Safeguarding Children

Barry Sheerman Excerpts

Wednesday 13th June 2012 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Twigg]

My right hon. Friend speaks very powerfully on this issue, and makes the case on why the relationships I am talking about are so important. He also, by implication, makes the case for something I shall come to a little later: the importance of enhancing the status of social work as a profession.

These relationships should, of course, be challenging. Hackney has developed approaches whereby mistakes by people working in the services can be openly acknowledged and addressed without fear of reprisal. That is fostering a culture that should ensure systematic learning, including learning from mistakes. The role of local safeguarding children boards in this process has been invaluable. The boards were originally established by the Children Act 2004, and they bring the key partners together in one place to focus on safeguarding. There is significant variation in the quality and effectiveness of these boards, of course, but I hope the work that is now being done to ensure lessons are learned between them, such as through networks of board chairs, will go some way towards addressing that. However, there is concern that in the context of reduced regulation, the Government must remain vigilant to make sure that that learning process moves forward.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

Does my hon. Friend, who is getting to the heart of the matter, share my concern? When I chaired the Select Committee, the inquiries that we did on this subject showed time and time again that people did not learn from their mistakes and that the core management and training were at the heart of all the problems.

[Stephen Twigg]

That is absolutely right, and I shall come on to one or two of those themes. As a principle, that makes sense, and not only in social work—there are similar lessons in other areas of public service.

As well as integrated services, I want to emphasise the importance of leadership. Professor Munro has said that local authorities should protect the role of director of children’s services and the lead member for children’s services, as established in the 2004 legislation. There is evidence from some authorities of those roles being combined with other functions, typically adult social care responsibilities. Professor Munro made it clear that she opposed that, and I urge the Minister to respond to her concerns.

If the Government are to meet their aim of improving professional expertise and flexibility, there is a need, as I have said, to improve the status of the social work profession. The British Association of Social Workers has warned that the proposals set out yesterday do not address sufficiently social workers’ concerns about issues to which my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy) referred—unmanageable case loads, stress, plummeting morale and cuts to administrative support staff. We need to ensure that there is sufficient flexibility and professional expertise in the system, including on the important issue of neglect. Given that extreme, high-profile cases have, understandably, been well publicised, occasionally there is a tendency for the system to, as it were, neglect neglect. Professor Munro has said that the processes are

“better designed to deal with an urgent concern about an incident of physical or sexual abuse, so neglect, which is about a chronic pattern of parenting, does not come up as a serious case.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. He makes the point powerfully and better than I could, so I will simply say that I agree entirely.

There are positive signs that the system has been improving. Three years on from the baby Peter case, a review by the Children and Family Court Advisory and Support Service into care applications found that local authorities are intervening much more quickly and in a much more timely way. However, we are concerned that many essential early intervention services are being cut.

An important innovation has been the family drug and alcohol court, which provides intensive support to parents alongside a series of carrots and sticks to help them make progress. The close relationship between the court and families can serve to improve the speed of decision making and provide crucial therapeutic help at an early stage. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Birkenhead said earlier, it is so important to work with parents to improve parenting skills. Parental support was a key element of Labour’s Sure Start programme, and the national evaluation of Sure Start found greatly improved outcomes for children in Sure Start areas, with more consistent discipline from parents, less chaos at home, parents making more use of local services and fewer children suffering in accidents.

There is a wealth of evidence on the relationship between domestic violence and child abuse, as the Minister acknowledged yesterday when he appeared before the Select Committee. We are concerned that we have seen a 31% cut in funding for refuges and specialist advice, which is surely undermining action to deal with domestic violence. On the subject of unintended consequences, I have a real concern, which I think has been expressed in the Select Committee’s deliberations, that in some cases the legitimate desire to protect a child from domestic violence can lead to the child being taken away from the non-violent parent, usually the mother. I would be grateful for any further information the Minister has on that.

Finally, let me say something about the importance of clarifying who is responsible within the Government for implementing the measures included in the new guidance. Professor Munro has said that she feels on occasion that momentum is not being maintained, and I think that, one year after her recommendation to appoint a chief social worker, and three years after that was first proposed, the Government need to move swiftly to appoint someone to that important new post. At the end of her one-year progress report, Professor Munro says that there should be continuing oversight of the whole system so that progress is maintained. The Government need to make it clear who will be responsible for that oversight, and I note that Professor Munro says that it should not be her, but a “fresh person”.

[Mr Sheerman]

Before my hon. Friend finishes his excellent and even-handed contribution, like those from Members across the parties, will he take it from many of us who have been in the field for a long time that there is a crisis not just of children at risk, but of childhood? There are sometimes unintended consequences, and Opposition Members have been complicit in that, given our attitude that there should be votes at 16—with no attention paid to its implications in terms of shortening childhood. That is an unintended consequence, but two parties in the House had the measure in their election manifestos—with no thought about the implications for the protection that childhood until 18 offers so many children.

[Stephen Twigg]

My hon. Friend tempts me, as a long-standing supporter of votes at 16, down a different road. I am sure that it was not a consideration in his making the intervention, but it is a debate for another time and place.

We also need to safeguard the safeguarding system. Studies have shown that the vast majority of care proceedings are appropriate and taken in the best interests of the child, but we need to ensure that there is a suitable mechanism for the occasions when that does not happen. Yesterday the Minister said that he was considering a form of “appeals process” to enable that, and I am sure that the House would be grateful if he could elaborate on his thinking.

I said at the beginning of this speech that child protection and safeguarding covers a range of issues and Departments, and, in addition to my warnings about unintended consequences and the well-being of children, I am concerned by the Government’s somewhat incoherent approach: on the one hand, Ministers like to lambast local authorities, yet on the other they are removing regulation and placing more power in the hands of local authority social work staff; on the one hand, Ministers say they want to reduce bureaucracy and red tape, but on the other they are introducing adoption scorecards for every local authority; and, on the one hand, Ministers say that early intervention is important, yet on the other they have not taken forward Professor Munro’s recommended statutory duty to do “early work” on child protection.

The British Association of Social Workers has raised a series of concerns about the state of the profession, particularly case load and the pressures on administration. In a survey that we conducted, more than 80% of the directors of children’s services who responded said that cuts to other services would affect their ability to safeguard children, and in a survey by the BASW 90% of social workers expressed concern that lives “could be at risk” as a consequence of cuts to services. The Government need to explain how they will address those challenges.

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[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Tim Loughton)]

Let me first say what a contrast to the previous debate this has been—calm and measured, and about important things that are affecting our constituents and vulnerable children around the country but do not get the airing that they should.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Liverpool, West Derby (Stephen Twigg) on using an opportunity such as this, as I always did in opposition, to try to flag up these really important issues, which are not terribly fashionable in the press or among some of our colleagues but are absolutely crucial to many of our most vulnerable citizens. It is absolutely right that we should do that. The hon. Gentleman raised, in a very measured way, a lot of important matters, most of which I covered in my two-hour grilling in front of the Education Select Committee yesterday, and many of which I will cover in my comments today. Let me pick up just a few of his points. I do not want to speak at length, because other people want to contribute to the debate and that is very important.

I very much appreciate the hon. Gentleman’s comments about Eileen Monro’s report, which was excellent. She had the time and space to come up with some very well-considered proposals instead of giving a knee-jerk reaction to the latest tragedy that had happened. Her report was universally well received. It is a great joy to me to be able to put into practice everything that she recommended. Some of the recommendations are a bit more problematic than others, and with some, just as she took time to consider them, we will take time to come up with the precise nature of the solutions.

The hon. Gentleman referred to the chief social worker. Before this debate, the Minister of State, Department of Health, my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam (Paul Burstow), and I interviewed the four short-listed candidates; in fact, I gather that they interviewed us. There have been some very high-calibre candidates and we hope to be able to appoint that person shortly. I want them working alongside me and the Health Department as soon as possible. That key recommendation from Monro will make a big difference.

The hon. Gentleman also mentioned the family drug and alcohol court, which Nick Crichton runs. I have sat in it on many occasions. It is fantastic and a really smart way of dealing with very problematic cases. I want to see more of that rolled out. My own authority is looking at a joint venture with Brighton in east Sussex to see whether we can bring it to our part of the country, and there are other examples.

The hon. Gentleman hit the nail on the head when he praised Munro for wanting a child-centred system. The review was entitled, “The Child’s Journey”. We are all here not to make sure that the system works better or that processes are followed more efficiently, but to make sure that the qualitative outcomes—the impact that the system is having on children who need to be helped, safeguarded and put in a safe place—are improved. We often forgot that in the past, which has been one of the weaknesses.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned training. One of my continuous pushes is on continuous professional development, which he mentioned as well. It is crucial, which is why we put £80 million into social work reform in 2011-12, and why we have some good new social workers coming forward from other walks of life, as well as through training in our universities. We put £23 million into the local social work improvement fund in 2010-11 to support improvement on the front line. We have 3,700 newly qualified or first or second-year social workers who have joined the professional development programme. There are 400 extremely high-calibre people. I have met many of them. I am handing out awards to many of them from the Step Up to Social Work programme.

There is a great deal going on. Safeguarding children is not a partisan issue, but something that we all want to achieve, so I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman’s acknowledgement that a real momentum is building in efforts to make our children safer—although never completely safe. It is unrealistic, as Professor Munro pointed out, to suggest that we can remove risk and make every child absolutely safe. It would be complacent to think so. Our job in government and the job of those in opposition working with all the professionals around the country is to make children as safe as we possibly can.

[Mr Sheerman]

rose—

[Tim Loughton]

I give way to the former Chairman of the Select Committee.

[Mr Sheerman]

The Minister knows of my interest in the subject and I do not want to upset the apple cart or the bipartisan nature of the debate, but this is not the first such debate that the Secretary of State has not attended. There is a crisis facing children. All the evidence that we have received over the past months suggests that many vulnerable children are in a dreadful situation in our country. We need the leadership of the Secretary of State, to show that he is interested in children’s issues as well as in broader schools and education issues.

[Tim Loughton]

The Secretary of State is hugely engaged in the issue. I have been around the block a little longer than he has. Having been shadow Minister with responsibility for children, having dealt with safeguarding since 2003 and having been appointed to this position, I perhaps have a little more experience of the subject. When the current Secretary of State took up his position as shadow Secretary of State, his interest and his knowledge of serious case reviews on some safeguarding issues was extraordinary. He has driven the programme and enabled me and others to carry forward the proposals from Munro and others in the way we have. I remind the hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) that the very first review that was established in the Department for Education under the new Secretary of State was the Munro review on child safeguarding. It was nothing to do with schools or education; it was on child safeguarding. That speaks volumes.