Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-93)
PROFESSOR BRYAN
RODGERS, PROFESSOR
JUDY DUNN,
DR LEON
FEINSTEIN AND
DR AMANDA
WADE
12 JULY 2006
Q80 Chairman: In ACT.
Professor Rodgers: That is right.
It has terrific advantages; we work with policy developers on
a day to day basis with research projects, we advise on policy
issues and we also get involved in intervention projects that
are run by various departments and agencies. One of the things
I would stress in the family breakdown area is that it is something
that extends across portfolios and different agencies; we have
got interventions at the moment in the family court, we have one
project which is funded by the Department of Health to take place
within the family court, we have projects running with the Child
Support Agency in Australia and there are many agencies, government
organisations and non-government organisations involved in the
field that brings them into contact with issues to do with family
separation. The one thing I would like to stress overall—because
I realise you are a committee based on education and skills—is
to consider how you develop policy in that broader context so
that you have policy that extends across portfolios and takes
up the challenge of how different services—and you give
examples here which I am very pleased about—are integrated,
but also that the policies are clear that will guide that integration.
You have to integrate at all levels, I think, from policy development
down to service provision. There are broad themes in the separation
literature which I think are very important in guiding how agencies
work together, and some of those stem from research. We have a
particular distinction which goes right back to the issue I talked
about earlier of short term and long term change. We have some
agencies that come into contact with families, particularly around
the time of separation; the Family Court is the obvious example
of that, and there are particular kinds of interventions that
the Family Court is well-suited to be involved in. There are other
agencies—the Child Support Agency is a good example of this—where
they are in contact with separated families long after the separation
occurs. Rather than answer the specific question you have here
I am trying to throw open a more general framework for how policy
development and implementation, both of pilot studies and of broader
interventions, might take place, that brings in expertise from
different domains and agencies which you may not be familiar with.
There is no reason why, in the context of education and skills,
you should be familiar with, say, how the Family Court operates.
Q81 Jeff Ennis: I get the feeling,
Chairman, from virtually all the witnesses that we do not make
enough use in this country of the voluntary children-based charity
organisations in trying to rectify the situation shall we say
that currently exists in terms of policy initiatives, involving
them more. Would you agree with that?
Professor Rodgers: I suspect it
is no different in different countries. There are impediments
to those sorts of approaches and in Australia we have big bodies
for various sectors of the non-government organisations, so in
family relationships fields there are big bodies that government
interacts with, but even there they tend to interact within a
single portfolio. There are some exceptions: attorney-generals
and family and community services will both work with agencies
like Relationships Australia, but there are still great divides.
A lot of issues to do with family separation at the moment that
attract attention in Australia are to do with mental health, and
suicide prevention is one of those which falls within the Department
of Health, obviously. It is a great gulf for departments like
that to cross to interact with agencies on the ground, with organisations
that operate at the grassroots level. They do not have those sorts
of formal structures to do that.
Q82 Jeff Ennis: Can I just pursue
this question, Chairman, because I can remember a project in Grimethorpe,
not very far from my own village in fact, as you know, Chairman,
in South Yorkshire; that was a project funded by NACRO to help
young people in that area, and it was not necessarily for parents
who had not got young offenders as it were, but that seemed to
have quite a good effect on that village. That was a time-limited
project, but do we need to bring back more of these sorts of projects,
do you think?
Dr Feinstein: They have to be
part of the portfolio of approaches. There are issues also about
the governance structures within which this happens, and if you
think about all the different sorts of institutions that may be
involved in the lives of children who are going through family
breakdowns—and we have talked about the schools and other
kinds of out-of school contexts—there may be social services
involvement, there may be health issues as well and then issues
in relation to the DWP and also the criminal justice system. All
these things may come into play at different times with different
children and there are also all kinds of local agencies that may
be involved. At community level I would have thought that voluntary
organisations may provide exactly what we have been talking about,
and certainly with others in the schools there may be a context
for support. It does raise governance issues, however, in terms
of the extent to which policy is realised through local authorities
as playing a strategic role and how, amid all the different agencies,
you can actually have a common assessment framework and some degree
of integrated provision that allows autonomy to voluntary and
third sector agencies that may not want to be integrated too much.
There is a strength to that, but there does have to be some form
of governance that can create strategic capability so that that
does not become fractured, with lots of people falling through
the gaps.
Q83 Mr Marsden: We have already had
some brief discussions about the role of grandparents, but I would
now like to ask you a couple of questions about the role of grandparents
in loco parentis, whether that is a formal or an informal
one, and the policy implications. Perhaps I could start with you,
Dr Wade, because I notice from your biographical details that
your most recent work has actually been on contact and residence
disputes with the Lord Chancellor's Department, where I was at
one point as PPS. The question I have got is it is a grey area,
is it not, this issue of grandparents in loco parentis,
and the attitudes of local authorities to it, certainly on the
basis of my own casework, seems to vary enormously. Does that
extend, in your experience, to the attitudes of schools and teachers
in terms of discussing problems or raising problems about children
who are being looked after by their grandparents and, if it does,
are there perhaps further policy things that we need to do to
address that?
Dr Wade: My research in the schools
did not actually touch on that, but certainly the schools did
say that it was very difficult in some circumstances to know who
to contact about a child, where children have complex families.
It is open to grandparents, is it not, to obtain a residence order—for
example, giving them parental responsibility for children, in
which case one assumes that the school record will show that the
grandparent is the person—
Q84 Mr Marsden: If I could interrupt
you there, you are absolutely right; one of the problems is—and
certainly myself and I think other colleagues find this as well
in their casework—that you often have a grey area situation
where the grandparents either may be going for a residence order
or, in some cases, do not want to have a residence order formally
because maybe a daughter or a son-in-law or whatever is going
through a very, very difficult patch. They are being very supportive
and in effect they are actually in loco parentis, but they
do not go for the formal position because that then potentially
affects adversely the rights of the parents at a subsequent stage
and there are all sorts of things that come in as well. This issue
of the formal recognition is fine, but what about the informal
ones? Dr Feinstein, is this something that you have either views
on or experience of?
Dr Feinstein: I do not think I
understand it sufficiently to be able to comment. It is clearly
an important issue, but I do not know.
Professor Rodgers: Just a couple
of observations from the Australian perspective: the new family
law legislation is going to include some more specific references
to grandparents, so people are waiting on it to see what form
that takes. In terms of pretty practical issues, grandparents
have been a fairly neglected area of research work and simple
survey work in Australia, but more recent studies of family types
show that about 2% of children in Australia do not live with either
of their original parents and half of those live with their grandparents.
It has been realised therefore that even as a resource grandparents
are important in that picture, that is where they are providing
the main help, but that number increases substantially if you
then include children who are with a lone parent family and who
live with grandparents as well, that is particularly with young
children. The Australian Institute of Family Studies has just
written up some of the work from our first longitudinal study
of Australian children and perhaps afterwards if I can contact
the secretariat I could provide the references to that. It would
be very interesting.
Q85 Mr Marsden: That would be very
helpful because I am sure this is going to be a growing issue—I
will not say a growing problem, but a growing issue.
Professor Rodgers: I am sorry
to interrupt but I know from some of the government departments
that I work with that they have started having internal, informal
reviews even before any change in legislation about some of the
issues that you are alluding to; that is that at the service delivery
level the people who work in some agencies are not actually very
clear about things like entitlements of grandparents to state
benefits and so on, and they have discovered that they have actually
been giving misleading information and erroneous information about
such things which are very important to those families.
Mr Marsden: That is very helpful. Just
a final question; and this really picks up on something that DfES
has said to us about its views of family change and also separation.
They have suggested that those sorts of issues are addressed in
personal, social and health education in schools, but we have
had some discussion in another inquiry that we are conducting
here on citizenship education, about just how effective PSHE is
and whether in fact citizenship becomes a proxy for it or whatever.
Again, I do not know if any member of the panel has experience,
but I am asking you, Leon, because of your own connections with
DfES, do you have any views to suggest how effectively these sorts
of family issues are actually treated in PSHE sessions?
Q86 Chairman: We are picking on you
because of your relationship with the DfES.
Dr Feinstein: That makes it particularly
difficult, but I do not have any direct evidence on the question.
What I would say from the summaries of research that I have seen
I do not think this is so much an issue of a specific element
of the curriculum, it is much more about the general pastoral
care if you like of children in schools.
Q87 Mr Marsden: You do not think
these are the sorts of issues that either are or should be in
that area.
Dr Feinstein: In terms of Amanda's
point earlier about the need for schools to have some context
within which discussions about family breakdown may happen, PSHE
may be it, but in terms of the general support for the child if
there are important issues that are related to family breakdown,
PSHE is not going to be, I would have thought, the right kind
of curriculum context.
Q88 Mr Marsden: Has anybody else
got any brief comments or experience on that?
Professor Dunn: I have a brief
comment on grandparents. The Grandparents Association—I
do not know if you are familiar with them—are very concerned
indeed about the role of usually paternal grandparents after a
family separation, because for many of them it means a loss of
contact with their grandchildren. The legal possibilities are
very unclear and unsorted out, so I do think if we are talking
about families then that is an issue that needs addressing.
Q89 Mrs Dorries: This is about grandparents
again actually. I have found that in some areas grandparents have
become in loco parentis because of an increasing drug problem
that we have, and they find themselves with grandchildren and
no official recognition, no recognition at school or benefits
or anything else at a time when they are at their weakest. The
Grandparents Association has done a huge amount of work on this,
but I think it is a problem that is going to get worse not better
unless we step in. Do you see practical ways in which the Government
can formulate policy or step in with these sorts of cases which
can offer almost immediate relief? We understand there is a huge
amount of work, but actually there is deadlock and nothing happens.
Have you any ideas where we could go?
Professor Dunn: As a Committee
do you mean, or more broadly?
Q90 Mrs Dorries: More broadly.
Professor Dunn: I would have thought
the Grandparents Association would be the people who have thought
out what are the pressing issues there, which overlap—
Q91 Mrs Dorries: Unfortunately, nobody
is listening, that is the problem. To go on to children's centres,
I am quite interested in the concept of children's centres and
contact centres. I have worked at Kids Company in Camberwell,
under the arches, and I suppose that is the epitome of the ultimate
contact centre in deprived areas, providing the leading edge of
that sort of thing. I am bit concerned as to this one size fits
all and they will have this model and we replicate it across the
country because obviously centres like the Kids Company are meeting
a particular need in that area, and other areas in the country
like Jeff has just indicated would have different types of models
that would fit their background in more practical ways. Do you
think that the idea of contact centres should be left to NGOs
or should be adapted and implemented in a more flexible way than
people are talking about at the moment, because the model seems
very rigid at the moment in terms of what is being planned?
Professor Rodgers: I do not know
enough about contact centres here so I am kind of worried about
it, but is this for supervised contact or is it also handover?
Mrs Dorries: They are being talked about
at the moment in terms of before and after school care and providing
additional—Leon might know more about it because it is the
DfES that it comes from—pastoral-type support to children
before and after school as well.
Q92 Jeff Ennis: Wraparound care.
Dr Feinstein: Nothing that I have
seen leads me to the view that a one size fits all kind of approach
is being adopted, but you may have—
Q93 Mrs Dorries: That is the model
which is being talked about all the time and we do not hear the
word flexibility mentioned very often.
Dr Feinstein: The whole issue
of personalisation is key to a lot of government thinking and
a lot of DfES thinking, so I would be surprised if there was not
recognition that different communities have different needs. But
there are general principles about what works that do need to
be highlighted, I think, and one of the key principles is that
there is not a one size fits all thing; one of the key principles
is that involving the community in the development of the programme,
involving the young people and the parents in the design and implementation
is a key principle, so that would argue against the fixed model
being designed from Smith Street and being sent around the country.
Clearly, if that was happening I think that would be not particularly
likely to succeed.
Mrs Dorries: Thank you.
Chairman: This has been a really interesting
session for us and an unusual one because normally we call witnesses
when we are embarked on an inquiry, but because members of the
Committee were interested in actually finding facts we contacted
you as the very best researchers we could possibly get in front
of the Committee, and you have proved that we were right in our
choice. We have learned a great deal about the whole area—we
have learnt that we are calling it the wrong thing for a start—and
we will go away and think about that. Some of the things we have
learned today we will use when the Minister comes in front of
us for scrutiny and it will certainly inform our work on Every
Child Matters which, as Bryan probably knows less than the
others, is an attempt to have joined-up governance across five
or six departments. Indeed, last year when we looked at this we
went to British Columbia to see their Children's Act which has
been working rather longer. Do remain in contact with the Committee;
we take our responsibilities in this area very seriously and if
you think there are areas that we should be looking at, we would
be very grateful if you would e-mail us or get into contact with
us in some way. Thank you.
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