Education
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
What steps her Department is taking to improve early years teacher training. [902439]
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
The Department has significantly expanded the number of fully funded initial teacher training places in early years for the next academic year, and it is reviewing the level-3 qualification criterion for early years, both of which are part of our package of £180 million-worth of support.
Gary Sambrook
I recently visited Jelly Babies nursery at Longbridge Methodist church. [Interruption.] I did not eat any jelly babies on my visit, but I met the fantastic team who do so much to equip young children with new life skills. The Early Years Alliance is running its “We Are Educators” campaign, which I hope the Minister will support by recognising its work and the benefits for young children across the UK in general, and in Birmingham, Northfield in particular.
Claire Coutinho
I know that my hon. Friend is a huge supporter of Jelly Babies, both the nursery and otherwise. The Government are supporting early years professionals with £180 million for qualifications and specific training, such as on dealing with challenging behaviour following the pandemic and on early communication.
[Official Report, 28 November 2022, Vol. 723, c. 648.]
Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho):
An error has been identified in the responses given to my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Gary Sambrook).
The correct responses should have been:
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
The Department has significantly expanded the number of fully funded initial teacher training places in early years for the next academic year, and it is reviewing the level-3 qualification criterion for early years, both of which are part of our package of up to £180 million-worth of support…
The Government are supporting early years professionals with up to £180 million for qualifications and specific training, such as on dealing with challenging behaviour following the pandemic and on early communication.
The following is an extract from Education questions on Monday 28 November 2022.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
High-quality early years education is vital, and it is the best possible investment in our future—that includes both training and provision for all. Given that school budgets were protected in the autumn statement, where will the two years of real-terms funding cuts set for the Department for Education fall? Can the Minister confirm they will not fall on early years education?
Claire Coutinho
As I said in answer to earlier questions, we put an extra £0.5 billion into the early years sector in the 2021 spending review to increase the hourly rate. We are also spending money on qualifications and training for teachers. This sector is very important to us, and we continue to consider all the ways we can support it.[Official Report, 28 November 2022, Vol. 723, c. 648.]
Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho):
An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Twickenham (Munira Wilson).
The correct response should have been:
Claire Coutinho
As I said in answer to earlier questions, we put an extra £0.5 billion into the early years sector in the 2021 spending review to increase the hourly rate, split over the three-year spending review period. We are also spending money on qualifications and training for teachers. This sector is very important to us, and we continue to consider all the ways we can support it.
Accessible and Affordable Childcare
The following is an extract from Education questions on Monday 28 November 2022.
Mr Dhesi
The Government are knowingly underfunding the entitlement to 15 or 30 hours of childcare by over £2 per hour, thereby forcing providers to cross-subsidise and leading to astronomical costs for parents. New Ofsted data shows that 4,000 childcare providers closed within the year to March 2022, thereby further limiting access to childcare. When parents are having to pay more for their childcare than on their rent or mortgage, and adults without children are saying that childcare costs are forcing them out of parenting and precluding them from that, does she agree that she and the Government are presiding over a broken childcare system?
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Childcare is of course enormously important, and it is this Conservative Government who have expanded the childcare offer successively over a number of years. Last year in the spending review, we set out an additional £500 million to come into the sector, and we are also supporting private providers with their energy bills this year.
[Official Report, 28 November 2022, Vol. 723, c. 637.]
Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho):
An error has been identified in the response given to the hon. Member for Slough (Mr Dhesi).
The correct response should have been:
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Childcare is of course enormously important, and it is this Conservative Government who have expanded the childcare offer successively over a number of years. Last year in the spending review, we set out an additional £500 million to come into the sector, split over the three-year spending review period, and we are also supporting private providers with their energy bills this year.
Dyslexia Screening and Teacher Training Bill
Claire Coutinho ExcerptsFriday 2nd December 2022
(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Matt Hancock
My hon. Friend brings me immediately on to the next page of my speech, and I know that he is extremely experienced in work on these private Members’ Bills on a Friday—so much so that he can anticipate precisely the next point I was going to make.
The current system is broken, because identification as dyslexic requires expensive tests that only a few children do, and there is a strong correlation between being able to access those tests and the means of one’s parents, the result of which is a much higher rate of identification in the private school system than in the state school system. In the state school system, 2.2% of people are identified as having a special learning need. In the private school system, 18% have an education and healthcare plan. The divergence between those two figures cannot possibly be explained by a difference in the nature of the children; it is all about access.
In this country for more than 100 years, we have had universal access to schooling—quite rightly; it is the basis of a fair society and equality of opportunity—but we do not have equal access to identification for dyslexia and other neurodivergent conditions, and as a result it is not just that we have a problem accessing the extra time that might be appropriate, but we have an essentially unfair system of allocating that extra time, because if someone can afford to get the identification, they get the extra time, and if they cannot afford to, they do not, and that is a social outrage.
It is not only an issue of morality but an issue of social and economic justice. I gently make the point, which relates to the previous Bill, that more than half of prisoners are thought to have dyslexia, and more than half of successful entrepreneurs are thought to have dyslexia. If someone is dyslexic, their life can go two ways. If they get the support they need and become successful, they often are more creative. There is more lateral thinking among dyslexics, not least because we think around problems like how to read something on a page. People who do not get the support, however, can end up too often in a life of crime.
The 2012 “Dyslexia Behind Bars” programme found that when prisoners were taught to read, the reoffending rate dropped by 5.9% within four years. Sadly, as Ofsted and His Majesty’s inspectorate of prisons reported earlier this year, there has been no progress in literacy in prisons over the past decade, and the report was one of the most upsetting I have ever read. A dry Government document should not be as upsetting as that, and it describes precisely the problem caused by failing to put in place the measures in this Bill.
It is not all doom and gloom, though; there is also a massive opportunity. Dyslexic people tend to have skills that jobs increasingly need and future jobs need: creativity, lateral thinking and enhanced communication skills, especially in oral communication. Computers increasingly do the boring straight-line thinking; dyslexics have brains fit for the future. It is no wonder that progressive employers such as GCHQ, Universal Music and Deloitte proactively hire neurodivergent people. But if dyslexic people do not know that they have those talents—if they are not identified and they do not get the support they need—they cannot make the most of those advantages.
I have one further point on why there might be objections to the Bill. I have heard some people say that we do not want more false positives and to over-identify children who are not dyslexic. The Bill is carefully written to take that into account. It is calling for screening for all—it is not calling for all to take a formal test—with the purpose of the screening to get better data. We have an excellent phonics test in primary schools, which is good at identifying how good children are at turning phonic symbols on the page into sounds in their heads, but the measure of a dyslexic brain is the gap between that capability and capability at languages.
Most dyslexics are good at oral languages. They have got the gift of the gab—a bit like me, you might say, Mr Deputy Speaker. If they are good at that and poor at the phonics test, that identifies a different problem from being bad at the phonics test and bad at languages, which requires a different type of support. I am trying to address that gap. By having a test of language ability alongside phonic ability in primary school, we will find those who we know have the intellectual capability and wherewithal but have just got a specific neurological problem that means that they need support to get through this barrier. The Bill would help to address that problem. It would ensure that the Government have what they need to implement a system that takes the literacy that we need to see to the next level. If 10% of children are dyslexic, there is no way that we can reach full literacy without measures to find out who those children are and addressing that.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
My right hon. Friend is making an excellent speech, and I thank him for shining such a bright spotlight on this area and setting out the opportunities for neurodivergent people. Increasing educational and employment outcomes is a huge priority for me, and I know that he is a passionate campaigner. I want to put on the record my gratitude to him and willingness to work with him further on this issue.
Matt Hancock
I am grateful for that willingness—passing the Bill would be a good starting point. The Minister is also right that there is good work ongoing, especially in the SEND review. However, the critical point is early identification and rejection of the false argument put to me, including by some in her Department, that it is a bad idea to identify problems. We need more data in the classroom to know how children work. The best outcome would be that some children would have dyslexia identified, be given support and therefore close the gap between their phonic ability and their language ability just as my gap was closed and I can now read long words off a piece of paper and read perfectly effectively to be able to hold down a half-decent job.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
I am over the moon to be here discussing such important issues. As the Minister for special educational needs, and having served briefly as the Minister for disabled people, I want to start by congratulating my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matt Hancock) on introducing a Bill on this important issue. Having heard from people from across the House, I think we can agree that we have to work tirelessly to improve the outcomes for children and young people with SEND. I want to make sure that the decisions we take are well-informed and evidence-driven. I was asked about the SEND Green Paper. We have set out our ambition to respond to that early next year, and I am very committed to doing so. We will be looking at some of the questions we have talked about today, to make sure we can get the early identification right, so that people are getting the help they need when they need it; to make sure we are getting the teacher training right, so that people are getting the right support from the right teachers; and to make sure that we are setting out a series of standards so that at each point of the process those children, their families, and their teachers and schools can see what they should be getting and how they should be helped. We are incredibly ambitious about literacy and making sure we can achieve the targets that we have set out, and we will be working to do so not only through the measures in the Bill but throughout the Department. I shall be happy to work with my right hon. Friend on this issue. Now we can ensure that all our ambitious programmes are working together to deliver for young people with dyslexia—
Oral Answers to Questions
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi (Slough) (Lab)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
We are committed to improving the cost, choice and accessibility of childcare, and have spent more than £20 billion over the last five years supporting families with the cost of childcare.
Mr Dhesi
The Government are knowingly underfunding the entitlement to 15 or 30 hours of childcare by over £2 per hour, thereby forcing providers to cross-subsidise and leading to astronomical costs for parents. New Ofsted data shows that 4,000 childcare providers closed within the year to March 2022, thereby further limiting access to childcare. When parents are having to pay more for their childcare than on their rent or mortgage, and adults without children are saying that childcare costs are forcing them out of parenting and precluding them from that, does she agree that she and the Government are presiding over a broken childcare system?
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Gentleman for that question. Childcare is of course enormously important, and it is this Conservative Government who have expanded the childcare offer successively over a number of years. Last year in the spending review, we set out an additional £500 million to come into the sector, and we are also supporting private providers with their energy bills this year.
Selaine Saxby (North Devon) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
All local authorities, including those in rural areas, are subject to robust special educational needs and disabilities inspections, and Ofsted will shortly be announcing plans for a strengthened inspection framework. This is an area that both the Education Secretary and I are incredibly passionate about, and one which she knows from her time as a Health Minister and I know from my time as the Minister for disabled people. Today, my right hon. Friend has sent letters to those in the sector confirming that we will publish a full response to the SEND and alternative provision Green Paper, with an improvement plan, early in the new year.
Selaine Saxby
Many of my secondary school heads believe that, with the further devolvement of responsibility away from local education authorities, they could significantly enhance provision in their rural area. Would my hon. Friend agree to meet my school heads to discuss their ideas?
Claire Coutinho
I would like to thank my hon. Friend for a productive discussion last week. I absolutely agree with her—I know she is a former teacher—that empowering schools is crucial to ensure we have the right provision for SEND children in rural areas. The SEND and AP Green Paper proposed new standards based on the evidence of what works to make sure that local schools feel the sense of empowerment she so rightly talks about. Of course, if her heads write to me, I would be happy to respond.
Mr Ben Bradshaw (Exeter) (Lab)
The excellent community-run Ted Wragg Trust, which runs all the secondary schools in my constituency of Exeter, recently wanted to take over a failing local school—it started as a Steiner school, was then pushed on to another provider, which failed, and it has now been pushed on to another one—but the Government have decided not to allow that to happen. Could she explain—if not now, then perhaps in writing to me—why the Government did not listen to this very good idea to expand and improve local special educational needs provision in my constituency, but stuck to their ideological obsession with privately-run academies?
Claire Coutinho
I will be happy to look into that in detail and write to the right hon. Gentleman further about it, but I would say that the Department is working to improve all schools in terms of SEND needs across different sectors and we are working with all of them.
Helen Hayes (Dulwich and West Norwood) (Lab)
While this Government have been preoccupied with their own internal disputes, the trashing of the UK economy and an endless merry-go-round of ministerial reshuffles, children with special educational needs and disabilities and their families are left to suffer. It is now eight months since the publication of the SEND and alternative provision Green Paper and more than four months since the consultation closed. The Minister’s predecessor had promised a response to the consultation by the end of the year. Can the new Minister confirm when the full results of the consultation and the Government response will be published, because children with SEND and their families have already been waiting for far too long?
Claire Coutinho
If the hon. Lady had been listening, she would know that I just said we will be publishing early in the new year; if she was not just reading out a scripted question, she might have cottoned on to that point. This is an important area. I have many affected constituents so have seen all of this first hand, as I have in previous roles and from talking to parents across the country. We want to make sure that we are delivering for parents and children with SEND. We will set out that paper early in the new year addressing many of the challenges they are currently facing.
Danny Kruger (Devizes) (Con)
Tom Hunt (Ipswich) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
We are making a transformational investment in SEND places by investing £2.6 billion between 2022 and 2025 to help deliver new places and improve existing provision for children and young people with SEND or who require alternative provision as well as up to 60 new special and AP free schools.
Danny Kruger
I welcome that news and investment. Wiltshire Council has a policy of investing, particularly in mainstream places for children with special needs, and I applaud that. Does the Minister agree that that means parents need proper accountability for the performance of the schools their children are going to, and will she encourage Ofsted to do more to appraise mainstream schools on the support they give to children with special needs?
Claire Coutinho
My hon. Friend is a doughty campaigner for Wiltshire and I applaud the council on the work it is doing. Ofsted is revising its framework on this area, which was set out in the Green Paper earlier this year. My hon. Friend might be interested to know that we are also looking at better local and national dashboards to improve local accountability.
Dr Evans
I thank the Minister, who has already said that the consultation results will come out in January, but day in, day out in Leicestershire we hear cases involving parents who have had to struggle and fight to get SEND support, which is one of the biggest problems they face. Will that be put at the heart of the review? Secondly, the Minister talked about the £2.6 billion. How can the likes of Leicestershire get hold of some of that cash to improve one of the biggest areas of struggle in SEND provision?
Claire Coutinho
My hon. Friend is right that many parents find the system adversarial. That is one of the key things we are seeking to address by making what parents can expect much clearer and by simplifying and digitising their EHCP—education, health and care plan—application process, among our other measures. Meanwhile, Leicestershire will continue to be supported through its delivering better value programme, among other things.
Tom Hunt
Since I was elected in Ipswich we have had two new special schools, the Sir Bobby Robson School, which now has 60 pupils, and the Woodbridge Road Academy, currently in temporary buildings and moving into permanent buildings in 2023, with 16 pupils going up to 60 pupils. However, the Sir Bobby Robson School is already very over-subscribed and I imagine the same will be the case for the Woodbridge Road Academy. Will the Minister visit Ipswich to meet me and the heads of both schools to discuss how the funding formula could be tweaked to ensure that Suffolk SEND is fairly funded and that we have more top-quality places in special schools for the wonderful neuro-diverse thinkers in Ipswich?
Claire Coutinho
My hon. Friend has spoken to me multiple times about the excellent school provision in his area, and I would be delighted to visit and see more for myself.
Dan Jarvis (Barnsley Central) (Lab)
I welcome the Minister and the whole Front-Bench team to their new roles. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation says that children from low-income backgrounds are more likely to have a special educational need but less likely to receive support or interventions that address their needs. I note the comments the Minister has just made, but given that Barnsley has one of the highest numbers of EHCPs in the country, can she guarantee that she will move heaven and earth to make sure schools have the resources they need for this specialist provision?
Claire Coutinho
We absolutely need to address the plight of low-income families struggling with the system when their children have SEND. The amount of funding that has gone into the SEND high needs block has risen by 40% over the last three years, so we are putting the funding in, but we absolutely need to ensure that it is going to the right families.
Margaret Ferrier (Rutherglen and Hamilton West) (Ind)
Teaching assistants providing one-to-one support are vital for children with additional needs to succeed in the classroom, but many are leaving because the pay is too low for them to survive during the economic crisis. What steps are Ministers taking to improve both recruitment and retention rates for SEND teaching assistants?
Claire Coutinho
I point to the £2 billion extra funding that is going into the schools system next year and the year after as well as the huge increase of funding that I just mentioned going into the SEND sector.
Stephanie Peacock (Barnsley East) (Lab)
I welcome the Secretary of State to her place and indeed the whole ministerial team. I acknowledge the extra money going in from the autumn statement, but when I met the Hoyland Common Academy Trust, I was told that its energy bills are going up by 400% and that budgetary pressures mean that support for all pupils—including those with SEND—will be affected. I have written to the Secretary of State along with my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley Central (Dan Jarvis), so will she meet us to discuss that further?
Claire Coutinho
As I have mentioned, there is extra money going into the schools system, which was set out in the autumn statement. The energy relief scheme, which is helping schools with their energy bills, will also last throughout the winter.
Mr Robin Walker (Worcester) (Con)
Thank you, Mr Speaker. High needs pupils need
“the right support in the right place at the right time”.
Those are not my words but those of the Government’s Green Paper, and yet BBC local radio in Worcestershire is reporting today that a nine-year-old with autism missed a year of education because our specialist schools are full and he could not get the support that he needed in mainstream. Instead, he was offered a placement 110 miles away, but that fell through. What progress has been made in spending the billions of extra high needs capital announced at the spending review? When can we expect more provision in Worcestershire?
Claire Coutinho
It is absolutely tragic that anyone might spend that amount of time outside of school. In March 2020, we announced £1.4 billion of high needs provision capital allocations, of which Worcestershire is receiving just over £10.7 million between 2022 and 2024 to help create new places in both mainstream and special schools. It is up to the local authority to determine how best to use that funding. However, the practice of sending children very far away is one thing that we would like to address in our response to the Green Paper.
Paula Barker (Liverpool, Wavertree) (Lab)
Gary Sambrook (Birmingham, Northfield) (Con)
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
The Department has significantly expanded the number of fully funded initial teacher training places in early years for the next academic year, and it is reviewing the level-3 qualification criterion for early years, both of which make up our package of £180 million-worth of support.
Gary Sambrook
I recently visited Jelly Babies nursery at Longbridge Methodist church. [Interruption.] I did not eat any jelly babies on my visit, but I met the fantastic team who do so much to equip young children with new life skills. The Early Years Alliance is running its “We Are Educators” campaign, which I hope the Minister will support by recognising its work and the benefits for young children across the UK in general, and in Birmingham, Northfield in particular.
Claire Coutinho
I know that my hon. Friend is a huge supporter of Jelly Babies, both the nursery and otherwise. The Government are supporting early years professionals with £180 million for qualifications and specific training, such as on dealing with challenging behaviour following the pandemic and on early communication.
Munira Wilson (Twickenham) (LD)
High-quality early years education is vital, and it is the best possible investment in our future—that includes both training and provision for all. Given that school budgets were protected in the autumn statement, where will the two years of real-terms funding cuts set for the Department for Education fall? Can the Minister confirm they will not fall on early years education?
Claire Coutinho
As I said in answer to earlier questions, we put an extra £0.5 billion into the early years sector in the 2021 spending review to increase the hourly rate. We are also spending money on qualifications and training for teachers. This sector is very important to us, and we continue to consider all the ways we can support it.
Mohammad Yasin (Bedford) (Lab)
Schools such as King’s Oak primary in Bedford are experiencing significantly increased demand for support around special educational needs and disabilities and social, emotional and mental health needs, due to the cost of living crisis. While additional funding is a relief, the Government need to urgently make clear what the overall funding announcement will mean, to ensure that essential support can be sustained for the most vulnerable children. When will the details be announced?
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
We have set out the announcements on funding for SEND, which, as I said, has increased by 40% over the past three years for the high needs block funding. We have also set out spending on capital grants. We are setting out early next year our proposals for the SEND and alternative provision Green Paper to make sure that that money is spent well.
Jack Brereton (Stoke-on-Trent South) (Con)
Trentham Academy has recently received a very good Ofsted rating, with a number of outstanding features, following significant improvement. But the school building is in a very serious condition, with rat infestations, a number of areas of safety concerns and more than one third of classrooms below 40 square metres. Will my right hon. Friend agree to support Trentham’s being in the school rebuilding programme?
Claire Coutinho
I would be delighted to meet my right hon. Friend. She is an incredible campaigner on these issues, which are also important to the Government.
Sir James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend East) (Con)
King Edmund School, in the constituency of my right hon. Friend the Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois), is currently closed while building materials containing asbestos are removed from the site. Will the ministerial team look into this situation with a view to getting kids safely back to school as quickly as possible?
Independent Review of Children’s Social Care
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
I have been asked to keep my comments relatively brief, so I hope I can do justice to this tremendous debate and set out some of the Government’s vision.
I start by thanking the hon. Member for York Central (Rachael Maskell) for a moving and passionate speech, which I am becoming used to hearing from her, and my hon. Friend the Member for East Worthing and Shoreham (Tim Loughton), who has been generous to me with his time and experience, for securing this important debate. I also thank all Members for their contributions. I look around the Chamber and see former Ministers, former care workers, former councillors and the newly elected Chair of the Education Committee. They have a huge amount of experience and compassion, and we heard the very best of the House today. I look forward to working with all of them, and I am overjoyed to see the wealth of enthusiasm for these changes.
I also thank all those who led and contributed to the vital reviews this year, and many Members listed some of them, including Josh MacAlister, Annie Hudson, the rest of the national panel and the Competition and Markets Authority team, as well as the children and young people in care and their families, who contributed and made these reports so powerful. I particularly thank Josh, who many Members mentioned today. He has been rightly praised, and he has worked closely with us since the publication of his review to encourage the depth and breadth of our ambition.
There is a lot that is good about children’s social care, as all the reports have set out this year and, indeed, over a decade, and as Members have shown today. The dedication of social workers, family support workers, directors of children’s services, foster carers, kinship carers and others up and down the country who work determinedly to improve children’s lives deserve our fullest praise. Many children who have been supported by children’s social care go on to lead happy and fulfilling lives. That is a testament not only to their resilience, but to the quality of the help and support they have received when they have needed it.
However, the message from these reports and from the many excellent contributions made today is clear: the system is not delivering well enough, or consistently for the children and families it supports. Less than one month ago, I was given what I believe is the most important job in Government—it is excellent to hear that people who have held it previously agree. No other role provides such a huge opportunity to change children’s lives for the better. That is why, when my hon. Friend the Member for Colchester (Will Quince), the then Minister for children and families, came to this House six months ago, this Government committed to taking action from day one, and I am pleased to update the House today on some of our progress.
We have already established a national implementation board and I chaired a meeting of the board last week. Hearing the experiences of the people who are care-experienced on it, as well as the wealth of experience of Josh, our Children’s Commissioner and others, has given me huge confidence in its ability to help us to achieve the full extent of our ambitions for children.
We have also set up a new child protection ministerial group, and launched a data and digital solutions fund. I know that many Members talked about the importance of sharing data to encourage joined-up working. We are working to increase the number of foster care placements. My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Eddisbury (Edward Timpson) has excellent real-world experience in this area and is pushing us to be ambitious. I want to be ambitious in this area too. That is what we are getting on with already.
Many Members have also rightly pressed me on the contents and timing of the delivery of the implementation strategy. I want to assure them that this is the thing that is keeping me up at night. It is a huge priority. I committed to publishing our implementation strategy early in the new year and I look forward to returning to this House to set out our plans in full. I am sure I will see many Members return to scrutinise them.
Today, I can share some of our vision and ambitions for the future system. The Government believe in the power of opportunity, which is why levelling up was at the core of our manifesto in 2019, and it is our belief that the roots of opportunity start with the power and importance of family. With the right support, families are the best means of protecting, nurturing and promoting the interests of children, now and forever. As the care review said:
“We all have a part to play and it starts with love.”
Our ambitions for reform will reaffirm the central role of families in the care system, and put love and stable relationships at the heart of what children’s social care does. Children should grow up in loving, safe and stable families. That is where they can achieve their best. Where that is not possible, it is right that the care system should take swift and decisive action to protect them. But care should also provide that same foundation of love, stability and safety. That is what all children and indeed what all of us need to thrive.
Jim Shannon
I asked about the advocates. The figures I have from back home show that only three in 10 children have an advocate. I asked whether it would be possible to look at that process to ensure that every young child has an advocate so that they can plan their way forward in a structured fashion.
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention and I will be looking at that carefully. The heart of what we want to do is to make sure that all people have these powerful relationships in their lives. As he ably pointed out, that is what we expect for our friends and families and actually everyone deserves to have those people who will go the extra mile for them.
On our ambitions for this area, first, I come to our ambition for families. Many Members spoke eloquently about the importance of families. They are at the heart of what makes us happy and well, so when families are struggling we should provide rapid and intensive multidisciplinary support at the right time to help to fix the issues. Lots of Members talked about early intervention and I completely agree that that is the core issue here. We want to make sure that our programmes improve early help services from birth to adulthood. We want to build a strong evidence base on what works to support families to turn around difficult situations, and I would particularly like to thank the Children’s Commissioner for part 1 of her recent excellent review of family life. There was a comment from the shadow Minister about our lack of ambition in this area. I gently point her towards our ambitious reforms on domestic abuse and on drug and alcohol addiction, reducing parental conflict. We talk about prevention to make sure that people are not suffering from the kind of trauma that the hon. Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse) set out movingly. These programmes are both important and exactly the right place to start.
Rachael Maskell
What keeps me awake at night is knowing that poverty levels are rising sharply. It is those pressures on families that often lead children into the care system. Given that the report did not have the remit to look into the intersection between poverty and the challenges that families face, will the Minister ensure that she puts more pressure on her Government to put the protection around families so we do not see children having to go into the care sector?
Claire Coutinho
As someone who has been working on the cost of living challenge for the past 18 months, I can say that it has been a priority of this Government, during the pandemic and into the energy crisis, to support the most vulnerable households. That has exactly been our impetus in these times.
Our second ambition is for child protection. The murders of Arthur and Star have sickened us all. The recommendations of the national panel aim to ensure that such terrible incidents are as rare as possible and, when children are at risk of harm, to ensure that we intervene quickly and decisively through a more expert and multi-agency child protection response. The hon. Member for Bath had a question about developing our understanding of sibling sexual abuse. Nothing in this area should be taboo. We are looking at the evidence base via our child sex abuse centre. I am happy to discuss these things further with her.
Local authorities, police and health services are under statutory duties to work together to safeguard children. We will use the recommendations of all the reviews to support them.
Thirdly, on foster care and kinship care, I agree that the John Lewis advert was touching, providing an exciting opportunity for us to talk more about this area. Where children cannot be looked after safely by their parents, we should properly support wider family networks to step up and family-like environments. At the moment, there are practical, financial and cultural barriers to some of this, particularly some of the ethnic disparities that have been mentioned today. But moving in with a relative or people from one’s own community provides a strong chance of achieving the kind of lifelong stability that children need. We need to encourage the system always to look to wider family before care outside the family and to help to equip families to do this where that is in the child’s best interests. Many Members also mentioned adoption. We set out a strategy last year and that will also be an important part of our solution here.
Our fourth ambition is for the care system. Where family is not an option, the care system should provide stable and loving homes. Again, I echo the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon), who said that it was very sad that some people do not have what other people have: a loving family home. The care review found that supporting children in the care system also needs to be focused on outcomes. That has been widely discussed today and it is absolutely right. My hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley (Mrs Drummond) movingly set that out, saying that we must focus on the outcomes. I also pay tribute to John from Plan B who sounds like a thoroughly brilliant man in all the work that he is doing to help people in this regard.
The number of times that children move homes was mentioned in a couple of speeches. Care-experienced people whom I have spoken to in the past couple of weeks talked about children moving 21 times. That is not the kind of situation that we need to set up the relationship that we think are so important for people.
While we are considering all the recommendations to support young people and to get those outcomes that we have been talking about, we have also been working in close partnership with Departments across Government and with Ofsted. What is clear is that the continuing status is not an option, although I gently say to the shadow Minister that the trajectory has been positive and that there has been a huge amount of work from dedicated teams to try to get that good and outstanding level from 36% to 55%, and to reduce the number of local authorities that have been judged to be inadequate. I pay tribute to them for their work. Of course, we must continue. We must not accept any failure in this area, but they have done exceptional work so far.
Our fifth ambition relates to the workforce, which the hon. Member for York Central, who I know has great experience in this area, my hon. Friend the Member for Meon Valley and my hon. Friend the Member for Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner (David Simmonds), who is always so interesting on this issue, all talked about. We must equip the children’s social care system with the people and tools it needs to do a good job of supporting all those who need its help. That means a skilled and empowered workforce, better data and transparency and clear system direction.
We have committed to a national framework for children’s social care and are working to publish a draft of that alongside the implementation strategy. We will also continue to work closely with Ofsted, which plays an important role in the intervention and improvement programme.
Finally, by far the most important factor in achieving success will be the people delivering the vision. I am sure this House will join me in paying tribute to every social worker and all those supporting children, such as workers in children’s homes and foster carers. They are there tirelessly, day in, day out, providing support to children and their families. We will bring forward proposals to support the workforce and foster carers to ensure they have the right skills and strong leadership.
I am proud to be responsible for a system that has been shown to help children to recover from traumatic experiences and often to succeed against the odds, but the children’s social care system cannot do it all. A young person’s success is driven by many different factors and actors. I want other parts of the local council system, the school system, the health service and many others within and outside Government to do all they can to give our children the best possible start in life. Children’s social care cannot do it alone and we cannot do anything at once, but this is a programme for a long-term, once in a generation reform. We will start by laying the foundations for a system that is built on love and the importance of family.
Adoption: Support for Birth Families
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central (Chi Onwurah) on securing a debate on this important subject as well as the hon. Members for Strangford (Jim Shannon) and for York Central (Rachael Maskell) on their contributions. I also congratulate Families in Care, which sounds like it is doing tremendous work to try to overcome the feelings that birth parents have of isolation and being stigmatised and overwhelmed. I would love to talk to the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central about what more I can do with that charity. I will set out a little what the law says at the moment before turning to some of our work in this area. I assure her that I am incredibly passionate about the matter and working keenly on it.
The law is clear that, wherever possible, children should remain in the birth family and that families should be given extra support to help keep them together. We are carefully considering the children’s social care review by Josh MacAlister, which talks about early family help and better data as well as some of the other points that the hon. Lady rightly mentioned.
Where a child cannot live with their birth parents, local authorities have a legal duty to give preference to alternative care by family and friends before considering adoption. The decision to put a child forward for adoption should never be taken lightly. The ultimate decision rests with the independent court systems, and courts scrutinise the evidence before them. The hon. Lady rightly mentioned that paramount in the court’s consideration is the welfare of the child, with strong checks and balances in the system. Birth parents are supported during the process by having access to legal representation and the opportunity to refute allegations. I very much recognise what she said about birth parents feeling like they sometimes do not have the chance to do those things.
It is essential that we support birth parents and adopted children. My Department funds the Family Rights Group, of which I am sure the hon. Lady is aware. This week, I met a brilliant employee of it who is a passionate advocate for birth parents. It provides independent legal and other advice to families so that, in its own words,
“wherever possible children can live safely and flourish within their family network”.
Many birth parents of children in care will be grieving over the loss of their child or may need support to process what has happened. Adoption agencies have legal duties to provide support to birth parents. I accept that provision can often be patchy and variable, but those agencies must provide counselling services to birth parents when adoption of a child is being considered. Such counselling must be made available to them at any time throughout the adoption process, including when that support has previously been rejected. When birth parents reject counselling, agencies should offer to set up counselling for them with another agency, should they prefer that. Birth parents must be given information about the implications of adoption. Adoption agencies must explain the process of adoption and the legal implications, and birth parents should also receive written information on the implications.
The wishes of birth parents about future contact must be asked for by adoption agencies so that the court can take them into account on applications for a placement or adoption order. Agencies must also ask birth parents their wishes about the religion and culture of their child so that their views can be considered if the child does go to live with adopters.
Ensuring that adoption agencies are running consistent and high-quality services is a key priority for me and the Government. We published a national adoption strategy in July 2021, and some of our work on regional adoption agencies is to try to test that best practice, including in particular some of the counselling and emotional support that the hon. Lady and the hon. Member for York Central mentioned.
Rachael Maskell
I am grateful to the Minister for her response so far, but she will also recognise that, such is the churn of social workers involved in the adoption process, that birth parents often have six or seven social workers over the course of an adoption discussion to the point of adoption. Therefore, they do not get the representation and consistency, which is so important to give them the care the Minister talks about.
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Lady for that important intervention. Yes, I recognise there is retention and churn in the social care worker system. I am looking at that very closely and am happy to talk to her about it further. Consistency means the ability to build a proper relationship. That means so much in terms of trust, but also in terms of access to the services that we all know are important, because it increases the likelihood of someone actually taking them up.
Part of our adoption strategy includes driving improvement for contact services, which was mentioned. Where ongoing contact with an adopted child is agreed, support for birth parents or family members can help to ensure that the contact is a positive experience for the adopted child. We know that having contact with birth parents is really important for a child’s sense of their past and identity. I spoke this week to birth parents and care-experienced people who talked about the trauma for children of not really understanding where they come from. We are working very hard with regional adoption agency leaders to ensure that contact services provide better support and are a positive experience for all those who are involved, including birth parents.
On top of that, regional adoption agency leaders have established a birth parent reference group. That is really important, because the group will help to shape plans for developing better information for birth parents and family members. It will create resources for other birth parents around letterbox contact, ensuring it is easier to navigate and ensuring that birth parents are involved during the further development of any adoption services who have some of that co-design.
Chi Onwurah
I thank the Minister for the comments she is making and for setting out some of the issues in the adoption process for birth parents. Will she focus on peer-to-peer support, too? The support she references is provided by agencies. As the charity and the parents who contacted me said, peer-to-peer support is particularly important, especially where there is a sense of guilt, trauma or shame associated with engaging with, say, an adoption agency.
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Lady; that is an excellent point. I have seen, in my work in social justice areas over the years, how much of a difference peer-to-peer support makes, particularly in encouraging people to take up services that they sometimes see as the enemy. Having a trusted person saying, “Actually, this is quite good” makes all the difference. I will take that away, but I absolutely agree with her about that.
I will just briefly touch on the independent review of children’s social care, which hon. Members will know well. The review sets out recommendations for the care system and, in terms of the topics they have raised, sets a really positive direction. The review staff spoke with a great number of birth parents to understand their needs and their experience of the care system. It includes lots of recommendations to strengthen family help systems, getting them that early help that was spoken about. It also talked about family help and support being available to birth parents when adoption is being considered for a child, after a decision has been made to place a child for adoption and after a child has been adopted as well. The review also made proposals to improve the contact between birth parents and the adopted child. It is important that we get this right for children and families, and we are rapidly working up an ambitious and detailed implementation strategy in response to the review.
I will touch on court proceedings, because I know that birth parents have described those as being particularly adversarial and traumatic. They have described a lack of compassion and kindness, as well as a lack of communication and updates on what is happening. The care review flagged the importance of making the court process more accessible for parents during family law proceedings. I am pleased to say that I have met some of the team on the cross-sector public law working group, who are looking at how they can improve the process. They are building the evidence base and starting to roll that out to make sure the courts are less adversarial, based on some of the problem-solving approaches in the family drug and alcohol courts, about which I am also very passionate.
In conclusion, I thank the hon. Member—
Chi Onwurah
I am keen to keep the Minister on her feet. I thank her for her response. However, on the role of the charity in my constituency and peer-to-peer care, I urge her to agree to a meeting with me or with the charity so that we can take that issue forward.
Claire Coutinho
I would be delighted to, so let me take that away and see what we can do.
Rachael Maskell
I am grateful to the Minister for allowing another intervention. The Mockingbird set-up that is used in fostering is another example of a network of support built around foster parents. Could that not also be translated into the adoption process, particularly bearing in mind Rachel de Souza’s report on the family and looking at the more extensive family and the opportunity that that brings?
Claire Coutinho
I am very familiar with the Mockingbird programme, which I think is excellent, so I will look at that as well. I also agree with the Children’s Commissioner Rachel de Souza’s excellent report on family.
Let me bring my comments to a close, despite all the interventions. We have had a very interesting debate. I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle upon Tyne Central for securing it. I am particularly committed to this area, as are the Government, and to making sure that it works better for birth parents and adopted children.
Question put and agreed to.
Education
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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Claire Coutinho
The Government consulted on the draft changes to Social Work England’s regulatory framework from 23 March to 11 May this year. We received 48 responses from a range of interested stake-holders, including service users and social workers. I am pleased to share that each proposal received broad support, with approval ranging from 67% to 94%.
[Official Report, Seventh Delegated Legislation Committee, 9 November 2022, Vol. 722, c. 3.]
Letter of correction from the Under-Secretary of State for Education, the hon. Member for East Surrey (Claire Coutinho).
An error has been identified in my opening speech on the draft regulations.
The correct contribution should be been:
Claire Coutinho
The Government consulted on the draft changes to Social Work England’s regulatory framework from 23 March to 11 May this year. We received 48 responses from a range of interested stake-holders, including service users and social workers. I am pleased to share that each proposal received broad support, with approval ranging from 68% to 94%.
Draft Social Workers (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2022
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(1 year, 6 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education (Claire Coutinho)
I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Social Workers (Amendment and Transitional Provision) Regulations 2022.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dame Maria. The draft regulations, which were laid before the House on 17 October, make changes to Social Work England’s regulatory framework. To start with, I thank our brilliant social workers who provide much-needed help and support for the most vulnerable children and adults.
Social Work England began operating in December 2019 as part of wider reforms to improve confidence in social work and raise the status of the profession. As a specialist regulator for social workers in England, public protection is at the heart of what Social Work England does. The Social Workers Regulations 2018 set out the details for the new regulator, covering how social workers would register and how the fitness to practise process would work, as well as educational and professional standards. Social Work England has been operating for nearly three years, and this statutory instrument will enable the regulator to make small improvements to its operational efficiency and support it to better deliver effective public protection.
The Government consulted on the draft changes to Social Work England’s regulatory framework from 23 March to 11 May this year. We received 48 responses from a range of interested stakeholders, including service users and social workers. I am pleased to share that each proposal received broad support, with approval ranging from 67% to 94%. Having considered all the responses carefully, we have now laid before the House a draft statutory instrument to implement the proposals made in our consultation. The instrument makes changes to Social Work England’s fitness to practise processes and procedures and its duty to co-operate. It also introduces a right for registrants to request voluntary removal from the register. Additionally, it extends the Professional Standards Authority’s oversight of Social Work England so that it matches its oversight powers for other regulators.
I will now talk about some of the details of the changes. Fitness to practise means that a social worker meets professional standards. Regulators investigate fitness to practise concerns when they receive information indicating that a social worker’s practice could be impaired. That is vital for both public protection and confidence in social work as a regulated profession.
Sometimes, it is appropriate to use interim orders—orders that temporarily prevent a social worker from practising while an investigation is ongoing. The instrument makes improvements to the regulator’s internal processes relating to those interim orders. It removes delay in the current system by allowing the regulator to initiate interim orders directly, bringing Social Work England in line with other regulators. In addition, interim orders will now be linked to individual cases, rather than a specific social worker. That means that each case is treated separately on its own evidence, allowing the regulator to take the most appropriate course of action in each case. The instrument also makes provision for fitness to practise outcomes to be recorded on the register much faster than before. Where a social worker has been found guilty of one of the serious offences set out in schedule 3 to the Social Workers Regulations, automatic removal will now be published with immediate effect.
I would also like to discuss the provisions relating to data sharing. It is vital that Social Work England co-operates with not only other regulators, but the other bodies and individuals who work alongside it in public protection. The instrument introduces two new provisions regarding data sharing: the first is a duty to share information relating to the regulator’s functions when it is requested and when it is in the public interest to do so. The second is a power to disclose any information relating to a registered social worker’s fitness to practise. The instrument is clear that the provisions do not override existing data protection legislation, ensuring that the changes deliver effective and proportionate public protection.
The instrument addresses an omission in the Social Workers Regulations by making it clear that the regulator can share information with relevant bodies outside of England in the exercise of its functions. It also introduces a provision to allow the regulator to consider applications from registered social workers to be voluntarily removed from the register, a power that is held by many other health and care regulators. It will, for example, help social workers with significant ill health and an open fitness to practise concern to leave the register if they are no longer able to practise. When deciding whether voluntary removal is appropriate, the regulator’s primary consideration will be protecting the public from social workers whose fitness to practise could be impaired. The regulator will be required to publish voluntary removals from the register, and may publish further details if it deems it necessary for the protection of the public.
The instrument also helps to ensure that the Professional Standards Authority’s oversight of Social Work England is equal to its oversight of other regulators. The Professional Standards Authority is the regulator of all health and care regulators. It performs a number of functions in respect of Social Work England, including annual performance reviews and the referring of cases to the High Court where it feels that fitness to practise decisions are insufficient for public protection.
This instrument enables the Professional Standards Authority to refer to the High Court mandatory review decisions and cases where the regulator has restored a social worker to the register without conditions or sanctions. These changes strengthen public protection safeguards. It is usual once a new body has become operational to identify areas of regulation that can be improved. The measures in the regulations are important to support Social Work England to improve its fitness to practise processes and deliver effective public protection. I hope the Committee will support the measures and their objectives and I commend them to the Committee.
Claire Coutinho
I thank the hon. Lady for her constructive contribution, and I look forward to her perhaps making more such contributions in similar roles in the future. I think she is right to call out the problem with inadequate children’s social care. The Department is making good progress, and we have seen the number of providers rated as “inadequate” come down. She is also right to highlight wider reform. In my time in this role, I have already met with Josh MacAlister. I am very passionate about children’s social care, and I will be looking at publishing an implementation strategy as quickly as possible. It will address some of the challenges she has raised, particularly around the recruitment and status of social care workers.
I note the shadow Minister’s concerns about the protection of employees. We have ensured that public protection is paramount, but we also want to make sure that social workers in this country who do tremendous work feel respected in their profession. I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(1 year, 10 months ago)
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Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
The Secretary of State for Education (Nadhim Zahawi)
From this autumn, the levelling-up premium will provide early career teachers in maths, physics, chemistry and computing with a bonus of up to £3,000 tax-free annually if they teach disadvantaged children in disadvantaged schools. That is in addition to tax-free bursaries worth £24,000 and tax-free scholarships worth £26,000.
Claire Coutinho
Maths skills are one of the surest ways to ensure higher future earnings for students, so I welcome this package; it is the right thing to do to try to get high-quality teachers into disadvantaged schools. I also support the specialist maths schools agenda, which ensuring that aim in a different way. Will the Secretary of State update the House on its progress?
Nadhim Zahawi
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for the work that she does to promote maths to girls. I believe she was previously a maths captain—we have a lot to learn from her. We have three great specialist maths schools, with some of the best A-level results nationally. We are on track to have 10 regional maths schools by 2025, including one in Surrey.
Oral Answers to Questions
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(2 years, 2 months ago)
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Will Quince
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Our family hubs programme is being developed in 75 local authorities, over and above the 12 in which the programme is already being rolled out, bringing together services for children of all ages and responding to the needs of the whole family. At its core is the Start for Life offer, which includes support for perinatal mental health and breastfeeding, as well parenting programmes. On top of that, there is the £200 million expansion to the Supporting Families programme. I understand that the Secretary of State is visiting my hon. Friend’s constituency in the coming weeks.
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
Sir David Evennett (Bexleyheath and Crayford) (Con)
The Minister for Higher and Further Education (Michelle Donelan)
For the first time ever, the Office for Students is setting minimum thresholds for completion and for progression rates to graduate jobs. We are also consulting on stopping the uncontrolled growth of low-quality courses.
Claire Coutinho
The hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) suggested that it was an injustice to introduce minimum requirements for going to university, but does the Minister agree with me that the greater injustice is that one in five students feels that their course did not add any value to their career? Moreover, the reforms to interest rates will now mean that nobody will pay more than they borrow in real terms.
Michelle Donelan
My hon. Friend is absolutely right. From September 2023, we are reducing interest rates on student loans to the retail price index only. This, combined with the tuition fee freeze for over seven years, means that students can graduate with up to £11,500 less debt from the off.
Careers Guidance in Schools
Claire Coutinho Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Anthony Mangnall (Totnes) (Con)
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Tatton (Esther McVey), who has been an extraordinary champion in this area; the fact that so many of us are here today pays testament to that. I also wish to put on the record my support for the private Member’s Bill introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Mark Jenkinson) on education and careers guidance, which will be debated on Friday. I am particularly pleased that the Government’s “Skills for Jobs: Lifelong Learning for Opportunity and Growth” White Paper has seen a commitment to a national rolling-out of careers hubs, digital support, careers leader training and the enterprise adviser network, all of which complement the Gatsby benchmarks. I understand that Sir John Holman has been tasked with delivery. Can the Minister tell us where we are with progress on that?
As ever, there is much to be done and there is great regional disparity, not least within the south-west, and I am working to close that gap in south Devon. On my patch, a post-18 career fair will be held to invite year 12 and 13 students to meet local employers, working with Kingsbridge Academy, King Edward VI Community College, or KEVICC, Brixham College, Churston Ferrers and South Devon College, to name but a few. Those career hub events seek to promote the opportunities available in south Devon and to highlight the extraordinary variety of businesses, but most importantly to provide our students with an understanding of what is available to them. All too often, there is a perception that we have to move away from home to find the work we want to do. I want to be able to try and disprove that perception.
I want to make three quick points—I will sit down at three minutes. First, we need to start early, as my right hon. Friend said. Secondly, we need hands-on experience; people need to try and test different jobs. I started off my life as a waiter in Royal Hospital, as well as in The Queen’s Gallery, and then I went on to be a shepherd on the Isle of Mull. I went on to be a ship broker and then to work behind a bar. Now I have sadly failed and become a Member of Parliament. Such hands-on experience allows people to see what can be achieved. I am hoping to get money for the fisheries and seafood scheme to build such a school in Dartmouth at Noss on Dart to make sure people can get into the fishing sector.
Thirdly, we need to promote the local opportunities across the country, and part of the levelling-up agenda has to be about providing those jobs and those interests for people.
Claire Coutinho (East Surrey) (Con)
I want to make a quick point about parents and their importance in influencing their children’s career choices. What does my hon. Friend say about that?
Anthony Mangnall
That is very timely; I know how much of a champion my hon. Friend is for local schools, working with educators, parents and employers alike to make sure we can find the right opportunities. We have to engage all our communities together to make sure that those opportunities can be found.
In summary, we have to ensure that our children’s horizons are broadened, that the opportunities are made available and that they are made aware that we can provide the support and insight for them.