all share an ambition to ensure the system works and delivers the best outcomes.

Over the past decade, we have worked consistently to improve outcomes for every child. For example, I am proud that through the work of the Department for Education, alongside schools, the attainment gap has narrowed at every stage of education. However, we know the pandemic has thrown up additional challenges, and families and children rely on policies and programmes owned across Government. For example, that means being able to access a good school and early education place; the welfare support system being there when families need it; providing first-class child and family health provision through our NHS; and, where families need more support, ensuring that the right, targeted services are in place through children’s social care, early help, special education needs and disabilities services, and multi-service providers, such as family hubs.

Departments must keep families front and centre of all they do, and I am proud of the progress the Government have made in joining up services for children and families. I assure my hon. Friend that Ministers and officials have never worked more closely together than over this pandemic period. I have had frequent meetings at the Home Office with the Minister for Safeguarding, at the Department of Health and Social Care with the Minister for Minister for Prevention, Public Health and Primary Care, the Minister for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health and the Minister for Care, at the Department for Work and Pensions with the Minister for Welfare Delivery, at the Ministry of Justice with the Parliamentary Under-Secretaries of State, the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Alex Chalk) and Lord Wolfson, and at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs with my the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis). All these meetings have brought us together to better our approach to protect the most vulnerable children and young people.

At official level, Departments continue to partner to deliver the cross-Government vulnerable children and young people’s programme, which has reported to the Cabinet Office since April 2020—right at the beginning of the pandemic. This approach has cemented strong cross-Government working and includes both central Government Departments and agencies, such as Ofsted, Public Health England and NHS England. Cross-Government work has been essential to ensuring children and young people continue to have access to the critical services they need and deserve, even over the challenges of the past 16 months. These services have continued to operate, thanks to the dedication of frontline workers, including health visitors, NHS mental health service providers, social workers, school teachers and staff.

To support local services, we have co-ordinated across Government an increase to funding for councils. An additional £4.6 billion of un-ringfenced funding in 2020 to 2021 went to councils for both children and adult social care, with another £1.5 billion-plus this year. My Department is providing an additional £3 billion for education recovery, which comes on top of investment of over £14 billion in schools over the three-year-period, compared with 2019 to 2020. The schools budget will be over £52 billion next year.

When schools were closed to most pupils, we provided £450 million for the national voucher scheme to support pupils eligible for free school meals when they stayed at home. However, many children missed out on opportunities to have fun with their friends, and parents had little respite from caring for their children. That is why we have also expanded our holiday activities and food programme this year and are making up to £220 million available to local authorities across the country to co-ordinate free holiday provision, including healthy food and enriching activities. The Department for Work and Pensions has provided more than £400 million in local authority welfare schemes, including the covid local support grant, which is to support families and individuals to stay warm and well fed. The primary focus of those grants is children and their families.

[David Simmonds]

I very much welcome the Minister’s commitment to enrichment, and I highlight the particular benefits that flow from that approach in policy terms. I am sure that, as constituency MPs, we have all heard from headteachers, school governors and parents in our areas that one of the striking features of the pandemic has been not so much the loss of learning, but the loss of learning skills. There is a real concern among those involved with education about the impact that will have on young people’s ability to return to full engagement. I commend the Minister’s position and promise to do anything I can to strengthen it and drive forward that approach to enrichment, which is absolutely crucial in making up for those lost learning skills.

[Vicky Ford]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Another thing that our young people have missed out on is having fun and gaining the confidence to meet new friends. They gained that in previous years, when we piloted our holiday activities and food programmes. To take him up on his offer, I ask him to please visit and support the holiday activities and food programme in his constituency and encourage others to do so. Perhaps I can encourage you to do so too, Mr Dowd.

This is about children getting confidence back when they have missed out on so much. They have been amazing and have given up so much. In doing so, they have saved the lives of others. We owe it to them to help them rebuild and have the fun that is such an important part of childhood and the teenage years.

Beyond the pandemic, there are many ways that Governments can come together to improve outcomes for children and families. Often, that is through the delivery of local services, which I have described already. That will be overseen by national Government.

We in national Government take an active role to shape and influence delivery, ensure it aligns with national priorities, and support co-ordination across departmental boundaries. For example, MHCLG’s supporting families programme helps families experiencing unemployment, domestic abuse and mental ill health, and supports other priorities, including school attendance and reducing crime. But it is not the only programme to use strong collaboration between services and Departments to help families with that wide range of issues. The reducing parental conflict programme works with all English local authorities to help them integrate help to reduce parental conflict in their local support for families. Violence reduction units are bringing together local partners in the 18 areas most affected by serious violence to deliver an effective and joined-up approach to tackling violent crime and its drivers, especially when it affects children and young people.

We are also tackling youth crime by addressing the risk factors for offending at an early stage. That includes boosting investment in local multi-agency youth offending teams, which provide holistic support to children who have committed offences or are at risk of offending. We must continue to work in those strong partnerships to improve outcomes for our children and families, especially the most vulnerable.

The pandemic has shown us just how important it is to get this right, but there is much more to do to ensure that families, parents and carers benefit from services, and that the services are seamless and built around their needs. That is why we are doing a SEND review and a care review, and are working with my right hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Dame Andrea Leadsom) to support the implementation of the early years healthy development review and all those recommendations. That is why we are improving children and young people’s mental health support with significant reforms and investment.

The public commitments that we set out in the joint Green Paper are only one part of the story. I have been working with ministerial colleagues, the Department of Health and Social Care and across Government more widely to produce the covid-19 mental health and wellbeing recovery action plan and to see that delivered. It includes extensive actions we are taking to support children and young people’s mental health and wellbeing.

We are also leading a cross-Government approach to champion the family hub model, providing more than £14 million of investment and working with DHSC, DWP, MHCLG and the Ministry of Justice. Family hubs bring those services together and aim to secure greater impact from those services for children and families.

[David Simmonds]

I welcome the Government’s initiative on family hubs. We often still hear that mental health is a Cinderella service, especially for teenagers at the point of transition to adulthood. I have had examples of constituents being told by the children’s side of the service that it is unwilling to take them on at the age of 17 because they will not be seen before they become an adult, and adult services saying that it will not see them until they pass their 18th birthday. Does the Minister agree that that is an example of the kind of area where rigorous accountability is needed, to ensure that the ambitions rightly set out by Government are fulfilled in practice?

[Vicky Ford]

I thank my hon. Friend for his support for family hubs. I have a little bit of constituency pride—my family hub, the Essex Child and Family Wellbeing Service, which supports the mental health of teenagers and young people, was recently the regional award winner in the NHS Parliamentary Awards. I am very proud of them.

It is so important that teenagers can also access that type of support. It is exactly those sorts of transitions that we have been looking at most deeply, not only with the Minister for Patient Safety, Suicide Prevention and Mental Health, but also through the mental health action group, which brings together a broad range of expertise on young people’s mental health and is chaired by myself and my hon. Friend the Minister for Universities. We have been looking at how we can support young people through, for example, the transitions from primary to secondary school and from secondary education on into higher education. At key transition points, they need additional help, especially at this time.

As we continue to take steps towards recovering from covid, we must not lose any of the benefits that have come to us by the close working relationships that have been strengthened in the pandemic. I know I speak on behalf of all my ministerial colleagues when I say we are committed to continuing to work together to ensure that we grow those relationships further. Just before the pandemic, we made changes to multi-agency working. We strengthened the duties placed on police, health and the local authority to work collaboratively to make arrangements to safeguard and promote the welfare of local children. It is clear that multi-agency arrangements are needed.

The recent Ofsted review into sexual abuse in schools and colleges was a prime example of bringing young people’s departments, local services, charities and parent groups together to identify the issues and deliver those cross-societal solutions to ensure that our children do not grow up thinking that harassment and abuse are just a normal part of their childhood. My Department, the Home Office and the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport are all working really closely to ensure that we interweave our responses into the Ofsted review, the violence against women and girls strategy and the online safety Bill, to maximise the collective response and make that deep-rooted change. We have to reset the dial and we only do that by working together.

We have recently published revised statutory guidance on keeping children safe in education. We are working with local authority safeguarding partners and the sector on tightening the statutory guidance, to interlock all those wider efforts to best support our children and young people.

The pandemic has strengthened local partnership working between schools and colleges and local authorities with social care and other services to identify and support vulnerable children and ensure their regular school attendance. Those multi-agency safeguarding partners are continuing to work in their committed partnerships to keep children in care safe and to keep them well. Yes, there is a lot more to do, but I am so proud of what we have achieved to make life better for children and families.

I want to take a moment to thank all my colleagues nationally and locally for their efforts, and to reiterate my personal commitment to work across Government, across programmes and across initiatives in order to place the needs of children and families at the heart of everything the Government are striving to achieve, and to ensure that we work with our partners in local government to make sure that they also can help to achieve this.

Question put and agreed to.

Ofsted Review of Sexual Abuse in Schools and Colleges

Debate between Vicky Ford and David Simmonds

Thursday 10th June 2021 Commons Chamber

[Vicky Ford]

First, let me discuss the specific helpline that we have set up. We obviously fund many other helplines through the NSPCC, including the ChildLine number, at the moment. Since we set up the helpline, we have had 400 calls, so as long as it is being used, it is good. If we start to see it tailing away—I cannot comment post October.[Official Report, 17 June 2021, Vol. 697, c. 6MC.] But we do want to ensure that there is always a place that a child can go to for advice. At the moment, this helpline is the bespoke place for advice, but that is why we have committed to the NSPCC and ChildLine for so many years.

Let me turn to boys. Again, part of the whole new RSHE curriculum is teaching healthy relationships and healthy behaviour: what is acceptable and not acceptable; what is coercive behaviour; what is abusive behaviour; what is harassment; and respect for each other. I think it is important that while we are clear that abuse is abhorrent, we also need to recognise that not all boys and men are abusers, and no one is saying that. We need to make sure that we put in protections and that we are there to act and help a girl who has been abused, but not make the suggestion that all boys are inherently abusers. That is the level that teachers will be working to when they are teaching this, to ensure that they get the balance right.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]]

I commend my hon. Friend for the progress that has been made in providing effective education in schools to equip our young people with the skills and knowledge they need to deal with the risks of inappropriate sexual behaviour. Does she agree that despite the many reviews of safeguarding arrangements—the latest being the Wood review—we still lack a sufficiently robust duty on schools to co-operate with local safeguarding arrangements, which in the experience of lead members and directors of children’s services leads to inconsistent practice and makes emerging issues across the school sector harder to spot?

[Vicky Ford]

As ever, my hon. Friend raises an important question, which is about how schools and colleges co-operate with safeguarding partners. They are under a statutory duty to co-operate with those partners once they are named as a relevant agency to that partnership. Our guidance is clear that we expect all schools to be brought into local safeguarding arrangements, and that is one reason why we have asked all our local safeguarding partnerships across the country to review now how that system is working locally.

We want to make sure that our safeguarding partners are supporting our schools. It is really important that a school feels it has a relationship with, for example, the police so that if it has a sensitive issue it wants to discuss with them, that can be done with somebody who understands children and young people, understands the behaviour and understands the school. It is about having that sort of closeness of relationship to support each other. That is what I have been told by headteachers again and again, and that is what I would like to see—that sort of close relationship working through those partnerships to keep schools safe. I believe that schools want to do that, and we need to ensure that our safeguarding partnerships are working hand in hand with our schools.

Free Childcare

Debate between Vicky Ford and David Simmonds

Monday 9th March 2020 Westminster Hall

[Vicky Ford]

I am aware of that report, but it is extremely important that we give credit to the early years workforce for ensuring that the attainment gap at the start of the school years has narrowed, because when there is a gap, there is a risk that it will widen during each individual’s school years.

The early years workforce plays a key role in the delivery of high-quality early education and childcare. It is a testament to that workforce that 96% of childcare settings—or 19 out of 20—are now rated “good” or “outstanding” by Ofsted; that represents an increase from 74% in 2012. Our investment in the early years entitlements not only allows us to support high-quality early education, helping children to thrive in the crucial early years, but helps us to make childcare more affordable, supporting more families to work. We are continuing to increase our investment in childcare to support parents to work.

The Government plan to spend more than £3.6 billion on the early years entitlements in the coming year. That includes the universal 15 hours of childcare for all three and four-year-olds, which was introduced in the early 2000s; the entitlement to 15 hours of free childcare a week for disadvantaged two-year-olds, which was rolled out in 2013 under the Conservative-led Government; and the additional 15 hours for working parents of three and four-year-olds, which was introduced in 2017—again, under a Conservative Government. Those entitlements save parents up to £5,000 per year in total if they use the full 30 hours of free childcare available. The Government’s manifesto at the last general election committed to investing a further £1 billion to create more high-quality wraparound and holiday childcare places. I have noted the challenges of holiday periods that hon. Members have mentioned.

All three and four-year-olds, and the most disadvantaged two-year-olds, benefit from 15 hours a week of free early education, regardless of whether their parents are in work. The entitlement for two-year-olds is in place to help to give the most disadvantaged children a great start in life by closing the attainment gap between them and their better-off peers.

The Department for Education’s study of early education and development, or SEED, and the study of effective primary, pre-school and secondary education, or EPPSE, are clear that good-quality early education at the age of two has a variety of positive benefits for children. I believe in evidence-based decisions, however, and evidence from the EPPSE also indicates that children who start pre-school under the age of two do not show more positive outcomes than those who started between the ages of 24 and 36 months, which is why we targeted the policy at the most disadvantaged two-year-olds. It is extremely encouraging to see that more than 850,000 two-year-olds have benefited from an early education place since the scheme began in 2013.

Achieving a good level of development is important. It is excellent news that three out of four children are reaching that level, because children who do not are more likely to have an education, health and care plan or to become children in need. That is why we have announced a range of initiatives to support disadvantaged children, including a significant investment in professional development for early years practitioners and the development of the evidence base for what works in the early years. I hope that that addresses the point raised by the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Hessle (Emma Hardy), about the importance of supporting professional development in the early years sector. A range of initiatives are under way.

Capital funding is also important. We have allocated £24 million to build more school-based nursery places in deprived areas. That supports our commitment to social mobility, ensuring that we provide more quality places for those who will most benefit.

Early language has a major impact on all aspects of young children’s non-physical development, contributing to their ability to manage emotions, communicate feelings, establish and maintain relationships, think symbolically, and learn to read and write. The evidence is clear that children who start school behind stay behind. Children with poor vocabulary skills at the age of five are twice as likely to be unemployed when they reach adulthood, and three times as likely to have mental health problems.

We want to enable more parents to support their child’s early communication, language and literacy development at home. The Department for Education has launched the hungry little minds campaign, which I hope all hon. Members present will help me to champion. That three-year campaign aims to encourage parents to chat, play and read with their children to help to set them up for school and beyond.

As part of that campaign, the Department for Education recently awarded a quality mark to eight early years apps with a focus on literacy, language and communication. That comes after new data revealed that three quarters of children aged five and under had used smartphones or tablet apps at least once in the past six months to learn. A panel of experts recommended that the apps should be accredited to help parents to make informed decisions about the use of technology in creating a positive learning environment at home.

As well as improving children’s outcomes, the availability of high-quality childcare is a key factor in enabling parents to work, a subject that has been raised a number of times today. The 2018 Office for National Statistics report on families and the labour market in England shows that many parents return to work and need childcare when their child turns three.

The primary focus of the 30-hour childcare entitlement is to support all working families with the cost of childcare, and to support parents to go back into work or to increase their working hours, if they so wish. As I said, 600,000 three and four-year-olds have benefited from a 30-hour place in the first two years of delivery, helping parents to keep more of their salary through the doubling of free childcare. According to the Department’s independent year-one evaluation, the 30-hour policy is making a real difference to families’ lives, with many parents reporting that they now have more money to spend. In our most recent parent study, which was published last December, the vast majority of parents—80%—said that their family’s quality of life was better since using the 30 hours. We are clear that the 30-hour offer aims to support working families with the cost of childcare and to support parents to go back into work or to work more hours, should they so wish.

A point was made about gender pay equality and support, especially for mothers returning to work. The Government’s parental leave, flexible working and childcare policies all work together, and they have supported a closing of the gender pay gap. Back in 1997—that was before I had my first child—the gender pay gap was 27.5%. The last number we have is for 2018, when it was 17.9%. Over the past two decades, there has been a really significant improvement in employment for mothers. The maternal employment rate has gone up from 62% in 1996% to 74% in 2018. There is more to do, of course, but I ask Members to please recognise the huge improvements that have been made with the gender pay gap and maternal employment.

Early years entitlement supports families with two, three and four-year-olds to work more hours and supports their children’s development. Other childcare offers across Government support families with younger children. It is important to enable parents to spend more time with their children in the very early months and to allow families more flexibility to find the right balance for them. That is why the Conservative Government introduced shared parental leave in 2015. It has given parents the chance to share up to 50 weeks of leave and up to 37 weeks of parental pay in the first year following the child’s birth or adoption.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Katherine Fletcher) raised the issue of family hubs. I am positive about family hubs and, in fact, visited the hub in my constituency last Friday. I was deeply impressed with the support that it gave to families across a wide age range, and for the nought to three-year-olds especially. I would like to see more family hubs opening across the country.

My hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds) made a large number of really important points, as ever. He brings great experience to this House. First, he spoke about special educational needs and disabilities. He knows that we are in the midst of a review of the entire SEND system, but our disability access fund is worth £615 per eligible child per year. All local authorities are required to have special educational needs inclusion funds for all three and four-year-olds with SEND who are taking up the early years entitlement. A two-year-old in receipt of disability living allowance or an EHCP—education, health and care plan—would also be eligible for the universal 15-hour entitlement.

[David Simmonds]

The Minister covered a number of the key issues in her speech. Does she agree not only about the benefit from the early years pupil premium, which helps to boost the funding rate, but that it is important for the Department for Education to put pressure on the Department of Health and Social Care? One of the consistent issues for children with special educational needs and disabilities is that local authorities have for many years been doing statements for children with special educational needs and are used to that process, but local NHS colleagues who are required to contribute towards the clinical and medical aspects of a child’s early years experience do not have any history of doing so at the local level. In fact, I am sure that many Members find, when we investigate SEND casework in our constituencies, that the blockage behind getting a child what is needed sits with the local NHS provider, rather than with the local authority.

[Vicky Ford]

My hon. Friend absolutely hits the nail on the head. I have been in my role for two weeks and one day, and the issue of education, health and care plans has been raised a number of times. SEND review is right at the top of my list of priorities. The plan is meant to cover education, health and care—that was a huge step forward in the 2014 reforms—and it needs to ensure that they are all delivered. I have a meeting scheduled with my counterpart, the Health Minister, but the Health team seems rather busy at the moment. However, it will happen, and we will look at those plans as part of the review.

My hon. Friend also raised the important issues of the school forums, which I will look into, and of tax-free childcare. I was quite disappointed that neither of the two Opposition speakers mentioned tax-free childcare, because it is an important introduction that helps up to 1.3 million families whom we estimate could be benefiting.