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Children's Plan

My Lords, I join those who have congratulated the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on obtaining this important debate. I also pay tribute to her indefatigable chairmanship of the All-Party Group on Children. She arranges for a remarkable series of subjects to be discussed. They are all relevant and pertinent, and all meetings are chaired with a splendid lightness, as well as seriousness, which is a model of its kind. Like my noble friend Lord Listowel, I pay tribute to the Minister, not least for the courteous and speedy way that he has commented on and responded to all the various points made during proceedings on the recent Children and Young Persons Bill. It is a model of how it might happen and I wish that some of the Minister’s colleagues would learn from him. That remark is, perhaps, not appropriate. The noble Baroness said in her speech that she was two and three-quarters in favour of the plan. I join her in that. There are tremendous things in the plan as far as intentions are concerned. Like the noble Baroness, it is the implementation that concerns me most. Obviously, the group of children who concern me most are those who end up in the hands of the criminal justice system, not least those in custody. I draw attention to four particular aspects, all of which appear in the plan, and all of which are currently being picked up by good practice somewhere in the system, but none of which are being turned into common practice everywhere. If there is a theme in the implementation of this plan, I hope that it is one of picking up good practice—because all over the place there is good practice by the devoted practitioners to whom attention has already been drawn—and turning it into common practice, from which all can benefit. The ““all”” is the children of this country and there is no more important group to which we owe a duty of care. I will refer to the four aspects by the paragraphs in the plan and speak to each in the order in which they appear, not the order of priority. I pick up the first in paragraph 3.61, which says: "““The pilot is aimed at improving ongoing assessment and tracking by teachers, with an offer of one-to-one tuition for pupils””." It is remarkable, going into young offender institutions and looking at the education achievement or non-achievement of these people, that many of them have dropped out of school and, when you talk to them, are unsure whether the reason was boredom before drugs, or drugs before boredom. The word ““boredom”” worries me because it suggests that the teachers are not engaging them. You do not engage them by repeating the blackboard-type instruction from which they have walked away. There is, in Feltham, a remarkable piece of work called the Volunteer Supported Education Scheme, which began in 1992 and has been praised consistently by both prison and education inspectors ever since. The volunteers go in, one-to-one, to these young offenders and achieve remarkable results. For the life of me, I cannot understand why that has not been picked up in every young offender institution in the country. It works, it is cheap and it involves the local community in looking after their own. I have written to Ministers about this; I have had one reply from the noble Lord, Lord Adonis, but not from any of the others. If there is to be a serious attempt by the new consortium of justice and education working together, this seems to be just the sort of project that they ought to be picking up and running with. Secondly, I come to the problem of communication skills. The failure and inability to communicate is one of the scourges of the 21st century. Children simply cannot do it. In this House I have already drawn attention to this problem, and to a trial funded by the Helen Hamlyn Trust, where speech and language therapists were put into young offender establishments, and which had a remarkable effect. The assessments produced by those speech and language therapists highlighted problems that could be picked up by healthcare, education and behavioural discipline staff. Indeed, one of the hard-bitten disciplinary staff told me that they had been damaging young children in there until they were told that there was another way by the speech and language therapist. The trial finished in 2005, since when there have been three years of inertia. I am glad that John Bercow MP is now conducting an inquiry, and that the work of that trial is being included. I hope he will come out with confirmation of the fact that you find, in young offender establishments, children aged 15 and upwards who are unable to communicate with each other, and tend to conduct relationships with the fist rather than the mouth because they know no other way. Had those children been assessed before they went to primary school, their communication difficulties could have been alerted and resolved, enabling them to communicate with their teachers, and possibly then avoiding their ultimately opting out of school and becoming the truants that cause the problem. Thirdly, I draw attention to paragraph 3.133, which talks about the achievements of gifted and talented learners. Unsurprisingly, in many young offender establishments you find some very gifted young people who have turned to crime out of frustration because nobody has picked up their talents and run with them. For the past 10 years, Gabbitas has been running a programme called ““Tomorrow’s Achievers””. The idea is to identify the talented young and give them master classes that will enable them to maximise their talents. That was put to the Prison Service in 1997, since when absolutely nothing has happened. We are not talking about huge numbers, but if the Prison Service is not prepared to look at the talented and do something for them, that says to me that it is not looking at all the young people in its hands and all their needs and possibilities. This would cost the Government nothing, and it is an example of good practice that needs to be picked up. Finally, I come to paragraph 6.68, which says: "““The new cross-government responsibilities for youth justice present an opportunity to look at how we might strengthen the approach we are taking to offending””." I agree. One of the biggest bars to any form of progress with young people at the moment is the institutionalisation conducted in the young offender establishments up and down the country that do not do the job as effectively as possible. One of the reasons for that is that far too many people are being moved around from place to place, from instructor to instructor, from mentor to mentor, from someone who could be a guide to them to another guide. There is an opportunity in the pipeline to change all that, by picking up the ideas that have come from an organisation called East Potential in the East End of London, which suggests that a ring could be drawn around an area with about a one-hour radius from the centre, and all children who become involved in the criminal justice system within that radius should all be based on an establishment that would include within its perimeter a foyer, a place for homeless youngsters; a high-level security centre for the small few; and the facilities—the classrooms, the drug treatment centres, the workshops and other places for activity—related to that local area. The ownership of what went on with people in an area would therefore be delegated to the people in that area, which would provide a chance for consistency and continuity so that relationships between the damaged young, the young who are turning down the crime road, could be consistently looked after. They would get to know the people and could build up a relationship that might be the vital thing that kept them on the right road. That is a splendid development because it has come up from below, from the housing associations in the East End. It has been supported by industries that can see the opportunity for training people to be employed by them. It has come from those involved in education and in drug treatment, who can see that there is continuity in the plan. It has come from social workers, who feel that it is another way of getting over the problems of inconsistency of the treatment of people in care. Here is an opportunity for the new consortium to pick up and pilot something that is designed to eliminate the problems that are created by the current situation. As I said, I am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, for introducing this debate, because it is an opportunity to put before your Lordships the marvellous work behind the things I have talked about, with the hope that they will be picked up and run with.