Examination of Witnesses (Questions 480
- 499)
WEDNESDAY 9 FEBRUARY 2005
RT HON
MARGARET HODGE
MP
Q480 Chairman: We have had research
pointing out that two-thirds of SureStart has not been successful.
Margaret Hodge: I do not know
what research you are getting there. I have not seen that.
Q481 Chairman: I am referring to
research that was presented to the IPPR Conference very recently.
I think Cathy Silver has been involved in research and the Audit
Commission has been involved in research that suggested that only
a third of SureStart programmes seem to add value. I have to direct
you to an article that I only read very recently by Anna Coote,
who says the real problem is what you are doing with SureStart
is that here is a government that believes in evidence-based policy
and you have not yet evaluated properly, you really have not yet
properly evaluated SureStart, and yet you are changing it into
a very different programme delivered by a different organisation.
Margaret Hodge: With respect to
you, Chairman, you cannot have it both ways with one person saying
there has not been an evaluation and therefore we should not move
forward, and another allegation, which I have yet to see, which
says that SureStart—
Q482 Chairman: You have seen no research
that suggests that much of SureStart does not add very much value?
Margaret Hodge: The reality is
that much of the national SureStart evidence has yet to come.
I read all the evidence that comes out of our SureStart evaluation,
and much of it currently is about process, a description of the
situation in the SureStart communities and very early outcomes,
and it is very positive, Chairman. What we have not got yet is
the longer term evaluation which will tell us that the impact
on children, on families, is transformation over time. What we
have got is evidence from a number of the local programmes, which
we are also evaluating, that fewer children are ending up in A&E,
more mothers are giving up smoking in pregnancy, more children
are being breast-fed, children are developing their speech and
language capacity better and are therefore ready to go to school,
there is greater engagement in Bookstart and literacy.
Q483 Chairman: I am not disagreeing
with you, and we will be happy to let you know of the research
that has presented to us that suggests that there are some problems
with adding value in a high percentage of SureStart programmes.
That is not to say that we do not know that the research already
suggests that those containing a higher educational component
are very successful indeed. I am not disagreeing on that. What
we are trying to tease out from you is the delivery system. You
are changing the delivery system to local authorities, you say
you are happy with that, although we were given evidence that
the local authority that was mostly in the firing line over Victoria
Climbié has not changed its practices one iota, has not
improved at all since that dreadful tragedy. You have to balance
faith in local democracy with realities on the ground. On the
other side, what about schools? Your government or ministry is
making schools far more independent. Are you telling me that cooperation
in bringing to fruition the Children Act is going to be more important
than meeting standards? The schools can take much more of a broad
brush approach to taking on Change for Children rather than getting
high standards and the way they are confronted with that choice?
Margaret Hodge: I am going to
come back to you on SureStart. SureStart currently meets the needs
of a third of children in deprived areas.
Q484 Chairman: That is not true,
Minister. In 20% of the poorest wards in this country there are
SureStart programmes.
Margaret Hodge: Yes.
Q485 Chairman: A very different jump
from saying it meets the needs. It is attempting to meet the needs?
Margaret Hodge: I accept that.
It is attempting to meet the needs of a third of children in deprived
areas. If we want to build on what we believe we have uncovered
as a very successful and innovative intervention into children
lives, if we want to build that nationwide and go from 500 to
3,500 SureStart children centres, which is our ambition in a 10-year
programme, the only way in which we can deliver that effectively
is through local authorities, and we have to put in place the
levers, the carrots and the sticks, to make it happen. Just on
Ealing, because it is Ealing to which you are referring and I
saw the evidence that you had from Lord Laming, it is deeply depressing
that Ealing has become a zero-rated social services authority
this year, we are looking at it very carefully, but I have to
say, interestingly enough, and I have met leading members and
leading officers from Ealing Council, they are failing more on
their adult services and doing much better on their children's
services.
Q486 Chairman: Let us go on to schools
then. You made a good case. It is inevitable if you want 3,500
it is going to go to local education, or local authorities. What
about schools?
Margaret Hodge: Schools are engaged
in our agenda, and they are engaged because when I talk to head
teachers, when I visit schools, when I talk to the various trade
unions representing head teachers and others in schools, they
all acknowledge that the Every Child Matters agenda is
an integral part of the standards agenda. You will only achieve
high standards in education if every child in your school community
is ready to learn and is therefore an included child and you ensure
that all aspects of that child's life are secure and the child's
well-being is there. You will only provide an inclusive society
if you ensure that every child has the ability to develop their
full potential, so the inclusion agenda and the standards agenda
are two sides of the same coin, and schools understand that. The
best of schools are doing incredibly innovative things to demonstrate
that.
Q487 Chairman: Minister, the best
of schools are wonderful, we know that because we take evidence
from them, but a lot of the schools that gave evidence to us under
admission said they were not going to take children that would
not perform well because that was not good for the best school
standards, and they would get a bad reputation for falling standards.
They absolutely ignored any prescriptions coming from government
and said, "We will only take the children that we want to
take."
Margaret Hodge: As you know, we
have said that by 2008 we expect the admissions code, which will
ensure a properly inclusive admission practice, will be in place
in every school, but let me talk a little bit about the—
Q488 Chairman: The code is not statutory.
Margaret Hodge: It is not a statutory
code, but my view is, Chairman, that schools actually will grasp
this agenda. If we are wrong and if you are right to say it needs
to be backed by statute to make it work, it will be.
Q489 Chairman: That is something
in our report. You rejected it?
Margaret Hodge: I know it is,
but we are trying to go down another route which I believe will
get to us a shared end.
Q490 Chairman: Wishful thinking,
Minister, a very dangerous route.
Margaret Hodge: No, I do not believe
it is wishful thinking. I have often said, and I have probably
often said to you privately as well as I have in the Committee,
I do not think legislation of itself transforms cultures and behaviour
and practice.
Q491 Chairman: It helps, Minister,
otherwise this Government would not have so much of it.
Margaret Hodge: Maybe this Government
sometimes has too much of it, but legislation of itself—
Q492 Chairman: You are looking for
friends now, Minister!
Margaret Hodge: Let me go back
to the issue about how we are going to ensure that schools do
grasp the agenda that we are promoting through the Every Child
Matters and the Change for Children programme. First of all,
in the Ofsted inspection, in the new Ofsted inspection, the five
children's outcomes are firmly embedded there as one criteria
against which a school's performance and capability will be inspected.
That is a pretty strong lever for them. Secondly, in the conversation
that will take place every year between a school and the local
authority, the Children's Trust, as it emerges over time, again
the five outcomes which are now on the Children Act will again
form part of that conversation. Furthermore, as we develop policies
like our Extended Schools policies, which has been enthusiastically
welcomed by, again, most schools to whom I talk, we will find
that the development of multi-agency services co-located on a
school site will grow; in fact our commitment in the Early Years
and Childcare strategy is to have it there; and, again, the green
shoots of change are there. Let me give you an example. Let us
take Sheffield as an instance. In Sheffield two head teachers
were seconded two days a week for six months to promote the Every
Child Matters agenda and get schools buying into it across Sheffield.
There is a 100% buy-in now right across Sheffield. In Knowlsey
they have area-based partnerships which are developing the children's
programmes, and those are chaired by head teachers. Those are
two examples of where we are getting good practice across countries.
Q493 Chairman: I absolutely agree
with you; there will be some lovely green shoots out there and
we welcome them. All we as the Educational and Skills Committee
are doing is flagging up our concern that one policy that could
end up with every school becoming a foundation school owning its
own premises and all that does in some ways run counter, and then
you are adding the standards, the push of standards all the time,
that these two agendas might not actually fit very well together.
We are only putting that on the record, Minister.
Margaret Hodge: I do not agree.
I really do not agree.
Q494 Chairman: We agree to disagree
on that. Mr Michael is, we know, the last on your list. What about
money? What about resources? You say 10 years, but we get the
impression from some of your officials that it is not just a wonderful
land, we get the promised land that we are going to move to, but
is it one that can be achieved without real resources being devoted
to it? Are there going to be real resources, the necessary resources
devoted to delivery, and have you spoken to the Treasury about
this and what do they say about it?
Margaret Hodge: I talk to the
Treasury all the time. In fact, we have done rather well out of
the Treasury, as you know, on the Early Years and Childcare strategy.
I was looking at figures the other day. In 1997-98 we were spending
just over a billion pounds on Early Years and Childcare. This
year I think we are over four billion. I will write to you with
the accurate figures. That is a fantastic expansion in developing
integrated services around the needs of children and in developing
a preventative range of services to try and promote strong children.
That is the agenda, Chairman.
Q495 Chairman: If you look at the
Treasury's figures, they show, yes, in the next two years we have
a high in educational spending and then it starts to tail off.
At the very time that you are telling this Committee there are
the necessary resources in order to meet with the children's agenda,
is it going to be there?
Margaret Hodge: Out of this comprehensive
spending review settlement, if I just look at the SureStart budget,
it does not. I cannot predict what will be in the next spending
review settlement, but if we are returned to Government to meet
our commitment on both Children's Centres and Extended Schools
and Childcare we will need to keep growing that budget. Let me
go beyond that to other areas of the budget. There has been a
pretty healthy growth in the social services FSS over the period.
Again I will correct myself if I am wrong, but I think it is 7%
this year, so it is a pretty healthy growth there, and we should
just note that. The third thing I was going to say to you is this
programme is about changing the way people work, and you do not
have to change the way people work by simply adding new resources
into the picture. I could take endless examples; let me take two.
Think of a teenager who may be in trouble with the police. That
teenager could have working with him an education welfare officer
because he is probably not in school, he might well have a learning
mentor, he might well have a Connexions worker trying to deal
with some of the issues, he may have a drug problem, so he will
have a drug action team worker, he may be in trouble with the
law so he will have a YOTS team worker and he probably will have
a social worker because there is a problem of whether he should
or should not come into care. I have probably left out lots, but
that is six professionals working with the one child. If we can
reconfigure that so that we get the lead professional with real
responsibility with the child backed up by the specialists where
it is required, so possibly a children analyst and mental health
worker, I think you can reconfigure and save resources. I know
you are going to question me on it later, but the interesting
thing that comes out of the trailblazer authorities that are working
on sharing information, getting better mechanisms for sharing
information, I had a seminar with them the other day and they
strongly said to me that what they are able to do out of the protocols
they are developing to get better sharing of information across
professional boundaries is identifying more children, identifying
them sooner and therefore intervening and saving money. The other
thing I was going to say to you was the example which I often
give but it is a very powerful one of a little girl I visited
in a Camden flat. She was very, very severely disabled but in
a mainstream school, so lots of things were going well for her.
I saw her and her mother. Her mother was her main carer. She said
she had had 18 separate assessments by different professionals
in the previous six months. Her mother had spent more time managing
the professionals who were supposed to be caring for her rather
than caring for her directly, and she was the main carer. If we
can through our Common Assessment Framework which we are hoping
to introduce shortly, and we have got 50 authorities ready to
go on it, if we can cut that down, you can save resources which
you then can distribute elsewhere. Let me give you one final example
out of Derbyshire. Derbyshire now have multi-agency teams that
respond to cries for help from families where they voluntarily
want to put their children in care for some reason or another.
Since this multi-agency team has been working they have reduced
the number of children coming into the care system by 20. That
is a saving of a quarter of a million to Derbyshire, which they
can invest elsewhere. If we are even half successful in our ambition
to transform the way people work, we do not necessarily need more
money; we simply really do need to use existing resources more
smartly.
Chairman: Minister, I have listened to
myself for too long. I will relinquish you to Val Davey, but thank
you for those introductory answers.
Q496 Valerie Davey: I want to underpin
some of the areas that the Chair has already touched on. You mentioned
the guidance which will be available to go out to local authorities.
Can you tell us on what evidence that will be based. I imagine,
for example, that Pathfinder Children's Trusts are already coming
up with that evidence. You have got a strategic vision—I
have no doubt about that—and all the optimism you need to
go with it, but what guidance are you going to give, when will
that guidance come out and on what evidence will it be based?
Margaret Hodge: Much of the vision
emerges from the best practice that exists in local authorities
and in local communities now, so there is a lot of evidence out
there. Much of the guidance is going out in draft form so that
we can further consult and build into the final guidance evidence
we have of what works in local communities across the country.
Everything we do, is what I am saying to you, is already built
on evidence of what we have as to what works. There is a lot of
guidance going out as we implement the various clauses of the
Children Act. In fact, I worry that we must not give indigestion
to local authorities by giving them too much guidance, but it
is a pretty wide programme of transformational change and therefore
requires quite at lot of information to those working at the front-line
as to the sort of practices they have to engage in and the sort
of procedures they need to think about, but it is based, as much
as we can, on best practice. The other thing I always say is I
am sure we will not get it all absolutely right the first time,
and I am not pretending that we will. As we continue to learn,
if we then have to think again and revisit some of the guidance
that we have issued to local authorities, we will do so.
Q497 Valerie Davey: I am encouraged
by that and also by the fact that you are sending it out in draft.
I think that does enable local authorities to contribute, but
for some of them—particularly let us move over to the funding—the
Government is sending out different messages, because the funding
for education is going virtually directly to schools and it is
leaving some social services with a tension. I can take you to,
I am afraid, too near to home in my area a social services department
which is struggling, and you will say to me, yes, they have got
these very highly, very expensive young people to manage—if
only we had—but what is the mechanism that they are going
to have for bringing these budgets together to match your inclusive
framework, and how are we going to get this bridging loan between
the situation they are now in of some highly expensive young people
to the prevention side, which you are claiming, quite rightly
I am sure, will be less expensive and more beneficial to everyone?
Margaret Hodge: We are already
beginning to see local authorities pooling their budgets, and
they are beginning to pool their budgets across the most difficult
boundary, and that is between local authorities and health, and
there are huge problems in getting those budgets pooled, but we
have got 27 pooled budgets across a whole range of local authorities—Barnsley,
Bolton—I have got the list here—down to Wigan, Warwickshire,
and they are working across health and local authority budgets
particularly around issues of children with disabilities—that
is one area where there is a lot of work being done—and
around the children's mental health as well. So there is good
stuff happening out there and, again, we need to build on that
experience, understand the difficulties that they face when they
try to pool budgets and then tackle some of those difficulties
that they confront. That is the first thing to say. I think that
will come over time. I am a great believer in pooled budgets,
because I think nothing focuses the mind more than knowing that
you have all got to decide how to spend the money together from
the same pocket of money. Again, the sort of example I always
use is who should pay for the wheelchair for the disabled child,
and the endless rows you have between health, social care and
education as to who foots that bill is never in the child's interest
and is a terrible waste of human resources as people argue about
it and it can have a terrible impact on the outcome of the child,
so we need to push in that direction. If we move to looked after
children, who are the ones that I think you were referring to,
some authorities spend a huge amount of money on some individual
children, sometimes inappropriately placed outside borough in
very expensive residential accommodation, that is an enormous
challenge which would be there whether or not we had the Change
for Children programme. I think that is a traditional challenge
that has always faced local authority social services departments.
We are doing a number of things around that. We are looking and
working with local authorities to improve their commissioning
practices so that you do not get a Friday night frantic social
worker with a child coming into care without any place to put
the child, ringing around and ending up putting the child 200
miles away in a very expensive, inappropriate residential children's
home; so better commissioning. We are doing a lot of work to try
and ensure that we encourage the growth of foster carers and the
growth of foster carers in the local authority so that you do
not get children going across local authority boundaries and therefore
removed from their families and their friends and no networks
and no schools and all that matters there.
Q498 Valerie Davey: I can give you
a good news story on that. In our area we are doing well on that?
Margaret Hodge: And we are growing
adoptions. That was the last thing I wanted to say. I think we
have been jolly successful as a government. We have had an increase
in adoptions. I think it is a 37% improvement since 1999-2000
in the number of children who are adopted from care, and that
provides the stability of a loving family which will ensure that
you can improve the outcomes for children.
Q499 Valerie Davey: I hear all you
are saying, and it is good practice here, it is good practice
here and it does not have to be the same style. How then are you
going to measure this in terms of the criteria which will be expected
of local authorities: because they have got draft guidance coming
down which they are commenting on, they have got funding which
they are desperately trying to pool, they have some youngsters
already very expensive who they are trying to draw back and deal
with. What will be the judgment on these local authorities and
when are you going to say, "Hold on, this is not good enough?",
how you going to determine that?
Margaret Hodge: We have got a
pretty comprehensive performance management framework that we
are putting in place. We start with the five outcomes. From those
we have developed what we have called the 25 current aims which
will focus action in relation to each outcome. They derive from
the targets, the PSA targets that we have in Government. They
translate into CPA targets for local authorities, and criteria
under which Primary Care Trusts will be judged. We then have each
local authority doing an analysis of its needs against those aims,
developing a children's plan against those aims, having a conversation,
the single conversation, which is our way of communicating with
local authorities, against those aims. You have a coherence of
aims across Government and across services—you have those
translated into local authorities—that determines their
needs assessment and their children's plan. We then have pretty
tough performance assessment, both from our regional advisors,
from the inspectors, and we have the joint area review at local
level, which is all the inspectors coming together to see how
well an area is delivering services for children. All that gives
us the framework to measure performance, and star ratings and
all that stuff flows from it. If authorities fail children through
the services they provide, we will intervene. We have a new power
under the Children Act which mirrors the power of intervention
into local education authorities and we will intervene.
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