Examination of Witness (Questions 213-219)
17 DECEMBER 2003
BARONESS ASHTON
OF UPHOLLAND
Q213 Chairman: Good morning and can I
welcome Baroness Ashton to our deliberations. We were just discussing
that it is nice to have a minister here to be annually reviewed
because they have been in the same post for at least a year and
you are more or less in the same job, are you not?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
More or less, due to changes because of the creation of the new
division.
Q214 Chairman: It is exciting times in
your responsibilities. You will know because I saw you sitting
in the public gallery on Monday that we had Margaret Hodge here
to talk about this new post that she has and we want to ask you
some questions; some will be similar but you will find that there
is some novelty in them. Would you like an opportunity of saying
how you see the new job and how you complement the Minister in
the House of Commons?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I am delighted that we have a Minister for Children and that we
have brought together all of the children's responsibilities in
one Department. It is something that I have felt very strongly
in my role as Minister for Sure Start was needed. I think that
we complement each other in two ways. First of all, I have now
expanded responsibilities in the House of Lords because I cover
not only all education but of course all children's issues as
well and that I find very useful because it brings together all
of those different strands of what happens in a child's life.
Secondly, in policy terms, bringing together the integrated approach
to supporting children and their families, not only in the early
years, which is what we had started to do as a result of the review
last year, but also throughout a child's life into adolescence
and of course into adulthood is a very important part of making
sure that we provide good services for children and families.
Q215 Chairman: A lot of people feel that
the Government have put an enormous amount of money in Early Years
in children's issues at the earlier stages and Sure Start and
we are all aware of a whole range of programmes. What are the
three best things that the Government has done since 1997?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
The best things are first of all the Early Years' education offer
to families and children because we know that providing free nursery
education for four-year-olds and now all three-year-olds enables
children to get a really good start. The evidence shows us that
of course it is critical for children, if we are going to break
the barriers that exist for some of our poorest children in terms
of education achievements, that we start early. Secondly, the
increasing offer to families on childcare linked to Early Years'
education in order that families who have struggled for a long
time to know how to support their children best can work, if they
wish to, and can ensure that they have high-quality childcare
for their children. I think the family support, the work we are
doing to increase the opportunities for families to get support
that is, if I can use the word, holistic, that is built around
the needs of the family and not the needs of the professionals
in the services. For example, a child with a disability can, in
some areas, end up with eight or nine different assessments by
different agencies. We want to reduce that to an assessment from
one agency on behalf of the others and support provided by all
the agencies working to the family's needs.
Q216 Chairman: What about the failures
of the Government? Listening to Professor Ainsley- Green, who
is the Children's Health and I hesitate to call him "Tsar"
but whatever his title is, in his presentation in the House of
Commons last night, his sense of his evaluation of how far children
are absolutely focused on and targeted in the Health Service was
chilling. He pointed out, for example, that there was only one
consultant dealing with teenage years in the whole of the United
Kingdom and he went through a list of areas where there was no
focus on children, where children were incidental and he said
that, as he went through health trusts and health areas in this
country, he found that there was absolutely no knowledge of what
services there were for children and found enormous gaps in provision.
We, as a Committee, are going to have to get used to asking questions
about health and education because this is a ministerial chain
responsibility, but that is chilling stuff after a Government
has been in power for six years to be told by Professor Ainsley-Green
that there was this tremendous lack of facilities for children.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I think it is something that has been a failure for a long time
and the good news of course is that we are beginning to address
it. I, as you probably know, have a background in the Health Service
as chair of a health authority before I became a minister, so
I am very well aware of the prioritisation that children did not
get. There are two or three critical things that I would say.
First of all, I do not think as governments—and I use the
plural in that—we have listened enough to what children
need and want and know because actually children themselves are
very well aware of the things that they want in life and, whether
it is a play review, whether it is through the Green Paper and
so on, we are beginning to listen to what children say and that
is very important. It is also very important in terms of vulnerability
in child protection. I think the second thing is that we have
had services that have been very siloed around children, so children
have received education or they have received health services
or they have received support from different professionals and
children, particularly vulnerable children, fall through the net
in that way because nobody takes overall responsibility. So, a
critical part of the future is actually making sure that we have
responsible agencies who, in a sense, do not pass the buck and
ensure that children get the services they need and I think those
have been failures that now we can address properly.
Q217 Chairman: Do you think you are going
to knit these services together? The Minister yesterday, not actually
to this Committee but in another meeting, the same meeting with
Professor Ainsley-Green, pointed out that, if you are going to
track where children are—and this Committee pushed her on
the fact that children go missing. Where are the children? Are
they children of people who are in refuges? Are they children
of political refugees? Missing children. Children who are born
abroad or who are taken abroad—and if you are going to have
a register of children, there has to be a system across the piece
but we understand that many people in the health sector feel that
this is an invasion of privacy and that they will not share a
health identification system across the piece with people outside
the health centre. How are you going to stop that sort of problem?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I think a lot of progress has actually been made. For example,
with the Sure Start programmes, some of which are led by the Department
of Health because Sure Start of course was in the Department of
Health until a year ago, a lot of work has gone on making sure
that health services are working effectively with other services
and I think it is a combination of trust between professionals
who know that to make sure information is available appropriately
to other professionals would ensure that children get a better
deal, and having the right systems in place. We have a health
service that has been brought up to believe, and rightly so, in
confidentiality between patient and doctor. We have to make sure
that we retain that but that we also ensure that the systems work,
so that a child who is in danger or who is vulnerable in some
way does not lose out because we cannot make those systems talk
to each other effectively.
Chairman: Thank you for those introductory
discussions.
Q218 Mr Turner: Your specific responsibilities
are described as Sure Start, Early Years and Childcare, the foundation
stage of the curriculum, and special educational needs, yet your
ministerial title omits the latter, which does not overlap in
the same way as the first group of responsibilities do and those
in your title. Do you think that reflects appropriately the importance
of special educational needs?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I hope it does not detract from it. I am a passionate Minister
about special educational needs. I do a huge amount of work. We
are about to publish a new strategy and you may have seen that
we published a report on special schools from a working group
that I set up to advise us on the future of special schools. I
hope that, in my ministerial duties, I give the correct balance
to different parts of my portfolio. I have no objection to being
called the Minister of Sure Start and Special Educational Needs.
One always ends up with shorthand for a title because of course
there are other responsibilities that I have too, but I hope that,
in carrying out my duties, people, particularly in the special
educational needs field, would see that I do work and respect
them and also make sure that I represent their views.
Q219 Jeff Ennis: I think the Government
has been quite successful in many of the Early Years' initiatives
we have introduced like the Sure Start, Neighbourhood Nurseries,
Extended Schools etc. How will the new Children's Trusts bring
all these together in a cohesive fashion, shall we say? How will
they assist in that process?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
Part of the reason for piloting the 35 pathfinders is to find
out what works. I think there are two points on that. The first
is that I feel quite strongly that different ways of collaborating
will work differently in different areas of the country because
there are some very good examples already of real collaboration
between health, education and social care that exist in different
parts of the country that look quite different to each other and
my view is that we need to set the framework of collaboration
with children's trusts, remove the barriers that prevent money
being used as effectively as it might, which is always critical,
build on what the professionals have always told me which is that
they want to be able to work together more effectively and ensure
that, at the heart of that is developing the services around the
needs of children. What I think the pathfinders will tell us—and
the evaluation is going to happen, in a sense, simultaneously—are
ways in which it is clearly going to work more effectively than
others, so that we can spread that information across to others
who will follow. What I hope they will do is build on, in a sense,
the principles that Sure Start establish which is that, if you
have a collaborative approach to families and build services around
them, you can support children more effectively.
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