Examination of Witnesses (Questions 420
- 439)
WEDNESDAY 2 FEBRUARY 2005
MR TOM
JEFFERY, MS
ANNE JACKSON,
MS SHEILA
SCALES, MS
ALTHEA EFUNSHILE,
DR JEANNETTE
PUGH AND
MR MARK
DAVIES
Q420 Jonathan Shaw: They are saying
that there should be a minimum entitlement to three days of joint
training for all staff across agencies.
Dr Pugh: We have not been speaking
in terms of an entitlement to training. We certainly have been
looking to identify what training needs there will be in particular
areas like the common assessment framework for instance. However,
we have not been discussing entitlements because again, as Sheila
mentioned in her earlier comments, circumstances will vary from
area to area and there will be differing needs across different
sectors and in different types of skill areas. We do not think
that entitlement is the most appropriate approach.
Q421 Jonathan Shaw: These 70 people,
why would they say that then? Is this just a bargaining chip?
Are they trying to put pressure on the departments to give them
some money? Why would they say that everyone needs three days
of joint training before the trusts are established?
Dr Pugh: It is not for me to speculate
as to why they might say it, but let me comment on a couple of
things. First, I can well imagine why they might understand the
value of joint training. The experience in our information sharing
trailblazers, for example in some of our other pilot projects
has shown the huge value to be gained by practitioners and professionals
from different sectors—social workers, teachers, nurses—getting
together in the same room and thereby effectively doubling the
value of the training because not only do they learn about the
skill that they were in the room specifically to learn about but
they also learn about starting to build those relationships that
are going to be so important to making this agenda work on the
ground. I can certainly understand why they would emphasise the
need for joint training. As to the specific notion of a particular
number of days, I can only imagine that they have arrived at that
figure through speaking to their colleagues across different local
authority areas. We have not had any discussions with them about
the notion of an entitlement as such, but we have certainly talked
to them about the importance of training and the importance of
joint training and the value that can bring.
Q422 Jonathan Shaw: Do you know how
much the Department spent on training for Children's Services
last year?
Dr Pugh: I am afraid I do not
have that figure.
Q423 Jonathan Shaw: In terms of this
training, are the departments going to pool their budgets to assist
this? Is there going to be some pooling of budgets at a national
level as well as at a local level to assist in paying for the
training?
Mr Davies: I can write to you
with the information, but it is not my understanding that we hold
budgets at the centre for local training. We hold significant
levies from the NHS for medical education and training which is
a completely different issue, but I do not think we hold it for
those types of localised training programmes.
Q424 Chairman: It is a bit worrying
because in one set of questions you say there is not going to
be any special money for this and now you are saying there is
no resource for the training of personnel.
Mr Davies: I am not saying there
is no resource; I am saying that we do not hold it at the centre.
The question was about whether we are going to pool it centrally.
People will have local training resources available but the Department
of Health does not hold it for them.
Ms Efunshile: You talked about
training for safeguarding as a particular example of one those
three days and I think it is important to recognise that local
areas already have training programmes. There are already resources
on the ground for training and what we will be expecting and wanting
local agencies to do is to bend those training opportunities so
that they are taking account of the changed agenda. Over the course
of this financial year and the last financial year as an example
we have had a safeguarding children grant which has been issued
to local authorities, £90 million each year. We have not
said that this is a sum of money for training; we have said that
this is a sum of money to assist you as you move forward and improve
the levels of your safeguarding and training will be part of that.
Whilst we will not be saying that there is additional money for
training we would certainly expect existing resources to be taking
account of the new duties for example under Section 11 of the
Children Act 2004 where they have a new duty on a wider range
of agencies to safeguard and promote the welfare of children and,
indeed, to co-operate under Section 10.
Q425 Jonathan Shaw: So this will
be replacement training. If they have their budgets and they are
using this money presumably for things that you approve of in
the first place, there is going to be additional training or it
is going to have to replace some existing training. That is the
implication of what you are saying.
Ms Efunshile: Indeed, but we do
not have central pots of money which are labelled "training"
for this agenda. There are resources which are allocated to local
authorities and other agencies on the ground from which they can
train; they can use resources to train. It will be down to local
agencies themselves to work out across that range of agencies
at the local level—the children's trust, the local safeguarding
children's board—to work out what those training priorities
are and how they are going to use their existing resources in
order to deliver that training.
Q426 Jonathan Shaw: In the many discussions
that you have had, Tom Jeffery, with the various representative
bodies that represent the agencies that are going to deliver Every
Child Matters, have any of those agencies at any time said,
"Look, it is essential that we have some more resources for
training if this is going to happen"? Has anyone said that
to you?
Mr Jeffery: I am sure they have
said words to that effect and we are making available a change
fund, as you may know, over the next three years for local determination
as to how it is spent in support of the Every Child Matters
agenda. There are substantial resources out there at the moment
as colleagues have said. We are also developing a workforce strategy
and we will want to continue discussions with all our partners
about workforce issues. I absolutely take the point that here
we are right into the heart of change on the ground, change in
understanding and culture and people working together, and many
of the programmes which we are putting in place—including
common assessment, including information sharing—are already
generating and have done for some months if not years now people
working together and training together in a quite unprecedented
way.
Q427 Helen Jones: Can I come back
to this training because it seems to me that we have two problems
in what we are setting up here. One is that teachers do not receive
training in child protections during their initial teacher training
and yet schools have a duty to safeguard children's welfare. Are
we going to do something about that? Who is safeguarding children?
The person who often has most contact with the child at school
who might most immediately notice if something is wrong is their
teacher. Why are they not trained in child protection, and are
they going to be?
Ms Efunshile: I am a bit flummoxed
because in my experience there is significant training in schools.
Q428 Helen Jones: I am talking about
initial teacher training first of all.
Dr Pugh: One of the areas that
we have been developing in working with a wide range of organisations
over the last year or so has been the development of something
that we are calling the Common Core of Skills and Knowledge that
we expect will become the foundation of induction across the range
of Children's Services. We have the support of our colleagues
in the Teacher Training Agency and we have discussed that with
other representatives of the schools' organisations precisely
with a view to seeing how we can fit that Common Core within initial
teacher training. The Common Core includes within it a number
of units of core areas of skills and knowledge of which one is
precisely safeguarding children so I think I can say to you quite
directly and specifically that that is one area that we are looking
at particularly.
Q429 Helen Jones: So it will become
a component in initial teacher training. Is that what you are
telling us?
Dr Pugh: That is what we are looking
towards. We are about to publish a prospectus for the Common Core
hopefully in the next few weeks and we are discussing through
the shadow Children's Workforce Development Council that has been
established and it, in turn, through its wider network that it
is working with—which includes the teacher training community—how
that Common Core can over the coming months and years become firmly
embedded within the initial training of practitioners across the
full range of Children's Services including teachers.
Q430 Helen Jones: That is very helpful,
but let us go back to the teachers who are already in school because
there are a huge number of calls on the training budget in schools
as you would expect, so if we are going to move into this whole
area of involving schools very closely with an extended range
of services, how are we going to ensure that the teachers in the
front line are actually trained in child protection and are trained
in working with all the other services that they have to liaise
with? The three teachers here would tell you that currently that
does not happen. How are we going to do that? Please do not tell
us that it is for local decisions because heads have so many calls
on their budgets and this quite frankly is not going to be at
the top of many people's agenda unless we find a way of making
it so.
Ms Efunshile: Can I speak as a
former teacher as well? We have existing arrangements and in every
area there should be an area child protection committee. The best
area child protection committees will be working out across the
agencies what the training requirements are, what the training
needs are in that local area in order that there can be satisfactory
child protection practice. As we move forward we are wanting to
build on the best practice in those existing local child protection
committees by establishing local safeguarding children's boards
and again we will be expecting that it will be very clear that
part of their duty will be to assess, to audit and to look at
what the training needs are in that local area in order that they
can improve the level of safeguarding jointly across the range
of agencies and of course in the individual agencies who are the
constituent members of that safeguarding children board.
Q431 Chairman: Can we get the terminology
right? You started off by saying they were called child protection
committees; they are really safeguarding children boards, are
they not?
Ms Efunshile: If I could clarify
that, there are two slightly different things. At the moment every
area should have an area child protection committee but we know
that there is variable practice across the country in terms of
the effectiveness of these bodies and one of the most important
factors there in terms of the variability is that they are not
statutory bodies, they are in fact voluntary bodies. Whilst it
is the norm to have an area child protection committee in fact
they do not have to have one and there is no duty on the local
agencies at the moment to participate in the area child protection
committee or to contribute to it. The Children Act 2004 establishes
local safeguarding children boards which will be in place across
all 150 local authorities by April 2006 on a statutory basis,
very much building on the recommendations which emerged from Lord
Laming's inquiry where what he wanted to see was a much firmer
line of accountability in terms of safeguarding and child protection.
Training will remain one of the key responsibilities of the local
safeguarding children boards. Their role in fact is in two parts.
One is to monitor the level of safeguarding across the local area
and secondly to monitor and to challenge the level of safeguarding
in the respective bodies that make up that safeguarding board.
They will include education, police, various National Health Service
bodies, probation and so on.
Q432 Helen Jones: That is helpful
but we are still back to the position that Jonathan raised earlier
that you can do all that monitoring and evaluating but if the
individual head says, "It's not my policy, I'm not releasing
my staff to go on that course" then we are not getting anywhere,
are we?
Ms Efunshile: If we look at the
range of levers that are available to us and try to use those
levers, one is the duty because there is a duty on schools to
safeguard and to promote the welfare of their children. Guidance
has been sent out which, in fact, will mean that they should under
legislation participate in safeguarding activities across the
area. Secondly, I think Anne has mentioned the performance management
framework so the inspection framework for schools will in fact
look at the extent to which schools and an individual school is
contributing to the improvement of the five outcomes for children,
one of which is, of course, staying safe. Individual schools'
activities in terms of safeguarding will in fact be a part of
how they are inspected and how they are judged. Those are actually
quite important and powerful levers on the school in order that
they do take part in, for example, releasing teachers for training.
Q433 Helen Jones: Can I just ask
you before we move on about another group of staff? I am thinking
of who the child is going to come in contact with most of the
time because I think that is the key. In early years they are
often not even trained nursery nurses. There will be some trained
nursery nurses about but very often they are people who have not
had much training, often quite young, who are very badly paid.
How are we going to expect these people in these frameworks to
recognise not simply when a child is at risk of harm but when
a child has particular problems that may need early intervention?
How are we going to get these people trained? The reality of life
is that those are the people who are going to be dealing with
the children in early years care on a day to day basis. I think
that is perhaps where we have a real problem. Other countries
have people who are well trained; we have an under-paid, under-trained
workforce. How are we going to raise the game there?
Mr Jeffery: The development of
the early years' workforce was a major theme of the 10 year childcare
strategy. It will be a major element of the workforce strategy
on which Jeanette is currently working so I wonder if she would
like to say something.
Dr Pugh: The 10 year childcare
strategy that was published in December highlighted the crucial
importance as you have mentioned of raising the quality of the
workforce working with very young children.
Q434 Helen Jones: Could we say raising
the training? In my experience they are often extremely good people;
we are not making a judgment on their character but on their training.
Dr Pugh: I think the two go hand
in hand. As Tom mentioned, the workforce strategy will be highlighting
the early years as a particular priority and looking at coming
forward with propositions around strengthening the leadership
in early years settings, looking at the notion of how we raise
the levels of all those who are working in early years settings,
looking again at making the Common Core a foundation for training
for everyone working with children including very young children.
I think that will address some of the points that you raised in
terms of raising awareness of the signs to look for, how to identify
when a child might be having a particular need or having a particular
difficulty that needs to be addressed. It is absolutely a top
priority because, as you say, those workers come into contact
with a lot of young children and, as we know, intervention in
the early years has such a vital part to play in the overall development
and future of those children and young people and in fact on their
later life. I completely agree with you and we will be saying
more about this in the workforce strategy.
Q435 John Greenway: This is very
interesting and presumably the intention is that the Sector Skills
Council will be responsible for delivering much of this training.
Can you clarify for us that the Sector Skills Council is not about
teachers, it is about the non-teaching workforce?
Dr Pugh: The new Sector Skills
Council is a UK-wide body. The Children, Young People and Families
Workforce Development Council is the name of the England based
council and I think the basis of this discussion is that it is
this council that is germane. Its footprint covers early years,
social care and youth work so it brings within it the half a million
or so workers that are embraced by those sectors. I mentioned
earlier—this is quite an important part of how it operates—that
under the chairmanship of Paul Ennals the shadow council (because
it will become fully operational from April) has organised around
it a wider children's workforce network that draws together all
the other relevant sector skills councils and like agencies—like
the Teacher Training Agency, skills for health, skills for justice—to
talk about how we can develop a stronger common culture, common
training requirements, looking at the revision for instance of
occupational standards, looking at the review of qualifications,
working with us on the development of more coherent career pathways
across the whole children's workforce that allows clearer progression
within sectors and indeed greater lateral movement across sectors
as well as more flexible entry points at different points along
the qualification structure.
Q436 John Greenway: I think the question
that your answer to Helen Jones begs is: who is going to be responsible
for delivering this training and who is going to pay for it?
Dr Pugh: The Children's Workforce
Development Council with partner agencies (the Teacher Training
Agency in particular will have a particularly crucial role because
of the points you made earlier about teachers) will be responsible
for designing training, providing support; the funding is something
that we are needing to work through because as yet we are not
clear about our precise funding allocations. As Althea and other
colleagues have highlighted, there is already funding available
within local areas and local organisations to support training,
so it is not a net addition that is needed. It will be about changing
training as much as additional training to support this agenda.
The Children's Workforce Development Council will play a crucial
role in this.
Q437 Chairman: Just to sweep up one
element of that, it is clear from listening to people as senior
as you from the Department—you talk in theoretical terms
largely, and that is understandable—that what is coming
out of some of the questions here is what is the difference going
to be to the average social worker, health visitor and teacher
or head on the ground? How much change will there be to their
lives and are they being communicated with now? They are the people
who will deliver this policy so how far are they aware of it.
Are they going to meet each other more often?
Mr Jeffery: There is communication
with teachers on the ground. For example, you may know we have
a teachers' magazine, one for primary, one for secondary, that
is carrying a lot of information.
Q438 Chairman: Teachers TV is launched
this afternoon; perhaps that will be used.
Mr Jeffery: Teachers TV is a potentially
seriously helpful medium.
Q439 Chairman: When is it going to
enable them to meet with social workers and health visitors?
Mr Jeffery: It is happening more
and more. Of course it is happening through SureStart local programmes
but it will happen more through the rapid development of children's
centres, it will happen through extended schools, it is happening
through the training which is taking place particularly in the
trailblazer areas but more widely around information sharing.
I think it is a very real challenge for us all communicating effectively
in powerful language in a way which really enthuses front line
workers and gets them to own change and take it forward. That
is something which we need to work on very, very hard indeed.
We need to learn from them what they would like and it is a real
challenge.
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