Baroness Howarth of Breckland - HM Treasury debates

Children and Vulnerable Adults: Abuse

Baroness Howarth of Breckland Excerpts

Thursday 26th June 2014

(9 years, 10 months ago)

Lords Chamber

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Baroness Howarth of Breckland (CB)

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My Lords, the awful history of Savile is truly terrible, and we all need to extend concern and care to the victims, particularly today, when their memories are again being revived. However, we should not let celebrity cases focus our thinking on issues of abuse in one direction. Let us remind ourselves that most abuse takes place—is taking place at this moment—in the home, by the neighbour, in the sports centre, and in the local church congregation, and is usually perpetrated by a known and trusted adult. What we need from government—this is about what the Government are doing in this area—is a joined-up strategy that looks at all the areas. Perhaps it can look separately at adults and children, but certainly those two areas need joined-up strategies. I will talk in particular about child sexual abuse in relation to that.

Before I begin to talk about that, I pay tribute to the people who work in this field, because normally we hear only about the failings. I was at a conference this morning where we were told about the case loads of social workers; the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has already mentioned this. Those case loads are twice what they should be, and solicitors are undertaking work free, because the fees are now so low that they could not otherwise spend more than about three hours in consultation with families. Because those workers are usually condemned, I think that we should recognise the thousands of cases that, day in and day out, are carried through successfully by all the statutory services—the police, health workers, and particularly social workers.

I cannot agree with the call for a national inquiry. I know how expensive that would be. There are two reasons why I do not support an inquiry. The first is that if there is any money going in these years of austerity, when the answer is usually, “Deficit, deficit, deficit,” please let us plough it into the front line. Let us get the money to the preventive work, where we can really do good. The second reason is that we already have a plethora of reports. I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Bichard, will tell us his thoughts about how we follow through on the reports, and the analysis of those reports, that we already have. That is crucial to take us forward. Producing yet another report would, I fear, just take us to the same place. The work is already done.

I shall now talk about child sexual abuse and the other connected issues that I want to raise. I am vice-chair, and a trustee, of the Lucy Faithfull Foundation, which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley—whom I congratulate on securing this debate—has already generously mentioned. Dealing with child sexual abuse tends to reflect two strands of activity, child protection and offender management. The Lucy Faithfull Foundation takes a slightly different view, which might be called a public health view. It says that all adults, everywhere, are responsible for all abuse, particularly child sexual abuse. So we have to increase the understanding of parents, and of local groups such as schools and churches. I commend the work that the right reverend Prelate is doing at the moment; I confess to being on his committee. I think that the church is now trying to undertake some of the education work through its parishes.

Because child sexual abuse is such an emotive subject, providing the proper treatment and preventive strategies for abusers has brought particular challenges. It is easy to talk about the victims and get help for them; it is extraordinarily difficult to get a focus on abusers.

As many people will know, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation has developed a helpline. I thank the Government for their support for the helpline, especially recently, to ensure that all the men—it is mostly men—who might be abusing can get through, as well as families, often wives, and young people, who are sometimes referred from ChildLine with their problems involving abuse. More than 31,000 calls were taken between 2002 and 2013, but many were missed, and for every call missed there may be a child who is being abused, or a family life lost because the husband was not able to get help fast enough. The Government are playing their part in working with that helpline.

In the time that I have left I want to talk about a couple of other areas. The first is the work of the courts. In the NSPCC’s presentation of its recent work on the courts, I was shocked to discover that many of the procedures that we thought had already been implemented in the courts are still not there. What distresses me most is to discover that children are still being aggressively cross-examined by barristers, and that most of those who could be heard outside court, on off-site premises, do not do so because the provision is not there. Only 1% of the children get that opportunity. I commend the work of the NSPCC in that area.

Finally, the Lucy Faithfull Foundation works with young people who are sexually offending. We had a contract with the Youth Justice Board, which was successful until 2012. It was then given up to the health service. NHS England decided that it would take it in-house, but it has not taken the staff, so there is no specialist support for these children. Will the Minister look at what is happening to young people who now need extremely specialist programmes in young offender institutions, now that the one group that knows about this has been removed?

I want to say a word about mandatory reporting before I finish. I do not think that I could do better than to quote Donald Findlater, one of the most experienced workers in this field, both here and internationally. Again, I am taking a different position from those who have spoken before. I agree with him when he says:

“In other parts of the world I see police and child protection agencies swamped by demand following mandatory reporting. It leaves little time to invest in prevention, especially as most cases are unsubstantiated. I want staff to intervene when they have concerns, not just when abuse has happened. And I don’t want the criminal law to be an obstacle to such decent, responsible behaviour”.

I hope that the Government agree.

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