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Children

My Lords, like other noble Lords, I am most grateful to my noble friend Lord Listowel for securing this opportunity for the debate. We all applaud his terrier-like tenacity in everything that he does on behalf of children. We would also all wish to applaud the improvements that have been achieved since the inspectors last reported in 2002. To mention just one, clearly far greater attention is at last being paid to obtaining the views of children and young people—not least when arrangements are made which will directly affect their lives and, in some cases, safety. During a period of almost constant change in the working practices of all those involved in the vital job of safeguarding children, such progress has been a great success. However, as the inspectors made plain, there are a number of areas where concerns remain, and those need to be addressed urgently. For example, the huge variation in the degree of priority given to the safeguarding of children remains unsatisfactory. One illustration is that, although virtually all our 43 police forces have clear child protection and guidance procedures, child protection itself is not a priority in 18—or 41 per cent of—police authorities. Another example is the wide variation of threshold applied by local authorities and other involved organisations in deciding—indeed, even in recognising—when action is necessary. The inspectors point to staff recruitment problems and to the wide variations in the training provided even on how to recognise signs of abuse or neglect. Yet, if the safeguarding aims of the 2004 Act are to be achieved, surely it is vital for the agreed protocols to be set at a national, rather than local, level. The concept of ““safeguarding”” was very well defined by Sir William Utting as,"““taking proactive steps to keep children safe””." As the inspectors remind us, the 2004 Act imposed on agencies a duty to safeguard and promote their welfare. So the inspectors are surely right to be concerned about the need to achieve the right balance between universal and other preventive services. Clearly a huge financial and staff cost is involved in the reorganisation and, above all, the satisfactory integration and co-operation between the different levels of required provision for children already at risk. For that reason, I am particularly concerned to know whether there will still be sufficient resources for continued expansion of the all-important pre-preventive action, such as the old Sure Start. Concern about that has already been expressed in the Education and Skills Select Committee’s ninth report. Significant changes already made to Sure Start might well undermine important preventive work that has been going on with deprived, although not yet fully at risk, families. We should surely be striving to expand that kind of work, the essence of which is action involving, and listening to, parents, the local community and voluntary organisations. While I am on that subject, given the shortage of specialist trained staff, why are the Government not giving financial support to voluntary organisations such as Learning Through Action, which runs valuable ““keeping safe”” interactive workshops in schools? Apparently, it has been turned down by the DfES because what it does is non-statutory, and those distributing the lottery funds have turned it down because they do not fund statutory work. Something has gone a little wrong there. Preventive action must be the best hope of lessening the huge cost to the state, let alone the wastage of talent of far too many lives which end up within the penal system. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that my concerns are unfounded. I now want to say a word about the importance of extra support for looked-after children and young people, whether they are in the care of local authorities, in secure children’s homes, secure training centres or young offender institutions, and especially when they are placed outside their own home area. Along with many of your Lordships, to say nothing of the United Nations, I start from the premise that prison is not the place for these vulnerable young people. The fact that 29 such young people, including two this year—one even since your Lordships’ House last met—have committed suicide since 1990 should emphasise that conclusion. Sadly, the number of these often very disturbed children in YOIs, many with a history of self-harming, increased from 3,130 last year to 3,423 now. Those figures include girls. That is an increase of 9 per cent, despite the fact that the Youth Justice Board set itself a target of a 10 per cent reduction over the same period. Frankly, this whole situation is becoming a disgrace. The Minister can hardly be happy with it, not least as reoffending by young prisoners is apparently almost at the 90 per cent level. So what are the Government’s plans for creating appropriate specialist institutions for dealing with the, sadly, growing number of vulnerable children needing secure, certainly, and far more specialist and individualised education, training and care than prison can possibly provide them with? I turn now to other groups of children who are being looked after. I find very disturbing the apparent assumption that in some areas, once committed to the care of the authorities, the child will, by definition, be safe. How I wish it was so. The children themselves rightly identify a wide range of risks to their safety, which make them more vulnerable than if they lived at home. Seemingly, a wide range of individuals and organisations used by councils to provide ““care”” of this kind have not in the past been covered by regulation. Perhaps the Minister can tell the House what plans there are in this regard for the future. The report also rightly emphasises the specific extra need for children in care to have contact with reliable and trusted adults. As paragraph 5.23 points out, reliable adults are important,"““especially for children in out of area placements in foster care, children’s homes or residential special schools””." So it is particularly sad to see that these children often have infrequent contact, even with a social worker from their placing council. Indeed, in 2003, only half the councils had even allocated all their looked-after children to a social worker. Still more disturbing, we are told that social services often fail to arrange for a looked-after child who is not in touch with his family to have an independent visitor. The inspector’s report recommends that, subject to the individual child’s wishes, local authorities should consider providing that. Surely local authorities should do more than just consider such action. A young person from a deprived background, out of touch with his family, badly needs someone reliable to take his side—someone who can be safely confided in and preferably, over time, become a friend. I can remember speaking on this very point some years ago in your Lordships’ House. This is exactly the kind of role that suitably trained volunteers, such as those working with Sure Start, could take on. I hope that the Minister will give some reassurance on that point.