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11.12 am
Mr. Win Griffiths (Bridgend): The report of Sir Ronald Waterhouse and his tribunal members Margaret Clough and Morris le Fleming is an admirable but incredibly depressing document. It recounts a story of failures at every level of children's services, as children suffered sexual and physical abuse in the knowledge that any complaint would be a waste of time.
Everything that could be wrong was wrong. The Welsh Office, at a political and civil service level, local government officials, staff and elected members, private providers, and one critical police investigation triggered by Alison Thomas's complaint, all failed abused children appallingly.
Waterhouse catalogues the errors meticulously and, just as meticulously, makes 72 recommendations to prevent such abuse occurring again. At last the voices of the vulnerable and abused have been heard. However, that cannot compensate them properly for the abuse that they suffered. I hope that there is some comfort for them in the opening up of this secret world of terror, and the proposals made by Waterhouse to prevent it from happening again.
Unfortunately, the Waterhouse report probably will not be the last major investigation of child abuse in the United Kingdom. Even as I speak, police officers across England and Wales are investigating allegations of child abuse, involving, as the Minister said, 32 police teams.
It is salutary and deeply worrying to remember that Waterhouse is but the most recent of a long line of inquiries into child abuse allegations concerning both children in care and children living in their own homes. In the 1990s there were more than 20 child abuse inquiries; in the 1980s, more than 30; and in the 1970s, 17.
Those figures do not include more broadly based inquiries. The report of the Warner inquiry into the selection, development and management of staff in children's homes, "Choosing with Care", was published in 1992. The report of an inquiry chaired by Lady Howe into the pay, conditions of service, training and qualifications of residential staff employed in homes and hostels--including those for children--run by local authorities, "Quality of Care", was published the same year. The report of a review of children's homes in Wales by the Welsh social services inspectorate, focusing on the quality of care and the provision of solutions to meet the needs of children in care in appropriate settings, "Accommodating Children", was published the same year.
A wide-ranging review was undertaken by the social services inspectorate of the Department of Health, whose report, "Children in the Public Care", was published in 1991, hard on the heels of publication of the "Pindown Experience" report by Staffordshire county council. In 1987 Lady Wagner chaired an independent review of all residential care, commissioned by the then Secretary of State for Social Services, the right hon. Member for Sutton Coldfield (Sir N. Fowler); its report, entitled "Residential Care: A Positive Choice", was published by the National Institute for Social Work.
The most recent such report of this 10-year period was the Utting report, "Children Like Us: the report of the review of the safeguards for children living away from home", published in July 1997.
Let us hope that the fruits of these latest investigations will successfully ripen in the Care Standards Bill, the Children (Leaving Care) Bill and other Bills that, as this morning's debate has revealed, will address these concerns. Let us hope that they will all be enacted in this parliamentary year.
In the meantime, what is happening to children in children's services out there in the real world? In England in the 1990s, the number of children looked after by local authorities fell by nearly 5,000--8.5 per cent. In Wales, it increased by 122--3.7 per cent. The number of children on child protection registers in England fell by 30 per cent., while in Wales it increased by 16 per cent. In England, 28 of every 10,000 children were on child protection registers last year, while in Wales 40 of every 10,000 were.
In the last two years for which figures are available in Wales--1996-97 and 1997-98--the cost per child increased by 13.2 per cent., from £135,000 to £153,000. In the latter year, social services departments in Wales spent almost £103 million on children and their families.
It is obvious from reports such as the Waterhouse report that, in far too many instances, that money has not been well spent. Waterhouse notes in paragraph 55.12 of the summary that, from the records available to him, of 127 of the 129 people who gave oral evidence, 52 had
convictions before they entered care, 85 were convicted of offences while they were in care and 85 had convictions after they had left care. There are undoubtedly huge savings to be made in the criminal justice system if we can provide positive, sympathetic and well-structured environments for looked-after children to recover for themselves the ordinary things of life, which most children enjoy without even realising it.
Although, in one sense, the Waterhouse report is history and an investigation of events over 16 years, the most recent of which took place more than a decade past, the shadow of those years still blights the lives of hundreds of youngsters who are now men and women seeking to come to terms with their betrayal in care. Can we be confident that we will do better by the young people in care now? We are certainly more aware of the dangers that can face young people in care, dangers which in the 1970s and the 1980s we deemed to be so horrific, brutal and inhumane that, all too often, we could not bring ourselves to think that such sexual and physical abuse of young children in care was really possible. We know now that it is, and we can look around us and say that we are trying to make sure that such abuse does not happen again.
By the time we came to power in May 1997, the previous Government had begun to tackle the problems in the care of looked-after children that had been revealed across the United Kingdom. We know, however, that that was not enough. Indeed, the Waterhouse report shows us that even the improvements that our own Government are making through the Care Standards Bill and the Children (Leaving Care) Bill, the additional funding through the quality protects programme and children first in Wales, and the commitments to have more qualified staff at all levels are not sufficient to provide the necessary safeguards for looked-after children and provide them with new hope, so that they do not feel, as Waterhouse puts it, "Lost in Care".
There is no doubt that the spirit is willing. In our first year in government, I was fortunate to be, among many other things, the first Minister with responsibility for children in Wales. In the Welsh Office, in local government and in the voluntary sector, I found willing partners in the campaign to improve children's services, to have better co-ordination across government in Wales and to have a strengthened appreciation of the need to assess the impact of our policies and programmes for children in Wales.
In September 1998, the Welsh Local Government Association published "Developing a Strategy for Children in Need in Wales: Local Government Role". I want to emphasise that it was a strategy for children in need, not in care. The association realised that the issue went beyond children in care. In many ways, the report foreshadows many of the recommendations in the Waterhouse report. The key areas identified in the report give a flavour of the wide-ranging nature of its work. It refers to children's service plans, looking at children in need including those with disabilities, children in public care, child protection, child care, leaving care and after care, youth justice and youth crime, staff training and development, educational issues, partnerships between the health service and local authorities and changes in the pattern of services.
That report was also set in the context of Government initiatives such as the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, on welfare to work and social exclusion, on building excellent schools together and on the health agenda as set out in the report "The Strategic Framework: Better Health, Better Wales". That report is an excellent blueprint for promoting public health strategies. It is, however, notable for its chapter on children and young people, which is about more than promoting their physical health. Its aim is to ensure that they reach their potential for achieving healthy and satisfying lives. The strategic framework focuses on a series of initiatives in the community--in schools and colleges--that will raise all aspects of services and enable children and young people to look forward confidently to opportunities for achieving healthy and satisfying lives.
I believe that, despite the rough ride that the National Assembly has had in the early months since its birth, it has the potential for developing an all-embracing, co-ordinated approach to services for children, bearing in mind particularly the duties placed on the Assembly to strengthen the role of local government and the voluntary sector in policy making and providing services. It is not for me to predict how the Assembly will rise to that exciting challenge, but I believe that it has the opportunity to concentrate more deeply on the needs of children and the services provided both to protect their rights and to enhance the quality of their lives.
Waterhouse was right to have as his first recommendation a children's commissioner in Wales. He said that the post should be established by statute and that it should be accountable to the whole Assembly and not just to a particular Secretary in it. That is rather like the Public Accounts Committee, which reports to the House and not to a particular Minister. Parliament should create similar offices in England and Northern Ireland.
We have already had an exchange on whether it is a commissioner for children in Wales or a commissioner for children in care in Wales. Waterhouse does not, in his list of recommendations, make any distinction. He says that an independent children's commissioner should be appointed and he lists some of the post's duties. It is misplaced to put the recommendation simply in the context of the report itself, which is about looked-after children.
Although the vast majority of Waterhouse's recommendations are about dealing with looked-after children, he does from time to time consider wider issues. In recommendation (62) he suggests:
An Advisory Council for Children's Services in Wales comprised of members covering a wide range of expertise in children's services, including practice, research, management and training, should be established in order to strengthen the provision of children's services in Wales and to ensure that they are accorded the priority that they deserve.
Those are not services for children in care, but for all children. We should take the spirit of the Waterhouse recommendation for a children's commissioner in Wales to mean a commissioner who is involved with all children.
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