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Looked-after Children

I should like to start by praising the work of Select Committees, although perhaps that is slightly self-indulgent, as I am a member of the Children, Schools and Families Committee. The hon. Member for Huddersfield (Mr. Sheerman), who chairs the Committee, touched on the subject slightly, but did not go into too much detail in order to spare his blushes. Recently, a national newspaper looked at the work of Select Committees and praised three in particular, including the Education and Skills Committee, now the Children, Schools and Families Committee, and its Chairman. That highlighted the very effective work that Select Committees, and three of them in particular, have done in recent years. The Select Committee is a good model; it has worked very well since the big expansion of Select Committees in 1979. There has been talk of reforming the way in which this place works to make the job of scrutinising the Executive more effective. Hopefully the expansion of the role and powers of Select Committees is one of the measures that will be taken in the next year or so. It will mean that 30 years on from the '79 expansion and experiment, there will be a further expansion of the work of Select Committees. The Select Committee report that we are considering is a good example of what Select Committees can do so well. A number of hon. Members referred to the fact that in a normal family situation—whatever "normal" is—children do not, at the age of 16, 18 or 21, leave and never again have contact with their siblings, parents, uncles and so on. In fact, it is the norm for people to get a lot of support from their family system until they are well into their 20s, and even later. A lot of the latest stories are of children going away to university, getting jobs, getting their own place, and ending up back in the family home in their early 30s. I am a parent of three children, the eldest of whom is 24. She lives close by, but she is often not in her flat but at home, emptying the contents of my fridge, drinking my drink, watching my TV and so forth. Of course, we are always delighted to see our adult children; we are pleased that they come back to see us. That ongoing support is the norm. When considering the model for that strange creature, the corporate parent—the state as parent—we should very much bear in mind what the model is for a normal family. The state as parent takes on responsibility for children who come into care because they come from very abnormal family backgrounds. Some 62 per cent. of children in care have been taken into care because of direct neglect and abuse by their family. A large percentage of the other 38 per cent. of children come into care because of family dysfunction, severe illness or death in the family. They come into care because they come from the opposite of a "normal" family and family background. They have already had a traumatic experience in their life. Whether they come into care at four or 14, they have already had a difficult upbringing. If the state as parent is to discharge its parental duties to looked-after children, it has to run twice as fast simply to stand still. It has a moral duty to discharge those responsibilities to the best effect, and there is common, human sense in its seeking to do so. However, if we had to make a hard-nosed case to the Treasury, we could cite the pure economic sense behind it, too. The cost of not helping looked-after children—the cost of social breakdown, the cost of substance abuse, the cost of mental illness, the cost of the fact that half of prisoners under 25 years old and up to one third of prisoners of all ages have been in care, and the cost of picking up the pieces from that failure—is far greater than the cost of investing in and looking after them properly in the first place. There is an obvious moral case for discharging that duty properly, but one can make a hard-nosed economic case in Treasury terms, too. I am sure that the Minister, in her response to the debate, will say that much progress has been made. Indeed, the Government, in their published response to the Committee's report, agree with most of its findings and point out how they are making progress towards its objectives. They deserve praise for the progress that has been made, but we have an awful long way to go if we are to emulate what the Committee saw as the best systems in other areas. Denmark is the one that everybody has mentioned. The point at which one leaves care has been exhaustively discussed, so I shall not go into it, but is it 16 years old, 18, 21 or 25? It was quite shocking to hear one social worker who came to talk to the Committee two Mondays ago say that, in her authority, there was pressure not to go into any permanent arrangements or accommodation arrangements with 15-year-olds, because they are only a few months away from no longer being the authority's responsibility. The idea that 15 to 16-year-olds are already being cast adrift is outrageous. There are welcome moves to extend the leaving age, but surely it should be extended beyond 17 or 18 years old. Accommodation provision for young adults of 16, 17 and 18 years old is also an issue. The Government, in their response, talk about bed and breakfast being provided for somebody in that situation, and that is not suitable. Councils are now being told that they should give looked-after children priority for housing, but we keep being told that they should give many other groups priority, so we need to look at the issue of joined-up government thinking, because Government policy for the past 12 years has been not to allow council house building at all. Just over 4,000 council houses have been built in 12 years, and that is meaningless. The housing associations that were supposed to fill the gap have, on average, built 22,000 units of social housing per year for 12 years, when the Government's own Barker report said that 46,000 to 50,000 units were needed just to stand still—without even reducing the waiting list. Furthermore, the waiting list for social housing in general and council housing in particular has doubled nationally: it has gone up from 1 million in 1997 to almost 2 million now. How do councils give priority to people leaving the armed forces or looked-after children who are moving into independent accommodation? How do they give priority when their supply of social housing is totally inadequate to meet the needs of all groups—families, people with children and single mothers. Whatever the category, the massive shortage of social housing and council housing cannot meet those needs. I can think of examples in my constituency. I presented GCSE awards at a school a few years ago, and one girl won prizes for her fantastic GCSE artwork. Indeed, one of her paintings hangs in my office here in Westminster now. She succeeded at school despite a very difficult family background and having been in care, but at 16 years old she was about to leave school, start college and move into a council flat in one of the least desirable areas of Chesterfield. How would that 16-year-old girl get on as a young, single person, living on whatever benefits were provided, on her own, while trying to pursue her education, without the normal family support that we would expect for our children? We still have a long way to go if we are to move beyond that situation. I was a teacher for 22 years, so education is dear to my heart. When I was head of year and responsible for children's pastoral care, I noticed that some children would turn up in school, be around for a couple of months and then move on; they just kept moving on from their foster care placements, or whatever arrangements had been made. Years later, we heard about exactly the same thing from the children who gave evidence to the inquiry—about children who were constantly in a state of flux and moving from one place to another. The situation might be due to the difficulties in recruiting enough foster parents. That issue needs tackling, as the report says, but there might be all sorts of other reasons why such children are moving around. The norm in education should always be that the young person stays in their school place. That should be a priority; it is much better than their being shuffled around to a convenient place somewhere within a radius of 20 or 30 miles, which means that they keep changing school. The stability of a child's education is essential to any success that they have in exams, literacy or numeracy. The hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) said that placing looked-after children into academies with residential places might be an answer. He may want to respond, but I should say to him that I am puzzled by that. When academies were launched, the whole concept behind them was supposed to be that they would replace failing schools, which are almost entirely in deprived areas in the inner cities. Surely the best thing for looked-after children, who come from already difficult circumstances, is for them to be given priority for school places in the best, most successful schools—not in the academies, which take over, in theory, from failing schools in the most difficult circumstances. It would be good to see priority given to giving looked-after children the best places in the best schools.