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Children and Families

My Lords, I join other noble Lords in congratulating the noble Baroness, Lady Massey, on obtaining this important and timely debate and pay tribute to her for her chairmanship of the Children Group, which is recognised by the large number of people from outside organisations who make it their business to attend, knowing that there will be a lively, challenging, interesting and relevant meeting under her chairmanship. I also join in the words of my noble friend Lady Warnock and repeat the plea that I have made many times in this House that every child should receive a speech and language therapy assessment before beginning primary school, to enable them to engage with that process. I say that this debate is timely because we are about to embark on a legislative marathon, including the Coroners and Justice Bill, the Welfare Reform Bill, the Policing and Crime Bill, the Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill and the Equality Bill, all of which contain clauses relevant to children. Therefore, it is very timely to be reminded of their needs and problems as we approach that process. I want to focus on one aspect only—children in custody—and take as my text the excellent joint report of Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Prisons and the Youth Justice Board entitled Children and Young People in Custody 2006-2008, which was published recently. I shall cite two passages from it, one from the text and one from the conclusions, because I could not put what is said better and they are relevant for the House. Talking about the whole survey, the report states: ""The results … show, in general, a steady improvement in terms of young people's experience of the custodial environment"—" which is to be welcomed— ""But there is less encouraging news in relation to what the effect on them will be. Ease of contact with family and friends had deteriorated both for young men and young women … only a third of them said that it was easy for their families to visit, and in some establishments this figure was as low as a quarter (for young men) or 13% (for young women). Over a quarter of young women and nearly one in five young men said they had no visits at all. This must reflect the distance from home of some young people. In some establishments, a significant proportion also said they had problems contacting their families by telephone or mail.""There had also been deterioration, for young men, in some other important resettlement areas. Fewer young men said they could see their training plan, or had been contacted by a youth offending team or social worker or probation officer while in custody. There was still only a minority of young men—around four out of 10—who believed that they had done anything in custody that would help them not to offend again; though this rose to nearly eight out of 10 among sentenced young people in the one open unit (which has now been closed)"." In conclusion, the report states: ""There are some key messages … from these surveys. First, there is considerable variation in young people’s experiences and opportunities between different establishments … there are also variations which are not inexplicable … where culture, management or history seem to play a part. It also remains troubling that overall so many young people have felt unsafe … the experience ""of black and minority ethnic young men remains significantly more negative … Third, and most importantly, the experience of custody is only a part of these young lives, and it must be of concern that links with families and, for young men, with support services outside prison, seem to have loosened"." Those are serious and worrying words. They reflect something that I have been saying now for more than 10 years: until and unless someone, some person, is responsible and accountable for consistent direction of what happens to children in custody, we will continue to have uneven performance. We will continue to have the ridiculous situation that incoming governors and directors of establishments are not required to carry on from where their predecessor left off but can do what they like in relation to the targets and performance indicators that they have been given. As has been mentioned, there is a disconnect between what happens in young offender establishments, run by the Prison Service, secure training centres, which are run by private companies on contract to the Youth Justice Board, local authority secure homes, some of which are run by local authorities and some by the private sector. In this context, I deplore, as I have many times in this House, the abolition of the Commission for Social Care Inspection, which focused entirely on issues such as safeguarding, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Leicester just mentioned. Until and unless something is done to improve the overall direction of what happens, we will still go on having to read this depressing catalogue of avoidable failure, which is damaging the young people whose interests all of us in this nation must have at heart. I beg the Government to do something serious to overcome this deficiency.