World Social Work Day

David Simmonds Excerpts

Thursday 18th March 2021 Westminster Hall

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered World Social Work Day 2021.

It is a privilege to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, as I move this motion in celebration of World Social Work Day and of Social Work Week.

In 1989, when the Children Act 1989 came into force, I was doing my work experience at the long-abolished Mid Glamorgan County Council, in the children’s services department. That was the first time in my life when I had an insight into the work of our qualified social workers, who help many of the most vulnerable in our society. For many of us in politics, it will have been through service in local government that we had the opportunity to see how their work can help to transform the lives of our constituents, often at their darkest moments.

Research across the UK indicates that even in those places where the most residents have some form of assistance provided through our social care system, fewer than one in five of the people we serve will ever, in the whole course of their life, come into contact with our care system. That is important, because unlike the work of the police service, our military, GPs and people who work in hospitals, most of our constituents will not come into day-to-day contact with what social workers do. That work is done with children at a difficult time in their lives, when they need professional intervention; adults with learning difficulties in particular who need support as they make their way in life; and people who are older, facing a period of frailty, who need to access the support of the state and for whom our social workers are often, genuinely, an emergency service.

Of course, we have to recognise that for a parent whose family is facing great difficulty, the knock on the door by a social worker is not a welcome moment in life. Far too often, there is a sense of fear and anxiety that it means the threat of their children being taken away, or of being held to account for what is going on in the privacy of their household. To people facing great difficulty in old age, social workers might be perceived as the gatekeepers telling them that they cannot access services, support and finance from the local authority, rather than as an aid to help. In the postbags that we Members of Parliament receive, that side of social work is often reflected.

When I consider my experiences in my time in local government, however, I remember the reprovision of a residential centre of adults with disabilities. The local authority and the team of social workers who knew those people—generally, adults in their 40s with Down’s syndrome—extremely well proposed a new way to give them independence, to provide them with support to live in their own homes, to access work and to travel independently. There was huge fear among the parents, many of whom had been told when their now adult children were very young that they would never grow up because of the limitations of the disease. They told me, “We are afraid that as a consequence of what is happening, our children will die.” I remember meeting some of those parents a year later, and they said, “I never realised that this young person I’ve been responsible for would be living independently, would have a job and their own front door, and would be travelling on the bus and the tube.” That was the crucial difference that good-quality social work had made to their lives. A professional approach, understanding what people can do and not what they cannot, and patient work with them brought about a transformational change in the circumstances facing those young people.

When we consider the huge growth in the numbers of children who are on child protection plans and are specifically referred to local authorities because of concerns, we can see the difference that good social work makes, especially if we look at the care system. The longer a child spends in our care system and the earlier they go into that system, the better their outcomes are—for example, children who are adopted at birth tend to have outcomes that are entirely in line with their peers. Where social work is not always able to make the difference is for those young people who may have spent a long time at home or in a chaotic family situation, where intervention comes late—perhaps in their teens—and where there is only a very short period to turn that situation around.

Again, we see the evidence that good social work can make a huge difference in the lives of children, young people, adults, and the elderly. For most of our constituents, the most frequent form of contact with social work is in old age, when there is the need to access services from a local authority, perhaps in preparation for discharge from hospital to ensure that a person is safe and able to return to their own home. For all these reasons, we can recognise that in our society today social work, while it is not as glamorous and it does not have a flashing blue light attached to it, is absolutely crucial to keeping our society together and providing support to people at their most vulnerable moment.

I put on the record my thanks to, and my pride in, the work of the social workers for whom I was responsible during my time as a lead member of Hillingdon Council. I also thank the British Association of Social Workers for the work that it does to raise the profile of social work and make sure that more people in our country gain an understanding of what it can do, in order to contribute to an informed debate, recognition of the importance of social work, and—in the context of parliamentary work—ensuring that, in concert with our NHS, we have a joined-up system that is properly resourced and able to fulfil the expectations that our residents have.

--- Later in debate ---

[David Simmonds]

I thank my hon Friend the Minister for focusing her speech very much on the people at the heart of what we are here to celebrate in our debate on World Social Work Day 2021. There is clearly a debate to be had about the complex social care system that we have in this country. We have heard from Members with direct personal experience. The hon. Member for Lewisham East (Janet Daby) spoke of her experience as a children and families social worker, the hon. Member for South Shields (Mrs Lewell-Buck) spoke of what she had seen in her community and in her career, and the hon. Member for Coatbridge, Chryston and Bellshill (Steven Bonnar) spoke of the aspirations he sees as deliverable through a more devolved model with greater local discretion.

There is an enormous challenge for social workers. As we recognise, on the one hand there is a sense of frustration at the bureaucracy that surrounds them in doing the job of helping families; on the other, there is huge criticism levelled at the Government should they seek to alleviate that bureaucracy. We therefore need to find a way to cut through when we consider the toxic trio—domestic abuse, mental ill health and substance misuse—that bring children into the care system. Some 63% of children in our care system are there because of neglect. Those are complex issues to tackle, so we need to ensure that there is proportionate regulation and guidance from Government, but that the social workers who know those families well—know their circumstances and their communities—can make decisions with them, for them, and sometimes without them, to pursue the best interests of the children and individuals at the heart of that.

I welcome the care review. Although around 3% of our population of 12 million children in the United Kingdom are in the care system, those children are the most vulnerable in our society, and, from the perspective of public services and the Government, the most expensive. On average, a high-needs placement to a local authority costs more than £130,000 a year per child. Although the picture, according to Ofsted, is of an improvement in the supply and quality of placements available for local authorities when they are making arrangements for children, the system, none the less, remains under significant pressure because children and frail elderly people form a much larger proportion of our population than they have in recent years.

Owing to that, we expect a proportional increase in the pressure on our social work services, and we need to respond. Over the years, numerous initiatives from central Government have been designed to achieve an improvement—not just for social workers, but in the outcomes for the people they work with. Quality Protects was the first that came to my attention, but there have since been many initiatives, under many Governments, of all parties, to improve the work done and the outcomes achieved for our most vulnerable children.

According to international comparisons, the UK has the best—the second best, on some measures—child protection system in the world. That is a system in which social workers—derided and often criticised in the press, and working in obscure areas—do a job that is genuinely world class and something we should be proud of. When I consider the Government’s investment in the What Works Centre for Children’s Social Care, I commend working directly with those who best-know families, adults, elderly people and children, and what they have done to bring about a transformation in outcomes—and how we can enable that more easily at national level. Social work, in particular for children, is the only area of local government spending that has risen in the last decade, as local authorities have chosen to strip spending in other areas to prioritise early intervention and child protection activities.

We go forward to ensure that our social care system—around half of which looks after adults of working age, not people who are frail and elderly—can work seamlessly with the NHS on issues such as hospital discharge and supporting people in their community, and, at the same time, is not ancillary to the acute and hospital sector, but part of the bigger picture effectively supporting people. The hon. Member for Leicester West (Liz Kendall) made the point that social workers are the key leads for those individuals, and that is the right way to see it.

On World Social Work Day, I hope that watching social workers, senior managers and people with an interest in the sector have noted the strong sense of cross-party good will and desire for higher recognition of the professional contribution that social workers make, as well as the desire to improve the working environment—not just physically, but the requirements and regulations people work under—and the ability to act in the way necessary to transform the lives of the most vulnerable people in our country.

I shall finish where I started. Today is an opportunity to put on record our thanks and praise for social workers, recognise their contribution and ensure that what we have heard feeds through to the spirit of the care review, as we look at ways to make this system, which is already extremely high performing by international standards, even better in the interests of our constituents.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered World Social Work Day 2021.

Covid Contracts: Judicial Review

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 24th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Edward Argar]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. I will not comment on specific cases because, as I mentioned at the beginning, some are still subject to actions before the courts and I do not want to cut across those legal processes. The broader point I would make is that I think people will understand that this Government and the unsung heroes of the pandemic—the civil servants and officials who have worked throughout it—pulled out all the stops to do what was necessary and essential to procure the PPE. If we look back 10 months or so, it was the most pressing issue in this country to ensure that our frontline workers got the protection they needed.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]]

When I reflect on my inbox from nearly a year ago, I remember that my constituents were expressing huge anxiety about access to personal protective equipment in nursing homes and medical establishments, so will my hon. Friend accept the thanks of my constituents for having acted so swiftly to ensure that the necessary essential equipment got where it needed to be? Does he share my frustration that that success is being overshadowed by the frankly dubious attempts to muck-rake in respect of the process that was undertaken?

[Edward Argar]

The equipment was procured, it was secured and it was delivered. It did what we would all have wished it to do: it went to the frontline to protect people and to ensure that hospitals and trusts did not run out of PPE at that crucial point in the first wave. My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight what I believe the British public would have wished to see us doing, which was focusing on getting the PPE to those who needed it as fast as we could in that crisis.

Covid-19 Update

David Simmonds Excerpts

Tuesday 9th February 2021 Commons Chamber

[Matt Hancock]

I am afraid I do not agree with the hon. Lady one bit. We write regularly to those who are shielding and we write to them individually, so I am not going to make a blanket announcement in the Chamber. We will communicate carefully and individually with people who are on the shielded patient list. It is too sensitive to play politics with.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con) [V]]

I commend my right hon. Friend’s decision to fund the local authorities of Harrow and Hillingdon, which serve my constituency, to reach out to people who may be reluctant to come forward and get their vaccine. In respect of those who are in our country with an uncertain immigration status, but for whom vaccination is vital for both humanitarian and medical reasons, will he consider a similar approach and fund local authorities, which know their communities best, to reach out to those people, to ensure that they are also part of this great British success story?

[Matt Hancock]

Yes. We are working with GPs, with community parts of the NHS and also with local authorities to do this. As my hon. Friend may have seen, the Home Office has stated that the most important thing is that we vaccinate everybody who is present here, whatever their status or paperwork.

Covid-19

David Simmonds Excerpts

Wednesday 18th November 2020 Commons Chamber

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

Thank you for your flexibility in managing the timetable, Madam Deputy Speaker. I have two points that I will try to make in two minutes. The first is for those constituents who are bearing the lockdown with a great deal of patience and fortitude but who have concerns about the policy approach. I urge Ministers to share the data we have as widely as possible. I understand that the quality-adjusted life year measure that is standard for medical treatments in the NHS is not directly relevant to public health, but the more we can explain and demonstrate the value of this lockdown in preserving our economy and people’s wellbeing so that we come out of the period in good shape, the more confidence the lockdown will command. We should treat that as an urgent task, because people bear these measures with patience and fortitude—I think when history looks back on this time we will regard them as proportionate—but none the less we need to ensure that they feel willing to comply with them.

Secondly, I pay a big tribute to all those in the children’s sector who have ensured that nurseries, schools and childcare settings have remained open so that key workers and—vitally—working parents can keep doing their jobs. However, a challenge I am conscious of that affects businesses such as Jungle Monkeyz and Jurassic Perk in my constituency and many others around the country is the fate of soft play centres and other venues for children. They are closed at the moment, and recognise that the market will be there for them when they seek to reopen, but they are concerned about cash flow and any impact on the jobs of the people they employ. Therefore, when Ministers look at the financial support provided to all kinds of businesses, may I ask them to recognise how the wellbeing of working parents and children is supported by those businesses’ activities and that they seek to ensure that an appropriate degree of priority is given to them in the financial measures available in local areas?

NHS Funding Bill

David Simmonds Excerpts

Legislative Grand Committee & 3rd reading: House of Commons & Legislative Grand Committee: House of Commons & Programme motion: House of Commons & 3rd reading & Programme motion
Tuesday 4th February 2020 Commons Chamber

[Jeremy Hunt]

The hon Gentleman is absolutely right. On both sides of the Chamber, we are totally committed to the NHS and totally committed to transforming mental health services, but I am afraid that young people are regularly turned away from CAMHS and told, “You are not ill enough yet. Come back when things get worse.” Why is that such a tragedy? Because half of all mental health conditions become established before the age of 14, and the way to reduce the pressure on the NHS is to intervene early. That is what does not happen.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

In support of what my right hon. Friend has said, I think that one of this Government’s great initiatives in respect of children’s mental health in the past decade has been the work done through the health and wellbeing boards. I know that this was strongly supported by him when he was Secretary of State and by other Ministers since. Every local authority, using its connections with the schools and general practitioners in its local area, has a plan that reflects local need. This has evolved over the years to change the commissioning priorities at local level, which is reflected in what is purchased from NHS providers to address local need. I offer as an example an online counselling service that has been introduced to serve my constituents. The feedback from young people is that it is tremendously more accessible than what was there previously, and it is a lot less expensive than the type of services previously being commissioned. That demonstrates the commitment we have on the Government Benches to addressing children’s mental health.

--- Later in debate ---

[Jeremy Hunt]

I agree with the hon. Lady. Maintenance is a big issue in many hospitals. A number of hospitals are still essentially prefab buildings that should have been torn down a long time ago, and there are others where maintenance can solve the problem. I think we have to attack all of that, and I welcome the fact that there is a real commitment from the Government to do so.

Finally, I want to talk about new clause 4, which relates to whether the Government are giving enough to the NHS to meet the current waiting time targets for elective care, A&E, cancer and so on. I welcome the Opposition’s focus on this matter, because the public absolutely expect us to get back to meeting those targets. It was an important step forward for the NHS that we did bring down waiting times, and I have often credited the previous Labour Government for that happening, as I hope the Labour party will credit this Government for the focus on safety and quality in the wake of Mid Staffs. However, as we focus on safety and quality, I would not want to lose the achievements that were made on waiting times, because it is fundamental to all patients that they do not have to wait too long for care. Indeed, waiting times themselves can be a matter of patient safety.

[David Simmonds]

My right hon. Friend mentioned targets and people getting access to care. The hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) referenced Pinn Medical Centre, which is in my constituency, and the impact on Northwick Park Hospital in his constituency. This is a really good example of when the issue is not with the total sum of funding but with how the NHS is spending it. If the system can afford £300 to pay for each A&E attendance, I am sure it can afford £70 for those patients to attend a walk-in centre instead. This is not about an arms race and who can spend the most, but about who can bring the most focus to spending the money in the way that benefits patients and our constituents the greatest.

[Jeremy Hunt]

My hon. Friend neatly makes the point that I was hoping to make next. I will elaborate on the brilliance of his insight and simply say that when we think about waiting times it is very important that it is not just a debate about money. I appreciate that the Bill is about money, and that is why amendments have been tabled about money, but I want to give the example of the annual cycle of winter crises that we seem to have in the NHS now. I looked up the figures and, over the past five years that I was doing the job, in the first year I gave the NHS £300 million to avoid a winter crisis; in the second year, £400 million; in the third year, £700 million; in the fourth year, £400 million; and in the fifth year, £400 million. In four of those five years, we still had a winter crisis. That is because in the end it is not about money as much as it is about capacity.

Oral Answers to Questions

David Simmonds Excerpts

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Dinenage]

My hon. Friend is right to draw attention to rural sparsity and the challenges facing rural communities. We are committed to undertake a review of relative needs and resources, and it will be a thorough evidence-based review of the costs facing all authorities, including how factors such as rurality, sparsity and other geographical features affect the cost of delivering services across the country and how to account for them in a robust manner.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

For the record, I declare my interest as the spouse of an NHS doctor. The Pinn Medical Centre in my constituency is due to close its walk-in service so that the Harrow CCG can save money, but the likely diversion of patients to local A&E services will end up costing the NHS more. Will the Minister join me in encouraging the CCG to consider the wider context of NHS budgets and to support the service while local NHS providers consider how to increase access to GP appointments in line with our manifesto commitments?

[Caroline Dinenage]

My hon. Friend is right to highlight the importance of access to primary and community services within Pinner. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will be happy to meet him to discuss the matter further, but we will support anything he is doing to assist his local services.

--- Later in debate ---

[Matt Hancock]

That is obviously an incredibly important issue. The shortages come from problems with factories outside the UK. We have been working hard on it through the autumn. I am advised that the shortages are starting to be mitigated and that production is back up and running, but we keep a close eye on it, because I understand how important it is.

[David Simmonds (Ruislip, Northwood and Pinner) (Con)]

T9. Will my hon. Friend commit to working with me to secure the long-term future of hospice services in any reorganisation of the Mount Vernon Hospital site in my constituency?

[The Minister for Care (Caroline Dinenage)]

We are very committed to hospice services, which is why an additional £25 million went into hospices last year. I am certainly happy to meet my hon. Friend to discuss the hospices in his area.