(9 months, 1 week ago)
Commons ChamberWe are investing an additional £165 million a year to improve maternity and neonatal care, rising to £186 million a year from April. This will increase the number of midwifery posts and improve the quality of care that mothers and babies receive. As of October last year, there were 23,100 full-time equivalent midwives working in NHS trusts and other core organisations in England, which is more than 1,000 more than a year ago and 3,500 more than in 2010.
I thank the Secretary of State for that response. The Royal College of Midwives estimates that there is a shortage of around 2,500 full-time midwives working in the NHS. I know that at first hand from Cossham Hospital in my constituency, which has a wonderful birth centre, but it has been closed for most of the last few years, because it simply cannot get the midwives to staff it—they have to go elsewhere where more serious cases need to be dealt with. What is she doing specifically about the retention of midwives? I know that student numbers are, thankfully, coming up, but a lot of midwives are choosing to leave the profession because there is not enough flexibility in their work.
I think we all agree that a career as a midwife is just one of the most rewarding and fulfilling careers that one can hope for. That is why we have placed such priority on retention in the long-term workforce plan that we launched last year. The national retention programme for midwifery and nursing has prioritised five actions to support staff retention, including menopause guidance, because we know that that can be an issue for midwives, and valuing them and their contribution is also a key objective of NHS England’s three-year plan for maternity services.
I thank my right hon. Friend for commissioning that vital piece of work. I am giving the matter my closest attention, and I hope very much to be in a position to respond to his points in due course.
(2 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberThe number of children entering the youth justice system has fallen by 81% in the last decade and the number of children on the secure estate has fallen by about three quarters. We are, however, developing a more specialised workforce focused on rehabilitation, because we accept that that is how to help these young people to move away from a life of crime. Every prison officer on the youth estate is now funded to take up a qualification in youth justice by next year. We have also created specialist youth justice worker officers, who are trained to work with children, and we already have 284 in post.
I hope that the Minister has been talking to her colleague the Housing Minister about his plans to regulate supported housing, which were announced last week and which we very much welcome. Will she now talk to him about the need to ensure that if 16 and 17-year-olds are released from custody and it is not appropriate for them to go back to their family home, they are not placed in unregulated housing?
Very much so. As I said in answer to previous questions, home is a vital part of rehabilitation and cutting reoffending. We know about some of the particular pressures that young people can face if, for example, they have been drawn into county lines gangs, and the geographical location of their home may be a pertinent element in their reoffending or their vulnerability to reoffending. I am happy to confirm that I will be speaking to the Housing Minister. I am also drawing together a cross-Whitehall group of Ministers to discuss how we can tackle youth offending at the earliest stages, not just when a child reaches the justice system.
(2 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberMy hon. Friend is right to say that we must learn to live with covid within the prison estate, as we do outside prison walls. We are working with NHS local services to roll out the vaccine in custody, and clearly we encourage everyone to be vaccinated, not just inside but outside prison. That will be key to our consideration of further removing the national framework. Of course, we must be led by the evidence and the data.
I was a little surprised that the Minister did not mention family ties in her statement, as they are an important part of rehabilitation. Is she prepared to meet me and the charity Children Heard and Seen to discuss the retendering of prisoner, family and significant other support services so we can make sure they are children-focused services and are not just about prisoners’ wants and needs?
I thank the hon. Lady and my hon. Friend the Member for Winchester (Steve Brine) for mentioning family ties, which are critical. Family ties are in the White Paper, and we want to encourage, as appropriate, keeping those connections as best we can. I am happy to meet the hon. Lady and the charity. Through this White Paper we will be welcoming the expertise, knowledge and thoughts of charities that work with prisoners, victims and prison staff to ensure they are shared throughout our work.
(3 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberWe are determined to tackle the harm caused by county lines exploitation. In addition to the establishment of violence reduction units, the extensive operations conducted by British Transport Police on transport networks and other targeted policing across the country, this year we have significantly increased our investment in one-to-one specialist support for county lines victims and their families to help them to leave the clutches of these criminal gangs. We are also funding the helpline Safecall run by the Missing People charity, which provides specialist advice and support to young people, parents and professionals who are worried about a young person who may be in trouble and being exploited.
I really welcome the sort of intervention that the hon. Lady describes. I am very conscious of the impact that county lines exploitation and, as she says, other types of criminal exploitation have not just on the young people themselves but on their families and their wider neighbourhoods. In terms of the organisation she mentions, I am very happy to meet her to learn more about it. I remind her of the youth endowment fund, which is a fund of £200 million that we have set out over a 10-year period in order to research programmes that work and are evaluated to have really good development and really good conclusions so that we can share that best practice with other local authorities and charities across the country.
In a recent report, the Children’s Commissioner highlighted the risk that young people in care were put in when they go into unregulated and mostly unsupported accommodation, and called for a ban on that. One of the things that they are at risk of is being preyed upon and drawn into county lines activity. Will the Minister speak to her colleagues in the Department for Education, the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to see whether they can support my Bill which aims to outlaw this?
I hope the hon. Lady would be content to know that those discussions are already taking place. I take the vulnerabilities of children living in care very seriously indeed. One of the funds, the Trusted Relationships fund, which she may be aware of, is precisely to help children who have perhaps been let down by every adult they have come across in their lives, and I have seen at first hand some of the incredible work that the youth workers are able to do with individuals through that fund. I am certainly happy to meet her and to discuss her Bill with my colleagues.