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Children's Plan

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on securing this debate, which is, after all, about planning for the future well-being of the country. I support wholeheartedly her remarks about implementation and incremental change. The DCSF has produced what is in many respects an effective analysis of the challenges faced by children, carers, parents and educators. It represents moves in the right direction in developing a strategy for helping our children and young people to enjoy a happy, secure and emotionally and educationally rewarding childhood. I should like to comment on three main points. The plan is rightly wide-ranging and ambitious but, in spite of appearing to be all-inclusive, it inevitably has gaps. First, it is quite right that the Children’s Plan recognises that poverty blights the present and future lives of too many children and that changing that situation is essential. The need to continue to fight to reduce the number of children living in poverty is acknowledged as a key motivation for creating and implementing the plan. However, it is not only poverty that needs to be tackled. The plan says: "““Particular groups, such as disabled children and those from black and minority ethnic groups, are especially likely to live in poverty””." That is true, but it is also no accident. There is a set of complex reasons why that is the case, but racism and discrimination are hugely significant. It is not only the direct impact of discrimination on children that needs to be addressed. The plan states that in relation to further education: "““The equality and diversity of the workforce is at the heart of the strategy””." What are the mechanisms that will deliver on equality and diversity in FE—and, for that matter, elsewhere in the education system? We have struggled with that issue for decades and still not managed to achieve either real diversity or equality across many of the professions involved with working with children and young people. Race, disability and gender inequality blight people's lives too, and as a society, we have yet to identify the discourse that will enable us to discuss those openly and honestly alongside the issue of social deprivation. I echo the noble Baroness, Lady Howells of St Davids: my concern is that such subjects—racism and other forms of discrimination—when not explicitly raised may be submerged and therefore not adequately addressed or factored in as issues that shape the experiences, attitudes and life chances of children and young people. Secondly, despite the substantial work that museums, libraries, galleries and the performing and visual arts do with children and young people in all kinds of settings, I was disappointed to note that the only specific mention of the Department for Culture, Media and Sport that I could see in the plan related to play facilities. I should have liked to have seen the arts and culture entitlement for children and young people strengthened in the plan for a number of reasons. It can help children articulate difficult emotions and painful experiences in a safe way. It contributes to building self-esteem and a sense of self-worth. It can encourage teamwork and be the inspiration to achieve individual excellence. A wide range of transferable skills can be learnt that can lead to jobs in the cultural sector and outside it. Children and young people relish the opportunity to engage their imagination and creativity; they actually enjoy doing it. Some research has indicated that engagement with high-quality creative work can improve performance in both other areas of academic work, including literacy and numeracy, and behaviour and attitude in school. Clearly, the Government see the potential value of using the arts and culture in a variety of settings, and have invested substantial funds in the area. For example, the Find Your Talent scheme builds on the strengths and successes of the Creative Partnerships programme. Creative Partnerships enabled high-quality participation in arts projects in schools in some of the most deprived areas in the country. Related to this subject, the Care Matters action plan describes a pilot scheme on social pedagogy. That methodological framework, it is suggested, "““provides a theoretical and practical framework for understanding children’s upbringing. It has a particular focus on building relationships through practical engagement with children and young people using skills such as art and music or outdoor activities. It provides the foundation for training those working with children in many other European countries. In a residential care setting, it brings a particular expertise in working with groups and using the group as a support””." I welcome that focus on trying to mitigate the negative impact on children and young people of being involved in the care system by injecting a fresh perspective on the role and remit of social workers. I look forward to seeing the results of the pilot scheme, and I will be interested to see whether there are other contexts in which it may be used to beneficial effect in addition to residential children's homes. The third gap that I point to briefly concerns refugee children. I am grateful to the Children's Society for a briefing on some of the issues raised by that omission. Those young people come under the jurisdiction of the Home Office, which immediately sets them apart as not our children but ““others””. It stigmatises them and identifies them as a problem. We need to safeguard those children as much as we would wish our own children to be safeguarded, because they are at their most vulnerable and disfranchised when they are locked into that system. We need to ensure that they are safeguarded and cared for; not treated as though they were actual or potential criminals. In summary, I am broadly in favour of the strategies laid out in the plan. Indeed, in some respects, it is hard to argue against many of the provisions and the underlying ethos. Who does not want our children to be happy and to have good lives? However, it poses a number of big challenges that it perhaps does not address wholeheartedly. For one, I struggle to see the coherence and consistency between stigmatising young people as thugs to be hounded and harassed in their homes to give them a taste of their own medicine, which I believe the Home Secretary intends to say today or has said, and some of the ethos and the feelings that are outlined in the various plans that we have been reading. Related to that, how do we bring together all these different components—the action plans, policies and strategies—that continue to emerge? How will we put together Every Child Matters, care for kids, Care Matters, the Children’s Plan and the forthcoming youth crime action plan to make a coherent whole, as well as integrating the rights and entitlements of refugee children to mental and physical well-being and security? Bringing all these areas together must surely be crucial to ensuring the effectiveness of the project overall. It is also absolutely essential to examine, to understand and to mitigate the impact of racism and all forms of discriminatory attitudes, practices and behaviours if we are really to get to grips with the problems that stalk some of the most vulnerable and disenfranchised young people in this society.