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Children and Families

My Lords, we are in the debt of my erstwhile mentor, my noble friend Lady Massey of Darwen, for giving us this opportunity to share such a wide expression of views on this general subject. I am delighted to offer mine in the midst of expertise of a rare order, and I stand as a general practitioner in the midst of consultants. As a church minister, my daily work is to visit families in their homes, to climb the stairs of those inner-city dwellings and to sit and eat humble fare sometimes with such families. I allow my mind to see the two little children in this small one or two-bedroomed accommodation when they have grown up and their home will be bursting at the seams. I sometimes hear that a pregnancy will make it likely that there will be three children before very long. I try to deal imaginatively with some of the problems that ensue. For example, I deal with inner-city schools which make provision for people who come from these sorts of homes. I am the minister of a flourishing church with more than 400 members. We have a large number of families from many ethnic groups. My only qualification for contributing to a debate like this is that I know and I visit those families. They matter to me and, through the way we organise our church, we try to offer safe space for children to have activities that enhance their well-being. I hope that it will not be thought to be a little tendentious or pedantic on my part to qualify the wording of the Motion before us. Although my awareness of child-centred government policy began with the Children Act 1989 and therefore goes well beyond the lifetime of this party’s Administration, I want to congratulate the Government on much that has happened. Rather than call attention to the policies on, ""the well-being of children and families"," I shall consider making provision for such well-being or to offer a legislative framework to enhance the well-being of children. Governments of course cannot and do not do it. It is those of us who live in communities and respond at ground level to the opportunities that legislative frameworks and systems of care offer who have to turn the good thinking, the lofty thinking, and the idealism of Governments into practice. I am full of admiration for the children and young people whom I see day by day and week by week. I see the noble Lord, Lord Stewartby, almost in his place. His family trust helps us to achieve real funding for an effort in the borough of Haringey—it is worth dwelling on the fact that it is Haringey—where children are encouraged to play, to develop cultural ways of behaviour, to learn about each other’s cultures through drama, and to enact responses to the burning issues of the day on the street. A young man, a member of my church—I have known him since he was 10 and he is 23 now—is funded by that trust. He organises workshops that look, for example, at substance abuse, the carrying of knives, gang activities on the streets, and so on. It is a brilliant piece of work. Another young man—a big boy—was passing by when a gang with baseball bats and knives were about to leave yet another victim on our streets. He simply went in and knocked a few heads together and knocked a few people out of the way, and they ran like scared rabbits. He will be presented, in church, at a suitable time, with one of the top awards that our Boys’ Brigade unit has to offer. He is about to undertake his A-levels. There is another young man, completing his degree—he was 21 last Sunday—who is the only male teacher in our Sunday school. Incidentally, I notice that there are six male participants in a debating list of 23 today, and that those organising this debate have bunched them together for solidarity, which I find very encouraging. So thank you very much. My admiration is unbounded for children and young people, and for families who courageously try to bring up their children with dignity, often in difficult and constraining circumstances, turning them out so well and wanting them to become responsible citizens. Because they arrived here from other places, these families often do not have many of the benefits they aspire to for their children. It really is imaginative and brilliant. We were represented by one of my colleagues earlier this week at a faith forum in the borough of Islington. Members of faith communities advised social workers, doctors, nurses, those concerned with housing policy and its implementation, and people from the voluntary sector and the police, about how those who have faith—or how the values that come from faith—impact on some of the social problems that present. To have an opportunity for the voluntary sector and the sector of faith to have practical interaction with the providers of the services which legislation in this area makes possible seems to me to be very positive indeed.