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30 Jan 2007 : Column 52WHcontinued
There is a risk that children affected by the illness or substance misuse of adults who would otherwise be expected to care for them are in danger of falling through the gap between adult and childrens services.
On this issue I recently asked a parliamentary question, and, indeed, the Minister replied at column 1398W on 19 January. I should be much reassured, I suppose, because we do have a framework for the assessment of children in need and their families, and guidance for fair access to care services, but what is happening on the ground? We cannot afford to be complacent.
In a report called The state of social care in England 2005-2006, the Commission for Social Care Inspection said:
Given the separation of adults and childrens services, and our assessment that no more than 20% of councils are taking a wholly strategic approach to carers services, it is hard to see how young carers issues can be routinely addressed unless there are clear and robust interdepartmental policies and procedures...Care needs to be taken that addressing the needs of disabled parents and young carers does not fall between stools.
I cannot emphasise that point enough. Some young carers, when asked about assessments, said that social services decided that
all was well because the young carer seemed to be coping.
The report quotes one comment that
because we can cope day to day they say we can managebut we need help as well.
Tim Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con): I applaud the hon. Lady for securing the debate. She and I have done a lot of work on the subject and I share her shame that more is not being done. Is there not an enormous neglected army of young carers, who are not properly recognised, and whom it is convenient not to recognise, because of the payments that go with that? In addition, is it not true that that lack of recognition extends to health as well as education, and that many of those children are not taken into the confidence of doctors dealing with the disabilities of their parents or other charges, and that they feel excluded? They are doing the job unpaid and without being looked after, and without being included in the process of finding out how to do the job better and look after the parents or loved ones they care for.
Annette Brooke: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his helpful intervention, and I agree that we must pay tribute to that invisible army of young carers for all that they do. We need a joined-up approach in education, health and social care.
I have one particular example. The names have been changed. Johns mum, Jackie, had a stroke and lost mobility. John, 13, was caring for mum, including helping her with intimate care such as using the toilet during the night. The provision of intimate care resulted in a deteriorating parent-child relationship, tiredness and behavioural difficulties in school. It encompassed all three strands: education, social care and health. The intervention needed to prevent Johns excessive caring role was identified as night support for Jackie. However, Jackie did not qualify for night support from adult services in her own right, while childrens services felt that it could not fund night support for an adult. The services debated who should pay while John carried on caring.
I should therefore like every local authority to have a joint working protocol between childrens and adult services, and perhaps to be inspected on their joint working. I should also like a commitment to review the effectiveness of the fair access to care services guidance in ensuring that every adult service asks all its clients, Are you a parent? How does your condition/disability/etc. affect you as a parent? And how can we support you as a parent?
It would also be worth while reviewing the fact that 16 and 17-year-old carers, who try to juggle education and caring, lack an entitlement to carers benefit. It makes no sense to give them a financial motivation to leave education when the Government are proposing education until age 18. The Government must consider in their new proposals how they will support young carers.
We need a securely funded young carer service in every area. Young carers speak highly of their local young carer groups; they make such a difference to their lives. Many voluntary organisations are involved in the provision of such groups. They include the Princess Royal Trust for Carers, NCH, the childrens charity, the Childrens Society and Barnardos.
The challenges that young carers face are beginning to be recognised, but there is still a lack of knowledge on the part of families and of those people in the work force who could offer more support. The principles of practice that the Childrens Society is developing should be included in the training of all relevant professionals. It is vital that front-line staff in education, health and social care are offered consistent training and access to ongoing information to deliver whole-family working and joint working between childrens and adult services. Practitioners must understand the needs of young carers and their families.
I conclude by paying tribute to the enormous amount of good work that is done in many local authority areas by many organisations in the voluntary sector, particularly by the Princess Royal Trust, which has provided me with a great deal of material for todays debate.
For the past few years, it has not been possible for a Minister to attend the festival about which I spoke earlier. I hope that the Minister present will be able to attend in the summer next year, because young people want to talk to people and they want us to listen, but most of all, they want action to make their lives better.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Education and Skills (Mr. Parmjit Dhanda): It is always a pleasure to be in a Chamber under your chairmanship, Mr. Gale. I thank the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and North Poole (Annette Brooke) for securing the debate. I should know her constituency by now, as we have had quite a few debates in this Chamber, and indeed in the House.
I am pleased to have the opportunity to discuss young carers with the hon. Lady. Young carers may not always face circumstances as extreme as some other children in need, because they have, by definition, homes and families; however, all Members present recognise that young carers face particular hardship.
The last census suggested that about 150,000 young people in England and Wales are in that position. The work of Chris Dearden and Saul Becker in the field suggests that the average age of young carers is about 12. I know from visits that I have paid to organisations in my constituency that they support carers as young as eight, and in some caseswho knows?perhaps even younger. Half of young carers deliver care for 11 or more hours a week, and many young carers face extra challenges. More than half live in lone-parent families, and perhaps one in 10 cares for more than one person. Not surprisingly, more than a quarter of secondary school-age carers experience problems with their education. We must be frank: those figures are stark.
I want to be quite clear that, where possible, children should be discouraged from undertaking inappropriate levels of responsibility. The Government want young carers to gain maximum life experiences from educational opportunities, health care and social care. Young carers should not be put under such a great burden in their caring that it has an adverse impact on their development and life chances. However, I accept that it continues to be the reality for many thousands of youngsters every day of the week.
Young carers do not tend to make noisy demands of Governments, local authorities or health services. Many are reluctant even to disclose the extra burden that they carry. Their needs are often entirely overlooked by all service providers in a locality. Young carers do not want to be categorised as victims, nor labelled as vulnerable. They form a group of often mature and thoughtful young people who frequently do what they do by choice, and they may be anxious that their loved ones will not otherwise receive the right level of care.
There is excellent voluntary work in the field, as the hon. Lady highlighted. That includes the young carers initiative. My Department is proud to fund that work, led by the Childrens Society, which does so much to offer information and training to young carers and to their families, and to promote their social inclusion.
The Government continue to play their part through clear guidance on the assessment of children in need. Issued in 2000, the framework for the assessment of children in need and their families was published with accompanying practice guidance. We have made sure that young carers are reflected in guidance on the Carers (Equal Opportunities) Act 2004. The Act arose from an excellent Back-Bench initiative, which the Government were pleased to support.
Local authorities are funded for their responsibilities towards children and towards families in general, and they are also funded through the carers special grant. It will be £185 million in 2007-08, and 20 per cent. of it is earmarked for childrens services, including young carer services, which will involve helping young carers to have a break.
However, the issues that really demand thought do not always concern money or the law, as the hon. Lady said. We must start to organise locally to make a reality of holistic approaches to families, and of outcome-focused and personalised approaches to the needs of children, including young carers.
I have mentioned projects in my constituency. I recently visited the Gloucestershire Young Carers organisation and saw that each young carer who is referred to it receives a home visit to assess their needs, and signposting to the appropriate service. There are 14 young carer groups in my county of Gloucestershire, which as a whole cater for carers between the ages of eight and 18. Several of those groups, such as the ones in Gloucester and Stroud, are split into junior and senior groups. I was particularly impressed to hear about some of the work that those groups do with Connexions services to address the needs of young carers in that age group and to tackle the likelihood of them becoming NEETnot in education, employment or training.
Young carers do not want to be labelled or patronised; they do want to be recognised, listened to, understood and respected. They do not want isolation, or to be seen as victims. They want what their peers want: the five key outcomes of Every Child Matters, which are to be healthy, stay safe, enjoy and achieve, make a positive contribution and have economic well-being. I know that there are calls for special teachers, school governors, health workers and so forth to have prescribed roles and targets with respect to young carers. I am always interested to hear of best practice in constituencies and local authority areas, and I would be delighted to hear of any that the hon. Lady is aware of in her constituency.
It is precisely because Every Child Matters is not just a slogan that we have so often resisted the creation of dedicated bureaucracy and officialdom around many vulnerable groups, including young carers. However, that is not the same as pretending that the needs do not exist, nor is it a recipe for not addressing them. We want a focus on individual children and their outcomes, not labels and deficits.
Our new school reforms will help, and they contain real opportunities to support young carers more effectively. Through personalised learning, teachers will tailor to an unprecedented degree what and how they teach to pupils individual needs. There will be tailored support for those who fall behind for whatever reason, and there will be much greater flexibility in learning, both in content and in accessibility. By 2008, all schools should be able to offer e-learning resources, both in and out of school. We are encouraging them also to make a personal online space available to every pupil.
We know the risks to young carers educational attainment. We know about the difficulties experienced by young carers at school, from absence and lateness to
bullying and behavioural problems, which the hon. Lady has mentioned. It is clear that schools do need a strong awareness of the issues.
Tim Loughton: A lot of what the Minister has described will bring improvements, but we are not asking for rocket science. For the past few years, children have told us clearly and strongly that they need a teacher in their school who understands their problem and can give them the sort of flexibility that their responsibilities often dictate. I do not think that that is the unduly bureaucratic system that the Minister has warned against. A central recommendation that it would be good practice to have such a teacher in each school, properly trained and informed, would go a long way to assuaging many of the fears of young carers, notwithstanding the other improvements the Minister thinks he can bring about.
Mr. Dhanda: I entirely understand the hon. Gentlemans points and where he is coming from. His is a heartfelt view, but we are not prescribing things from the centre for the reasons I have outlined regarding Every Child Matters. The practice is not to focus on particular staff for particular groups of children, but instead to ensure that every child does matter. Nevertheless, the hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It may well be that individual schools or local authorities wish to take a closer look at the matter. There may well be evidence of the practice working in places, and if that is the case, I would always be interested in hearing more and debating the issues with him. It is entirely fair for him to make such heartfelt points, but we have resisted dealing with the matter from the centre for the reasons I have already highlighted.
We must continue to promote awareness of young carers needs in other waysfor example, through personal, social and health education, the citizenship curriculum, the standards for qualified teacher status and anti-bullying guidanceso that all schools and teachers are aware of the needs of young carers. Young carers are likely to be present in every secondary school and many primary schools, but we cannot always identify them as individuals and thus offer them direct personal help. Understandably, not everyone is either familiar or comfortable with the issues. There is clearly a case for confidence-building measures, so that young carers know that it will be okay to ask a teacher, or whoever, for help. They need to hear that message from schools, and from local childrens services.
We have to accept that sometimes things can be done better. There is excellent practice going on, but there are times when the system does not work for young carers in the way that it should. We cannot accept, for example, cases in which adult social services visit the disabled parent and ignore or neglect their carers personal needs just because he or she is a child. Professionals cannot ignore the first-hand experience and knowledge of a young carer when compiling care plans for the adult.
Annette Brooke: Will the Minister reassure us that he will give some leadership and guidance to spread the best practice of teachers who are acting very well in schools? Will he do something about the fact that children are falling into a gap at the moment, however many pieces of paper he is pumping out?
Mr. Dhanda: That is a slight change of tone. I preferred the hon. Ladys initial comments in which she did not speak of papers being pushed out, but of effective and worthwhile initiatives, not least the work with the voluntary sector that we have been supporting financially. She mentioned some of the grants that we have made available and the additional funding, not least the £185 million for the carers allowance, 20 per cent. of which is going to children. I was about to come on to some of those areas, and I am happy to do so whether or not her tone is slightly more heated than it was.
We must not fail in our duty to tell young carers about their entitlements. These are issues not of legislation or money, but of good practice and guidance, as the hon. Lady rightly said. Sometimes local solutions have to be found, based on individual circumstances. To take one example, we are not going to make special rules that exempt young carers from school attendance regulations, and I do not think that they want to be singled out in that way. However, such issues must be handled sensitively with due regard to individual needs. That will sometimes demand careful work between a young person, a parent, a school, social services and the education service. Sometimes an imaginative and a joined-up approach to the rules is required.
Such things cannot be prescribed from Whitehall, but there are some things that we can do. During the recent passage of the Education and Inspections Bill, which the hon. Lady mentioned, Lord Adonis wrote to peers about a number of actions he envisaged, such as an improved focus on the issues of bullying and attendance. Last October, we published a revised version of the Departments guidance, Advice and guidance to Schools and Local Authorities on Managing Behaviour and Attendance: groups of pupils at particular risk. I know that that is a long title, but it is an effective document that reflects comments from the Princess Royal Trust for Carers. The document contains links to further more detailed information supplied by the trust.
Work is continuing on the revision of our anti-bullying guidance, Dont Suffer in Silence, to include material on how to prevent and tackle the bullying of young carers, among other vulnerable groups. The document will be a web-based resource and will include links to voluntary organisations. It is one of a range of measures that we will be taking
Mr. Roger Gale (in the Chair): Order.
John Robertson (Glasgow, North-West) (Lab): I am grateful for the opportunity to speak on water projects in Nigeria. The all-party group on Nigeria, of which I am the chairman, has visited Nigeria twice in the past two years. During our most recent visit, we visited several communities for which the supply of clean water was a challenge. We know from statistics that such communities are far from unusual. According to UNICEF, fewer than half the people of Nigeria have access to safe water and even fewer have access to adequate sanitation.
As in so many other parts of the world, the Department for International Development has stepped in to help provide the most basic of human rights. Our group visited the Wudil water scheme in the northern Nigerian state of Kano to see the work for ourselves. Kano is one of five states where DFID, in partnership with the World Bank and the United States Agency for International Development, is seeking to deepen its engagement with the local state government, to build capacity so that local administrators can better meet the basic needs of the 9 million people in their care. Among the most fundamental of those needs is a supply of clean water. Kano sits on the edge of the Sahara desert. People spend hours walking through scorching sun to fetch dirty water from overused and polluted water sources. The results speak for themselves in indices such as child mortality, which is high even as compared with the high level elsewhere in Nigeria.
It is DFIDs responsibility to oversee the building of the water projects that are required for those people, but it is the job of the local government of Kano to ensure that those projects are properly maintained and regularly checked.
Jim Sheridan (Paisley and Renfrewshire, North) (Lab): My hon. Friend makes a valid point. It is up to DFID to assist the local government there in providing the water supplies. However, given the experience that we shared on our visit to Nigeria, does he agree that there is a deep level of corruption in local government? That is the fundamental problem there.
John Robertson: My hon. Friend makes a good point. He is the secretary of our group and takes a great interest. I assure him that I will deal with corruption in detail later.
Perhaps more fundamentally, the government of Kano will not be in a position to supply the needs of those people unless it has full ownership and capacity, and an understanding of how to plan, implement and maintain the services by itself. DFIDs entirely practical aim, there as elsewhere, is to make itself redundant by working with the local state government and local people to implement pilot projects, before gradually stepping back from those communities.
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