Asked by Lord Farmer To ask Her Majesty’s Government what
steps they are taking to ensure that local authorities put an
action plan in place for all children in need that will improve
their family relationships and resolve other difficulties
sufficiently for them to be stepped down from that status. The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education...Request free trial
Asked by
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To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking
to ensure that local authorities put an action plan in
place for all children in need that will improve their
family relationships and resolve other difficulties
sufficiently for them to be stepped down from that status.
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for
Education (Lord Nash) (Con)
My Lords, our statutory guidance, Working together to
safeguard children, is clear that, where a child is found
to be in need, support should be provided to address those
needs in order to improve their outcomes. Where the outcome
of the assessment is the continued involvement of local
authority children’s social care, the social worker and
their manager should agree a plan of action with other
professionals and discuss this with the child and their
family.
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(Con)
I thank my noble friend the Minister for his reply. At his
suggestion, I visited Feltham’s Reach Academy, where staff
are working with the local authority to develop a family
hub. Parents with children aged nought to 19 will get any
early help they need so that they can partner with the
school to help deliver outstanding pupil outcomes. This
could be transformational for children in need. What are
the Government doing to encourage the development of family
hubs?
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I am delighted that my noble friend visited Reach Academy
in Feltham. It is an outstanding example of the success of
the free schools programme, and I am pleased that it has
also been approved to open a second free school. I know
that my noble friend has done a great deal of excellent
work with the Centre for Social Justice on the concept of
family hubs. Obviously, the earlier we can help children
the better, and this is why we are encouraging so many
primary schools to open nursery schools, through the free
schools programme and otherwise. A number of local
authorities have introduced family hub-type models, and I
hope we will see more of them. However, ultimately it is up
to local authorities to decide the best local solution.
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The (CB)
Does the Minister agree that school exclusion can
exacerbate the difficult situation of children in need and
may put them into care? Will he look at whether the system
of continuing professional development for teachers can be
strengthened and streamlined so that teachers are better
able to manage such children and do not need to exclude
them?
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I entirely agree with the noble Earl that school exclusions
are to be avoided at all costs, if possible. Certainly,
permanent exclusions are counterproductive and even
temporary exclusions are often so, because they effectively
amount to the child bunking off for a day. They would be
much better off segregated in the school, doing something
which encouraged them to behave better in future. Most
teachers are very keen to avoid school exclusions. I have
just taken over responsibility for attendance and
exclusions and will certainly look at this in more detail.
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(LD)
My Lords, children with parents in prison are particularly
vulnerable and need much consideration. However, under the
incentives and privileges scheme, prisoners have to earn
the right to see their kids. Barnardo’s has been calling
for this to change and for a review of the scheme. It
should not be a privilege for parents to see their
children, but the right of a child to see their parents.
When will a review take place to change this unjust
situation? I declare an interest as a vice-president of
Barnardo’s.
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I will have to go away and look at this. I am certainly a
great believer in earned release schemes, where prisoners
earn the right to be released early on the basis that they
attend courses in prison. I was not aware of this and it is
rather off my brief, but I will go away and come back to
the noble Baroness on it.
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(Lab)
My Lords, the Local Government Association recently
highlighted a serious shortfall in local authority budgets
to appropriately fund services for children in need and
their families. Between 2010 and 2015, high-deprivation
local authorities had to endure cuts of 21%, while the
figure for low-deprivation authorities was 7%. Perhaps the
Minister can help noble Lords make sense of that. I hope
that he has been made aware of the research published last
year by Professor Paul Bywaters and colleagues at Coventry
University, which showed an association between the numbers
needing child protection and looked-after children’s
services and children living in local authorities with the
highest rates of child poverty. Will he now commit to
taking steps to ensure that the local authorities with the
greatest proportion of children in need receive the funding
necessary to ensure that children are not unnecessarily
drawn into the child protection and looked-after systems?
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I do not recognise what the noble Lord is saying. Child
protection and safeguarding spending by local authorities
increased by 13% between 2011-12 and 2015-16. It is clear
that local authorities are rightly prioritising this area.
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(Con)
My Lords, is the Minister aware of the charity Malachi,
which has had great success in the West Midlands and
Birmingham working with schools where broken families are
involved and children are in trouble as a result? It is now
in the process of some degree of franchising to other parts
of the country.
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I am not aware of this charity. I am very grateful to my
noble friend for drawing it to my attention and look
forward to hearing more about it from him.
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(LD)
My Lords, as regards the Government’s promise to accept
3,000 unaccompanied children within the next couple of
years, how does this link in with the care that our
children are getting?
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We intend that all children in this country are treated
equally. I hope that the children to whom the noble Lord
refers will be able to access all the services that would
apply to any other children.
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(Con)
My Lords, both the Question and my noble friend’s Answer
refer to the “need” of children. Could he kindly define the
Government’s definition of “need” for these purposes?
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I had better write to my noble friend on the definition of
“children in need” as it is quite long and I do not want to
take up noble Lords’ time. However, it should apply to all
children equally.
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(Lab)
My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord to go back to the answer
that he gave on local authority funding? He made the
assertion that it was clear that local authorities were
making this issue a priority as they were spending more
money on it. That may or may not be true, but what is
important is how many children they are having to spend the
money on. Can he tell the House what the increase was in
numbers of children in care or needing local authority
support over that period?
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The noble Baroness raises a very good point. The number of
children in need during that period remained fairly
constant. We are doing a great deal of work reforming
social care to try to ensure that the money is better
spent.
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(Lab)
My Lords, in her recent report on vulnerable children the
Children’s Commissioner drew attention to the role of child
poverty in that vulnerability. What are the Government
doing to reduce child poverty—and will the Minister please
not simply say “moving families into paid work”, because we
know that that is not necessarily a route out of poverty
for low-income families?
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We are certainly very focused on social mobility; I always
find the definition of child poverty or of poverty in general
quite difficult, because if you define it as being below a
certain barrier, there will always be people below it.
However, we are determined to improve social mobility—it is
what drives all our educational reforms.
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