Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Earl of Listowel

Monday 18th November 2013 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 242, I wish to speak also to my Amendment 244.

Amendment 242 would enable the introduction of a pilot scheme,

“to trial the registration of births within children’s centres”.

Currently, only a small number of centres offer birth registration—the practice is not widespread. Figures from the 4Children charity’s children’s centre census of 2013 suggest that only 6% of centres currently provide birth registration. Looking ahead to the next 12 months, only 13% of respondents to the census said that they expected to be offering birth registration in a year’s time.

A report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Sure Start Children’s Centres was published in July, entitled Best Practice for a Sure Start, which highlighted the positive impact that the provision of birth registration can have for centres. The report included evidence submitted by the Department for Education, which stated:

“The opportunity to register births in children’s centres is potentially a very effective means of alerting parents to the support services available and the benefits of accessing these services through children’s centres”.

The department also highlighted the experience of three local authorities which currently offer birth registration services: Manchester, Bury and York. Based on these case studies, the department identified a number of benefits of implementing birth registration in centres. First, the benefit of improved reach; there has been a concern that in the past, children’s centres were not reaching the hardest to reach, particularly young teenage mothers. It is considered that this will improve the ability to get at those hard to reach groups. Secondly, parents seem to be more likely to come back again. Once they have visited to do the birth registration, practitioners find that they come back to the service. The Benchill centre in Manchester had a re-engagement rate of 87.5% in 2012-13; which means that 87.5% of those who came for the registration must have come back again for further services.

Thirdly, there is a danger of stigma in visiting a children’s centre; people may feel that they can go only if there is something wrong with them. This, however, is a universal service. Everyone would go there to register their child, so there would be no stigma attached to it. Fourthly, practitioners talk about this as an important step forward in terms of involving fathers. Fathers will go along when the child is going to have the birth registered. I am not quite sure of the technical details as to why it is so important for fathers to be involved in the registration process—perhaps one of your Lordships can tell me in a minute—but there is a strong feeling that more fathers will be involved early in their child’s life this way. Finally, it is an opportunity to showcase to parents the wonderful services that are available to them at the children’s centres.

There is a strong case for increasing provision of birth registration services in children’s centres. This would be a very good means of doing so. It is not onerous for local authorities to deliver this. It is not costly to do. The risk is that with local authorities currently carrying such burdens, this is one trick that they might miss. This would mean families and children missing out on the benefits of it. I hope that the Minister can give a sympathetic response.

I will move on to Amendment 244, which is to do with information and data sharing. It will require NHS trusts to share data on live births with local authorities in order to facilitate greater engagement with parents through children’s centres and other outreach services. This amendment would support children’s centres’ ability to engage with new parents. Sharing the live-birth data would make a significant contribution to enabling centres to identify within their reach area the new parents with whom they have not yet been in contact; allowing them to target those parents they may have missed and reach out to them accordingly.

Your Lordships may feel that this second amendment is a little bit deficient in that it is not ambitious enough, because there are other areas that children’s centres could be advised about better—for instance, the troubled families agenda. Centres do not necessarily know about who Louise Casey is dealing with through the troubled families agenda. Also, there are things called multi-agency risk assessment conference boards, dealing with domestic violence. Again, children’s centres could benefit by being given information about what those boards know about so that they can reach out to families where there is domestic violence. So your Lordships may feel that something further should be added to this amendment and more information should be shared with children’s centres. I hope that the Minister will be sympathetic to this second amendment, too. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch (Lab)]

My Lords, I will speak to Amendments 247 to 249 in our names. In doing so, I would like to support the amendments of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, which are very much on a similar theme.

Our first amendment, Amendment 247, seeks to improve the information available on children’s centres and to hold the Government to account for their failure to deliver a vibrant network of children’s centres since coming into office. It requires the information to be published separately and regularly so that the trends can be clearly observed. The information that is collated on children’s centres is buried and inaccessible. It is tempting to say that this is deliberate since the Government do not want to admit that the Prime Minister has broken the commitment he gave before the election to protect the Sure Start network.

Thankfully, as a result of the work of 4Children and its 2013 children centre census, we now know that 566 fewer children’s centres are serving our communities, and that many of those that still exist are having to cut their hours or charge for services. This is a very long way from the concept of universal early-years provision, which was so welcomed when it was introduced by the previous Government. We would like to see the data set out in a structured and accessible form.

Amendment 248 on the issue of birth registration is similar to that raised by the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. Like him, we believe that there are very real advantages in births being registered at children’s centres. It would encourage a wider group of parents to visit the centres and become aware of the services on offer. It would also enable the staff to have a point of contact to reach out to isolated or dysfunctional families and offer them help.

We have often rehearsed the arguments in favour of early intervention to improve children’s life chances. The reports of Graham Allen and Frank Field both demonstrated that money spent on early years is cost effective in the longer term and helps children meet their full potential. The National Children’s Bureau’s literacy initiative is an excellent example of early intervention that can grow out of children’s centres, combining home visits with increased parental involvement in other well-being events and a dramatic improvement in child literacy. That is just one example.

Unfortunately, while it is possible to use children’s centres for birth registration if the local authority agrees, as the noble Earl, Lord Listowel, pointed out, so far only 6% of centres do that. I hope that the Minister will feel able to support our amendment, given that her own department gave evidence to the Sure Start report highlighting the advantages of birth registration at children’s centres. Our amendment requires the Secretary of State to commission an independent study into the impact on the welfare of children of requiring births to be registered in this way, supported by the option of pilot schemes to inform the study.

Finally, Amendment 249 is also similar to that of the noble Earl, Lord Listowel. It requires NHS trusts to share details of live births with local authorities so that children’s centres and other early-years providers could follow up with appropriate outreach services. Again, there is good practice in some places where data are already shared. Other trusts feel that they are unable or unwilling to share and are concerned about confidentiality issues. This is where the Government could help by being much clearer about the advantages of sharing and the terms on which it should be done. How can local authorities be expected to carry out their safeguarding and child welfare responsibilities or plan adequately for local services if they are not made aware of the total picture of births in their area?

I hope the Minister will support our amendments. When this matter was discussed in the Commons, Jo Swinson reported that a short-life task and finish group had been set up to consider these issues and that it had subsequently made recommendations to the Minister. I hope the noble Baroness, Lady Northover, is now in a position to share those recommendations with us, and to tell us what action will be taken to follow it up. I look forward to hearing from her.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Earl of Listowel

Monday 11th November 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I just want to correct what I believe to be a misunderstanding about what Amendment 232(Rev) says. The noble Lord talked about teaching children at the age of five. I must draw his attention to the proposed new Section 85B(4)(b), which talks about teaching that is,

“appropriate to the ages of the pupils concerned”.

Of course, that needs to absolutely underlined. We are fully aware of the need to teach age-appropriately. What is right for an 11 year-old is clearly not always appropriate for a five year-old.

I know my noble friend Lady Massey will want to address much of what the noble Lord said so I will just say that I am very disappointed by the tone he took. I feel he is swimming against the tide here. There is a growing consensus on the need to update the guidance. It is a fairly simple act. Just referring everyone to a whole lot of different websites and so on is missing the point about the Government’s responsibility here. However, I am sure my noble friend will address that more coherently.

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for raising the point about the training of teachers. During our earlier debates on child development, the Minister said something that I certainly found quite comforting, about there being, in the standards for teacher training, a requirement that teachers have a good understanding of child development, which will be helpful in this area as well.

I listened with great interest to what the Minister said about his personal experience in this area and about why he thinks that it is unhelpful to be so prescriptive about what teachers do. Although that does not instantly change my point of view, I have sympathy for his position. I think of the situation, for instance, in Finland, where they have a very loose national curriculum. The Minister for Education there has described his teachers as “researchers” who develop their own kind of education base. However, in Finland, of course, teaching has been of very high status for many years. They have competition to teach and to get on to teacher training courses—it is a different culture. I suppose the question might be where we are today in this country with moving towards raising the status of teaching. We have only started that in the past few years. The question is one of getting the balance right between prescription and freedom, and empowering teachers to do the best they can with all their capacities.

I welcome what the Minister said, particularly with regard to mentoring and the recognition that so many boys are growing up without fathers in the family, which was a theme of the debate on Friday on the age of criminal responsibility. One of the very encouraging parts of the Minister’s response then was that the Home Office is putting so much energy and investment into mentoring for these young people. Two-thirds of young black men in the United States are growing up without a father in the home. The proportion of lone-parent families in this country is even higher than in the United States and about twice the level, I think, in Germany and Denmark. We have a real issue that we need to address. I often wonder, when thinking about this topic, whether there might be a more strategic push on mentoring: a sort of big society approach, with something like a national service commitment, to think about how we could mentor young men who do not have fathers in their families. I was encouraged by what the Minister said in that regard.

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Earl of Listowel

Wednesday 16th October 2013 Grand Committee

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

I thank the Minister for that clarification. I was coming to that point. The clarification I was seeking was: will there be just one review, the DWP review that the Deputy Prime Minister announced yesterday, or will there be a separate review within the Department for Education? I am grateful for the Minister’s clarification that it will be placed in the Library, but on an important issue such as this we need some assurance that there will be an opportunity for Parliament to debate the conclusions rather than just read them. Perhaps the Minister could clarify those points, which is what I was going to ask him to do anyway. I beg to move.

[The Earl of Listowel (CB)]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the mover of this amendment but also to the Minister for this very good news. The noble Lord, Lord Freud, took great trouble during the passage of the Welfare Reform Bill to consult the interested parties around foster care but I have a couple of questions for the Minister. What is the situation for families who are providing supported lodging for young people at university for whom they wish to keep a room open when they return? More generally, what is the position for families providing supported lodging for older young people who have left foster care but whom they still wish to support?

Children and Families Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Earl of Listowel

Monday 14th October 2013 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

I am reminded of the report by my noble friend Lord Laming on the death of Victoria Climbié. One of the comments made by the social workers in Haringey who were interviewed was that they were overwhelmed at the time, particularly by unaccompanied asylum-seeking children and young people. This can put a heavy burden on local authorities. I have another, related experience of visiting a children’s home some years ago. I spoke to the manager, who was very experienced—in many ways, she was a remarkable manager—but when it came to working with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children, she felt that these were not their children. She had enough to do looking after the children with whom she had to deal, rather than having to deal with these other children, if you like. There is a difficulty and perhaps the amendment is a helpful way of tackling it. Some people will just say, “Look, we have enough on our plate. We don’t want to think about these extra children and we’ll find ways not to do so”. I am not sure whether that is exactly the issue in hand, but my experience is that, understandably, given the strains on social services and the immense emotional burden that caring for children with complex needs brings with it, some people can find ways to rationalise not giving proper care to vulnerable children because those children come from a very different background from theirs.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble and learned Baroness for tabling this amendment. We all share her abhorrence at what is currently happening out there in the way that the care system is routinely failing trafficked children. I was interested to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Storey, said. One aspect of it might be that children whose parents want a better future for them come here voluntarily. However, the people that the noble and learned Baroness is talking about are duped into coming here on completely false pretences. They are told they are coming for waitressing jobs or otherwise to earn money. They certainly do not expect to come in the mode of being owned by a gang member, which is where they find themselves. The noble Lord is right that there is some good local authority practice but that is where people want help and support genuinely to make a better future here: these are not the same people.

This all goes to show that the problem for local authorities is much bigger, in the round, than we are looking at. There are people who come in on the noble Lord’s terms and those who come in on the noble and learned Baroness’s terms. There are some excellent charities working in this sector, as well as the local authorities who are providing a safe haven and proper care and advice for these young people. However, they need to do more and they are very much the exception. All too often, everyone feels powerless to prevent those children who are rescued disappearing. It is not just that they are being traded and sold into slavery and sexual abuse. Very often, the children go along with the gang members because they are spooked by some form of black magic which is endemic in their original societies or they feel that their families will be threatened by violence back at home if they do not go along with it. In no sense are they involved voluntarily: this is under absolute fear, duress and panic. It is a scandal that we are allowing this to happen on our territory and are unable to prevent it.

I was pleased to hear the proposals of the noble and learned Baroness. I do not know well enough what difference it would make but it would be fair to say that if it did make a big difference it would have a cost implication. If it were not going to make much difference, it would not. We have to own up to the fact that there may be a cost implication to what is being proposed. It is only right that, if a child is under 18, the local authority should have the same duty of care to look after them as it would to any other young people under its jurisdiction. It also seems only right that, when they go missing, it takes the same level of care as it would for any other young children under its jurisdiction, including making sure that it escalates the details of those young people beyond the local missing persons’ procedures.

We have touched on what is going wrong with local authorities. It is partly about resources but they also think that it is just too complicated to deal with on their own, particularly when they are dealing with young children and traffickers who are constantly moving and crossing local authority borders and other boundaries. It is all too easy for local authorities to feel that it is, in a sense, someone else’s problem and that the problem has moved off their estate and into the hands of someone else. That is not justifiable and we want to work with the Government to find some way to deal with this problem. It seems an absolute affront to our civilisation that children can be bought and sold and exploited in our own sight, and that we seem to be powerless to stop it.

The real solution probably lies with having the political will to make this issue a priority, which I do not think that it has been up to now. At the same time, a lot could be done if all the agencies involved worked more closely together to share information and act decisively. Whether that needs to be put in legislation is another matter, but a bit more joined-up action and joined-up government could go some way to addressing it. I very much appreciate the noble and learned Baroness raising this issue, and I hope that the Minister will explain how she is going to solve this problem.

Education Bill

Debate between Baroness Jones of Whitchurch and Earl of Listowel

Wednesday 20th July 2011 Grand Committee

[The Earl of Listowel]

My Lords, I hope that your Lordships agree with me that it is vital to give full recognition to those teachers and head teachers who put a huge effort into taking children forward. Where there is a challenging intake, perhaps with high levels of special educational needs or numbers of children with pupil premium, it is important to recognise in achievement the distance pupils have travelled and not just their performance against all other pupils across the country. I would be grateful perhaps for a note from the Minister on how Ofsted inspections will look at achievement and fully recognise it in terms of the distance travelled by children.

[Baroness Jones of Whitchurch]

My Lords, our names have been added to Amendments 115 and 118, so I will speak very briefly. First, I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, about the narrow focus on educational achievement which ignores the wider role of education in providing a safe and happy environment where all children can thrive and be healthy and confident. We believe that well-being should include such things as nutrition, exercise, relationships, respect for each other and how to overcome low self-esteem. A good school will include all this in the curriculum, but it does not mean that we should exempt all schools from having that assessed and checked from time to time.

The noble Lord, Lord Ouseley, gave a very coherent case for why Amendment 118 is important. It is important that we check that the Government’s rhetoric when they introduced the pupil premium can be backed up by independent assessment in the longer term, particularly in light of the new autonomous school structures. If we are not careful, disadvantaged children will get left behind. We need independent assessment to double- check that all is going well with the way that the money is being spent. I sense people’s frustration at the late hour and I will say no more at this stage.