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Children and Families

My Lords, this debate today covers a huge range of issues, all of them important to the well-being of our society, and so I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Massey of Darwen, and express my admiration of her for yet again securing a debate on these essential issues. I too came close to being dangerously incompetent in domestic science, although my husband probably thinks I still am. In the short time I have, I will focus on just a couple of issues; first, the increasing perception that our children are less fulfilled and happy than they once were, and, secondly, the threat to family life in all its forms. I do not believe it is too controversial to suggest that the two are closely linked. It was more than two years ago, in February 2007, that UNICEF—I declare an interest as a trustee of UNICEF UK—produced its damning report on the state of childhood in Britain. The findings were profoundly worrying, and although most noble Lords will be familiar with them, the main headline deserves to be highlighted. The UK was rated at the bottom of the table overall for children’s well-being, scoring the lowest of the 21 industrialised countries studied—not near the bottom, but at the very bottom. Even after two years I think that conclusion has lost none of its power to shock. The significance of the UNICEF report was that it found that neither national wealth nor household wealth in the countries concerned was the determining factor in whether children were happy. By definition, the countries studied were developed and affluent but there was still evidence of poverty in the quality of the childhood experience. A detailed look at the report shows that family breakdown is more prevalent in the UK, with fewer children living with both parents than in any other country except the United States. But the most shocking findings were those on children’s behaviour, with the UK leading the tables on the percentage of young people indulging in "risk" behaviour such as drunkenness and under-age sex. Just a few months after the UNICEF report, the Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green, warned of a ""crisis at the heart of our society"." Sadly, this grim picture has been reinforced again in the recent report compiled last month by the University of York for the Child Poverty Action Group. Although it shows the UK placed slightly higher than in the previous UNICEF study, it is only slightly better, at 24th out of 29 countries. Germany comes out in eighth place, with Scandinavian countries at the top of the table. Overall, it looks depressingly like the scoreboard of the Eurovision Song Contest over recent years. Let us hope we have a better result in that this weekend, but I fear that solving the complex problems of childhood will be beyond even the ability of my noble friend Lord Lloyd-Webber. I acknowledge that, following the UNICEF report, the Government published the Children's Plan and the Department for Children, Schools and Families was born. Of course, change does not happen overnight, but it seems as if we keep debating the same issues, passing more pieces of legislation and getting the same outcomes. One area where this is most obvious is children in care, the system now known in local government by the awful title of "corporate parenting". We learnt last month that the attainment gap for looked-after children has widened. As Natasha Finlayson, the chief executive of the Who Cares? Trust said: ""Achieving a level of good GCSE grades is the absolute minimum to ensure children get access to employment and a good start in life. It is a major concern that progress is so slow and the gap between those in care and not in care is widening"." But it does not have to be that way. During our deliberations on the Children and Young Persons Bill and in previous debates I drew attention to Barnet Council, where each child in the care of the council has been twinned with an employee of the council. They do not meet them or mentor them but they are that "pushy" parent that all children need, asking the awkward questions. The result is a dramatic improvement in educational achievements. That does not require money or an all singing and dancing piece of legislation; it is simply something that works. Similarly, we are now in the middle of a debate on whether more children should be taken into care or whether we should spend more time and resources on early intervention. Again in Kent—I make no apologies for referring to this once more—the authorities spend a good deal of their precious resources on working with families and the extended family to try to reach a solution which keeps the family together. Only when that has failed do they take a child into care, and then move swiftly to adoption so that a child receives the stability and consistency that is so vital to the well-being of which the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, spoke—and it saves money. So my question to the Minister is, what happens to best practice? Rather than always trying to reinvent the wheel, why do we not look at what is working across our councils and with some of our wonderful charities such as Save the Family, which every week battle to rescue broken families before they disintegrate? Why do we always have to have shiny plans and countless new pieces of legislation? In conclusion, alongside providing our children with the best possible education with rigorous standards, we must support families and help them to stay together wherever possible. Unless we address the root cause of family breakdown, or in many cases the absence of a family structure at all, I fear that the Government's well-intentioned policies will fail to deliver the quality of life and opportunities that so many of our children and young people deserve.