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Mr. Evans: A foster parent came to my surgery on Saturday and told me of the difficulties of placing foster children in local schools, which are usually full. Will the Minister ensure that children cared for by foster parents are able to gain access to local schools for their education?
Mr. Hutton: We will certainly take that issue into consideration. Of course, that is also a matter for my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Education and Employment to consider. We want children who have been fostered to have the best possible access to schools and education and that is why, as part of quality protects, we are trying to drive up the qualifications and educational achievements of looked-after children. That is the first time that any Government have tried to do that with a specific programme of work, and access to good schools is important if we are to succeed in that.
I am pleased that councils have begun to listen to children and young people in their care much more effectively. Listening to children helps to protect children--from harm and from low expectations. If children can speak up and are heard, abuse is less likely to happen. Children and young people demand and need to have a voice in all decisions taken about them--not just on the big issues such as education, health, and their placement, but on the day-to-day big issues for them such as pocket money, sleep-overs, and bedtimes.
Young people can and want to contribute to making the care system more effective. Children's participation will help local authorities to provide high-quality and effective services. It will also help councils to implement one of the key responsibilities under the requirements of best value. Councils must become more responsive to the people to whom they are supplying services. I am glad to be able to tell the House that listening to children was a priority area for expenditure for the children's special grant last year, and that councils spent nearly £5 million on improving the way in which they consult looked-after children in their care. Listening to children will remain a priority area for use of the grant in future as well.
In order to practise what we preach, we are organising a series of regional events at which I and senior members of the Department will hear directly from looked-after children. We are working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport, the Association of Directors of Social Services and a small project team of young people to plan the events.
We are currently reviewing the Children Act 1989 complaints procedure, which was mentioned by the right hon. Member for Caernarfon, and the procedure under the Local Authority Social Services Act 1970. A consultation document will be published shortly. The aim is to bring the two procedures more closely into line with each other and to ensure that they are effectively observed.
The review of complaints procedures has addressed issues such as the role of the "independent person" within the existing Children Act guidance. The review has shown that there is often confusion about that role. The consultation document will discuss whether a complainant would be better served by having a statutory right to an advocacy service in formulating and pursing their
complaints. As I have already indicated, a statutory right to advocacy is being considered as part of the review of complaints procedures. Advocacy in general is a developing area and--I am glad to say in relation to the point made by the right hon. Gentleman--is a priority area for grant funding under quality protects.
I recognise that for quality protects to be a success, authorities need to be able to recruit and retain staff. For quality protects and the whole social care modernisation agenda, local authorities and other employers need to be able to recruit and retain staff of the highest calibre and in the right numbers. A high-quality work force is essential to the delivery of high-quality services.
We are well aware of the concerns expressed in the media and directly to us by local government about the shortages of social workers and other care staff which jeopardise our modernisation plans and quality protects in particular. It is important to see that against a general background in which the social care work force have been fairly stable. The latest data available show vacancies for social workers are at the lowest level for a decade. Vacancies have declined from 10 per cent. in 1990 to just over 7 per cent. in 1998. Turnover rates over the same period have also declined from 14 per cent. to about 8.5 per cent. Those overall trends do mask particular difficulties in some service sectors and some parts of the country, which may be affected by the demands of service developments such as quality protects.
It is the responsibility of local authorities, in the first place, to address their work force requirements. The Government are not the employer. We are therefore particularly pleased that the Local Government Association has recently taken an initiative to set up a work force task group with the express purpose of identifying, for implementation as soon as possible, a series of practical measures that can have a more immediate impact.
We also recognise that the Government have a role to play. We have therefore agreed with the LGA to build on this early work and, together with the wider employment interests across the whole of social care, to work on a programme of action for implementation over a longer time scale. We are therefore making arrangements for a work force summit to be held on 22 March. Among the issues to be discussed in that summit will be the image and status of social care, including conditions of service, family friendly employment policies, encouraging return to work, developments in the existing work force, the skills mix, and the problems of recruiting students to social work.
The Government are of course already taking action to raise the quality of social workers and other social care staff. For example, we are funding a top management development programme for senior managers in social services. The Care Standards Bill provides for the creation of a new General Social Care Council. That body will have a statutory duty to promote high standards of conduct and practice through its codes of conduct and practice for all social care staff. We have already commissioned the initial drafting of those codes. The council will have the powers necessary to ensure that social work training is fit for the purpose. In addition, we are currently considering the reports of external consultants whom we engaged to advise us on the content
and delivery of professional social work training. Those reports will be published with the forthcoming Green Paper on quality issues in social services at Easter and further announcements are likely in the summer.
The Government accept that to build the new ethos of excellence in social services that we all desire, we need the highest standards among all of the social care work force. The essence of modernising social services lies in raising standards. We must have a new ethos of excellence, not of excuses. We must drive standards up and drive failure out. At their best, social services authorities are capable of just that sort of excellence. That is why we will issue a quality strategy Green Paper for social services.
The quality strategy is the Government's next step in their modernising agenda for social care. It will set a national framework for raising local standards, reducing unacceptable variations in practice and achieving an ethos of excellence in social services. It will build on and consolidate existing initiatives to improve quality. It will consider the creation of a new institution to support the drive for quality--a social care institute for excellence. The institute would provide authoritative guidance about effective and efficient social care interventions and help to guide local authorities through the modernisation process.
No one who has read the Waterhouse report could fail to be shocked by the catalogue of abuse it records of children in care in the former county council areas of Clwyd and Gwynedd. That abuse destroyed young lives over a period of more than 20 years. I repeat that this Government are determined to learn the lessons of that inquiry. We must use it as a catalyst for meaningful and radical change in children's services. The report should serve as a warning of the constant need for vigilance, of the need to ensure that children being looked after can always talk freely about their concerns and worries, and of our duty to listen to them and to treat them as we would our own children.
Safeguarding children is an absolute priority for this Government. Through quality protects, we are taking action now to get the management and services right. Through our legislative initiatives, we will enshrine real safeguards for vulnerable children and young people on the statute book. Through the ministerial task force, we are actively considering our response to all of the outstanding recommendations of the Waterhouse report, which we hope to publish early in the summer.
In conclusion, I would echo the words of Jo Williams of the Association of Directors of Social Services, who said recently that
Mr. Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge):
The Minister started his speech by emphasising the consensus that we have across the Chamber in dealing with matters of children's safety and protection. Indeed, there was little in his speech with which I could disagree. Where we do disagree, is about the modalities of achieving those safeguards and that protection, and I hope that the Minister and the House will take it as read that,
the age of innocence is past.
We must shoulder our responsibilities now for the children of this generation and for the future. There can be no more excuses. The events recorded in this unhappy report must never be allowed to happen again.
10.29 am
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