Examination of Witness (Questions 260-279)
17 DECEMBER 2003
BARONESS ASHTON
OF UPHOLLAND
Q260 Paul Holmes: Just returning to some
of the points that have already been touched upon, in response
to the Chairman, you said some very kind words about the Chancellor
and how supportive he had been and, in response to Jeff's question,
you then said, "But we do not have the resources to roll
out Sure Start in a concentrated way that we have done in the
initial areas." The Day Care Trust issued a report, Facing
the Childcare Challenge, where they said that, in order to
reach all parents and children and in order for the Government
to meet its child poverty targets, these services need to be rolled
out beyond the 20% of most disadvantaged areas. In the 20% of
most disadvantaged areas where Sure Start is concentrated, 40%
of the most disadvantaged children do not live in those areas,
they live in wards outside and therefore they are not touched
by the services. So, is it not fairly damning that you said in
response to the earlier question, "We do not have the resources
to roll out this concentrated support" because you are saying
that 40% of the children who most need this help are not going
to get it?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I do not think it is damning, I think it is a recognition that
the way you begin a programme is to start with those who clearly
need it most and I think I have said in this Committee before
that, if you look at our most disadvantaged areas, they just do
not even have the infrastructure to bring together the different
services and, quite often, the services have been poor. So, it
does matter that you start there and, in the life of trying to
think through a government programme, I am very pleased and proud
of what has been achieved. Resources is not just money, it is
actually wherewithal and its people to be able to develop programmes
including the kind of high-quality and high-calibre staff we need
at the centre and are fortunate to have, but they work very hard.
I think there is something in what you say about the mainstreaming
principle because you are right, a lot of disadvantaged children
live in areas of affluence, in deprived parts of those areas,
and it has long been my view that, where we can support children,
we need to do it in an a way that means that universality of the
services are high quality. Poor services for poor children has
to go. I want to see the principles we have established and the
way we work being part of the mainstream of how services operate.
What Sure Start brings to the table is a combination of, yes,
buildings and infrastructure that did not exist and that is an
issue in our poorest communities. It is about community involvement
of the right kind and people feeling a sense of ownership
and participation in the programme designed for them by them which
actually you can do anywhere in the country if you try hard enough
and local politicians and national politicians have been great
heroes and heroines of that in many of our communities. I think
it is also then about allowing the professionals to work more
closely together and to get, by doing that, the services to the
people in the right way and to be creative, which they often are.
So, a lot of the ways in which I see Sure Start operating I do
believe can be mirrored tomorrow in other parts of the country
and again, going back to my previous life, the work I was doing
as a health authority chair was indeed trying to find ways that
health education and social care could work better to support
families on the ground by using, for example, health visitors
to support education by recognising children who had special or
additional needs and so on and so forth. So, I think it is a combination
of those things but I do believe that, in poorest communities,
you do need to have additional resource in investment. Would I
like to see more of it? Yes, I would.
Q261 Paul Holmes: I am pleased to hear
the very last part of that because everything you said before
seemed to be implying that you could achieve the benefits of Sure
Start simply by changing the attitude of the way professionals
worked and ignoring the fact that they actually needed the resources
to actually deliver and, again, from my background as a teacher,
all too often there were schemes over the years where the first
wave of schools to be involved in something got lots of money
and then all the rest of us were told, "Right, now you go
and do it" but there was no money and that is ludicrous.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I hesitate to say anything about changing the attitudes of professionals
because I have not yet met professionals who I need to change
the attitudes of. It is often up the line where the silo activity
takes place and the budgets do not quite work together. Professionals
on the ground have, I think, been challenging us for a long time
to say, "How do you make this work more flexibly and together?"
I do think it is important not to lose sight of the fact that
a lot of ways of working can make a big difference to families
and can use money more smartly. I described in my opening answer
the issue for some of our children who end up with multiple assessments
of their needs called different things by different agencies but
fundamentally being about working out what those children need.
If we bring those eight assessments into one, I do not believe
that there are not some savings in lots of ways, not least professional
time that we could use more smartly. So, it is a combination of
things, I believe, and we should not lose sight of either. Yes,
you do need resources if you are going to make things happen that
are not there at all but, in other areas, I do think that we could
do more and we want to do more to make those work right now.
Q262 Paul Holmes: When you come down
to ground level because of the concentration on the most disadvantaged
areas which tend to be worked out on political ward boundaries,
in every community . . . I could give you two straightaway in
my constituency where they are on the edge of really deprived
areas but, because they happen to be part of a slightly different
boundary, they are totally excluded from all this money and they
go across one road and say, "Over there, they are getting
all this support and, on this side of the road, we cannot access
it", whether it is more beat policemen, Sure Start or whatever."
As I say, 40% of the most disadvantaged children are not getting
any of this support at all because they do not live on the right
side of a boundary line.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I was worried about your use of the word "political"
boundary; I do not quite know what you mean by that. Civil servants
work out deprivation by the deprivation index. What I think is
important to remember is that Early Years education is universal,
so it is not about these services just being around deprived areas.
Local Sure Start programmes, the 522 and it will be 524 by the
beginning of the year, are indeed based around the most disadvantaged
communities because, as you will well know, those communities,
as I have said, need massive support to be able to give them a
chance of being able to support their families and children more
effectively, but it is about a universal framework and then putting
services in a very targeted way within that framework, so they
are able to access universal nursery education. We are beginning
to see wrap-around support in childcare in many, many areas which
of course is an area where parents contribute to that and you
do begin to see the workings of professionals working more closely
together providing family support. Some of the children centres
we have already designated are not in the most deprived areas,
but we have designated them because they do the work that we believe
is right and proper. So, I do not think you should see this as
Government purely putting its money into some areas and not others.
It is about lots of money going into all areas and some money
going into the most deprived. Would I like to see more of that
in terms of being able to spread that out? Yes, I would.
Q263 Paul Holmes: Just a final point
on that. Talking to the staff on the Sure Start bus in my area
for example, they have said that, in theory, when they are parked
up somewhere and people are coming along, they are forced to ask,
"Where do you live?" and if they live in a certain area,
they have to say, "That is not within the designated area
and we cannot deal with you." In fact, they do not. They
turn a blind eye to that but, if that became too much of a flood,
then the whole service would be swamped and they would have to
start rationing. Earlier on, somebody talked about a postcode
lottery for this sort of thing but a cynic might say that it is
actually postcode rationing, that there is only a very limited
amount of money going into these projects but because of the way
it is done, we can trumpet the success of it but ignore the fact
that 40% of the people who need it most are not getting it.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I never trumpet the success without saying that it does not reach
every child; I would never do that. You are right to point that
out because it is important and it is why we should never be complacent.
What I do trumpet is the success of local people bringing the
services together. I think it is fantastic. When you visit Sure
Start programmes, it is great to see what is being achieved and
I do not think you should knock on any side of the political arena.
It is important to keep a perspective on it and to make sure that
we do not find ourselves being unsupported. What I would say is
that it is not a theory that you go on the bus and ask people
where they live and what their postcode is because that is outrageous.
What matters is making sure that the Sure Start programme is designed
to work with areas where we have recognised there is a huge deprivation
and ensure that those children do not get missed off because they
go somewhere else but, as I said earlier, we are absolutely clear
that we want programmes to develop and work with other children
as well but not in the sense to choose that they are not going
to work with the children who are clearly the most deprived. So,
it is important that if you find examples where this is happening
that I know because that is not what we meant and sometimes it
is people with all the best will in the world who have interpreted
perhaps what we mean in the wrong way and I would not want to
see any child prevented from getting Sure Start support who needs
it where we can do that but I would want to make sure that they
focus on the children that we have said must be included because
these are the children who really do need help.
Q264 Paul Holmes: Some recent research
by the Sure Start unit has said that black and ethnic minority
families are not accessing in the same way the opportunities from
the childcare strategy. Do you have any thoughts on why that is
and what you can do about that to overcome that particular barrier?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
It is very important research because it is critical that we support
all our families in different communities. I think there are a
number of different reasons for that. There are some very successful
Sure Start projects working with different minority ethnic groups.
Where they have been involved, those have been well received and
very successful. It was a combination of ensuring that we had
the projects facing in the right direction to make sure that they
are bringing people into those communities and it is also about
ensuring that you have the right workers on the ground who can
reach out to those communities. The critical part of Sure Start
is outreach; it is the children who we do not see. In a sense,
those who come to the centres willingly and easily is fantastic
but it is the parents out on there on the estates who do not come
to the centres and who we do not know about who we do not see
and who we are not able to support. So, getting the outreach right,
particularly for those families and particularly for those perhaps
women and children who do not have English as their first language
who may find themselves very isolated, is absolutely critical.
So, I was pleased that the research was done; I wanted to make
sure that we then enact that in a way that supports those families
better.
Q265 Paul Holmes: Do you have any specific
ideas yourself about how you overcome that?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I think outreach is critical. Looking at the factors where we
have successful programmes, what has worked well, making sure
that we identify groups of families who perhaps are not getting
the services and how do we do that, talking to our colleagues
in different agencies as well because health visitors, to whom
I pay enormous tribute, do a fantastic job in actually knowing
where families are and working with them and providing appropriate
services for those families in order that they feel able to participate.
Q266 Chairman: Minister, hearing your
responses—and you have been asked some interesting questions
by members of the Committee—what puzzles some of us is that
here we have a situation, again going back to Professor Ainsley-Green
last night who was calling on parliamentarians to take the children
issue seriously to actually become the person who brings together
the partnership in every constituency, assesses what is the provision
of services for children and really acting as a focus and I absolutely
agree with that and, after hearing his inspiring talk, I will
go back to my constituency and do something that . . . He used
the Lancaster experiment that Hilton Dawson, who has brought this
partnership together. I totally support that sort of initiative
but what seems to me frustrating in terms of answering this sort
of sense of complacency in the Government is that here are these
children Paul has pointed out, 40% of them not being reached by
Sure Start, what are the mechanisms? Yes, Members of Parliament
should take a lead in that assessment, I am sure, but who else
should be taking the lead in bringing this altogether? Yet again,
I come back to Early Years Partnership. When you sold us that
brand, we thought there it was, it was going to be dynamic. Looking
at children's services, bringing partnerships together. I have
to drag it out of you these days to mention Early Years partnerships
and you say, "That's local authority led." This Committee
recommended that the worst thing you could have is a local authority
chaired Early Years partnerships because that kills it and it
becomes an institutional part. Why is it that what seemed to be
a focus for children's services in Early Years seems to be now
downgraded and, if you are not going to use Early Years partnerships,
where is the focus of this apart from Members of Parliament?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I am sorry if you feel you have to drag it out of me. I will mention
them a lot from now on! I hesitate to say it but it was the line
of questioning that did not give me many opportunities to talk
about them and I did not mean to downgrade them at all. We actually
want local authorities to take responsibility because one of the
issues the Early Years partnership felt was very important was
again back to the point Mr Ennis was making about, is it community
led or is it local authority led? Who has responsibility for ensuring
that it works? The leaders of Government work best when we are
talking to our colleagues in local government, in my view, because
that is a good partnership. When it works well, it is fantastic.
Q267 Chairman: In some parts of the country,
you cannot leave it with local government, can you? What is the
alternative? I never get the real sense of entrepreneurship and
innovation and leadership even under the best local authorities,
even my own.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I take the view that what works best is when you bring the partners
together. My previous existence, when I was at Business in the
Community, was about building public/private/voluntary sector
partnerships. I do believe that each bring different strengths
to the party, as it were, and local government does have some
very inspiring leaders in some areas and not in others, but what
they have are mechanisms and opportunities to be able to work
closely with local communities should they take them. What they
need are good local community people and voluntary organisations
who represent those people on the ground, in a sense, working
closely with them and they need, where it is appropriate for different
initiatives, the involvement of the private sector. So, I do not
have a difficulty for saying it is a partnership and the Early
Years partnerships are called partnerships because that is what
we want them to be and they are critical, they are the developers
of the local Sure Start programmes and—
Q268 Chairman: Someone has to lead the
partnership. Professor Ainsley-Green was speaking last night about
the passion of the leadership, to realise that there are children
living in Dickensian conditions in this country and what came
out of the nineteenth century was a passion to change, to change
the poverty and the exploitation of children. What he was saying
is that today we have this exploitation of children and this ghastly
existence for many children in our communities. He was calling
because he could not see, in the institutions—a lot of well-paid
people in health and local authorities and social services, they
are quite well paid—the passion and the leadership, it is
not there, so the Members of Parliament should do it. What do
you think about that?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I think that I would say that my own experience is that there
are lots of passionate leaders in local communities desperate
to do something to support children and do very well.
Q269 Chairman: But you are not supporting
them. You are not promoting them. You are not giving a focus for
this, are you? What you are saying is that there is a bit of this
and a bit of that and would it not be nice if they all worked
as a partnership? It is all a kind of mush. Where is the focus
for leadership that you would choose in every community if we
are going to do something about children?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
That is the whole point, Chairman, that you do not have a focal
point that is the same in every community. The whole basis of
community entrepreneurial activity has been that, in different
communities, it rests with different people. So, I could take
you to places where it has been the galvanising work of the local
primary care trust in the health department who have actually
brought together people successfully. I can take you to another
area where it was a local authority, where it was the Director
of Children Services perhaps in Brighton and Hove or in Hertfordshire,
the two that I perhaps know best, where they have been the key
drivers with their staff in doing that. I can take you to areas
where it has been the voluntary sector working very closely with
community leaders, and to places like Barnsley where it is community
leadership, who have been doing this for a long time who we have
been able to resource. It does not look the same in every community.
Q270 Chairman: But Mr Ainsley Green would
take you to many places where there is no leadership and one has
to ask why not? If it is good to have a Children's Commissioner
nationally, why do you not tell every local authority they have
to have a Children's Commissioner bringing them all together,
because you have given up on Early Years partnership being the
strong leader. Why not a Children's Commissioner for every local
authority?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I refute completely the idea of giving up on the Early Years partnerships.
I have only mentioned them three times, and I will continue to
do so! They are critical factors.
Q271 Chairman: Are they what I am after,
then? Are they what I am pushing you to say? Where is the focus
in every local authority—not where in some areas it is good
and you can show me the local authority leadership or the community
leadership. What guarantees that there is some focus for children's
services in every part of our country?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
If you look at the Green Paper I think the guarantees come in
three different forms. The first is the Director of Children Services
which we are creating in every local authority, based on the models
of where it has worked well—
Q272 Chairman: Most of the senior local
authority people in those sorts of roles do not even live in the
communities.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I cannot be responsible for where they live but what I can try
and do is be responsible for what they do with the communities
they are responsible for.
Q273 Chairman: How do we expect people
to care if they do not even live in that community?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
It has been said of parliamentarians for many years—I do
not know. I think most parliamentarians would say they do a very
successful job for their constituents in what they do and they
represent them well. I am not being drawn on where people should
live. I think it really matters that what you do is set very high
standards for what you want people to do for the people they are
supporting, and I take the view, though you may consider this
naive, that most parliamentarians and local government people
who go in to work for their communities do so with a passion.
Q274 Chairman: I am only teasing you
about that, but what are the two? You gave us one.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I think that is really important. The second is the Children's
Trust because that is about the breaking down structural differences
and boundaries particularly that exist between the health service
and education and social care, because of the different ways in
which they work mechanically—
Q275 Chairman: Who is going to be on
this trust?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
It will be a representation from those different groups and it
depends in different areas how they set them up. So if you look
at the pilots that we have got operating, you have got some that
have begun by focusing on all children, 0-19 children and young
people in their area, others that have taken the view they want
to begin the focus with Early Years, some who have focused on
children with disabilities, some focused on extended schools and
so on, deliberately designed to test out what works successfully,
because as I have said we should see what works in different local
communities as well.
Q276 Chairman: So the Children's Trust
will have a chair and chief executive?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
As I understand it they will have a governance arrangement for
which there will be a chair, and there will be a lead office—a
Director of Children's Services.
Q277 Chairman: Will members of the board
of this trust get remuneration?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
I cannot answer that question because I am not specifically responsible
for the policy—I will supply you with a definitive answer
in writing.[3]
Q278 Chairman: How will they co-operate
with the Early Years partnerships?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
The third leg of that is the Early Years partnership who will
be part of the work of the Children's Trust because one of the
great things about the Early Years partnership is the focus on
early years, and one of the difficulties is that children do not
stop at 5 and we have to make sure we have the services working
together right the way through to support children from 0, or
minus 9 months in the case of Sure Start, right the way through
to 19 where children need that support. So it is about developing
your services, and Early Years partnership are critical in that
development as well. So it is not about ignoring them but they
are working in the main quite well, and it is about developing
that approach to support children right the way through to 19.
Q279 Chairman: The one small voice I
have, and I am sorry to be persistent, but Frank Dobson said in
the House on the Victoria Climbié tragedy, at the end of
the day, who was responsible? Where did the buck stop in terms
of the children's responsibility? What I am getting out of you,
in all this plethora of organisations, when something went wrong
or even something good happens, in your new structure with all
these organisations, where does the buck stop?
Baroness Ashton of Upholland:
The buck will stop with the Director of Children's Services as
the key responsible officer and of course the Executive of the
local authority.
3 Ev 68 Back
|
