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15 May 2007 : Column 668W—continued
The latest figures on early education places for three and four-year-olds in England were published in Statistical First Release (SFR) 32/2006 “Provision for children under five years of age in England—January 2006 (final)” in August. Figures for January 2007 will be published in SFR 19/2007 “Provision for children under five years of age in England: January 2007” at 9.30 am on 31 May 2007. Both are available on my Department’s website:
Pupils: Disability Aids
Annette Brooke: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills (1) what steps he is taking to ensure that disabled children and young people are provided with a wheelchair which meets their clinical, social and educational needs; [134779]
(2) what assessment he has made of the extent to which wheelchair assessments for children support the delivery of the five key outcomes envisaged by Every Child Matters; [134778]
(3) what guidance his Department (a) has issued and (b) plans to issue on the role of primary care trusts and local education authorities in jointly commissioning and resourcing wheelchair services for children and young people in line with Standard 8 of the National Service Framework for Children. [135125]
Mr. Ivan Lewis: I have been asked to reply.
The Department for Education and Skills leads the cross-government programme Every Child Matters; Change for Children but it is not responsible for all aspects of policy on children. The Department of Health is responsible for the health of disabled children and for wheelchair services for adults and children. It therefore leads the Be Healthy strand of the Every Child Matters programme.
The Department has made it clear that eligibility for services and support is for councils to determine in a locally consistent manner. We believe that local-decision making by councils is an important means by which local people have the opportunity to influence decisions about resources, charging and priorities.
The Care Services Improvement Partnership (CSIP) report ‘Out and About’, which was published on 20 October 2006, highlights the importance of services being committed to standard 8 of the Children's National Service Framework (NSF). The Commission
for Social Care Inspection (CSCI) will be referring to the best practice checklist, contained in the report, as part of its inspection process and will be specifically including wheelchair services.
The Transforming Community Equipment and Wheelchair Services (TCEWS) programme is looking at how best to address the issues the services face through development of a new delivery model in collaboration with stakeholders. The Department for Education and Skills is working closely with us on this ongoing programme of work. We anticipate that the new model will be capable of implementation by April 2008
The TCEWS programme was able to develop two potential models for wheelchair services in collaboration with users and their carers, seven wheelchair services, the wheelchair services managers and to refine the potential models with practitioners and suppliers. Further data are required before recommendations can be made for the way forward. A further data gathering exercise has been approved and an update will be provided in autumn 2007.
As part of our commitment set out in the Children's NSF, we presented, on 16 April 2006, a new self-assessment tool for commissioners of children's and young people's health services. The tool will play an important role in ensuring that all commissioners are equipped and able to deliver improved quality and outcomes for services for children and young people.
We are currently consulting on the Commissioning Framework for Health and Well-being which sets out how local commissioners can successfully commission services that improve health and well-being and help people remain independent. It also consults on a new duty for local authorities and primary care trusts to work together on a joint strategic needs assessment. This will outline current and predicted needs of the local population so providers can best promote the health and well-being of their local populations, particularly those groups that currently get a poor response from services.
Every Child Matters aims to improve outcomes for disabled children through better integration of services, at strategic and operational levels, including the pooling of budgets. The introduction of children's trust arrangements should see services coming together to provide more joined-up and coherent services and make a major contribution to the NSF standard 8 vision for equipment provision.
The Department does not collect centrally the average waiting times for children and young people under the age of 18 following assessment to receive a lightweight manual and a powered indoor and outdoor wheelchair in each of the last three years.
The Department does not collect centrally the data for the percentage of children under the age of 18 years who met local eligibility criteria and received a powered indoor and outdoor wheelchair within three months, six months and one year of an assessment in the last three years.
School Food Trust
Miss McIntosh:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how much has been made
available by his Department to (a) the School Food Trust and (b) each other similar organisation in each of the last three years. [135974]
Mr. Dhanda: The School Food Trust has been allocated £1 million in 2005-06, £7 million in 2006-07 and £7 million in 2007-08 in grant in aid. There are no other Department for Education and Skills agencies working in this area.
Schools: Contraception
Mr. Amess: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what the evidential basis was for the statement made by Ofsted in its report, “Time for Change? Personal, Social and Health Education”, that school nurses are providing an important service by offering the morning after pill to pupils; whom Ofsted consulted before making this statement; what recent representations he has received about the Ofsted report from (a) parents, (b) head teachers and (c) organisations; whether his Department plans to reply to the report; how many copies of the report were (i) published, (ii) sold and (iii) provided free of charge by Ofsted; how many copies of the report were provided to his Department; at what cost to (A) his Department and (B) Ofsted; what discussions (x) Ministers and (y) officials have had with Ofsted about the report; if he will place copies of the report in the Vote Office; how members of the public may obtain the report; at what cost; and if he will make a statement. [132650]
Jim Knight: The Department has not received representations from parents, head teachers or organisations about this report. The findings of Ofsted are given careful consideration but the Department does not routinely produce formal responses to such reports. Ministers and officials have ongoing discussions with Ofsted about issues relating to PSHE.
Matters concerning the distribution of this particular report, and the evidential basis for judgments within it, are for Ofsted. HM Chief Inspector, Christine Gilbert, has written to the hon. Member on these matters and a copy of her reply has been placed in the Library. Ofsted’s report can be accessed via this link
Letter from Christine Gilbert, dated 2 May 2007:
Your recent parliamentary question has been passed to me, as Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector, for reply.
You asked what the evidential basis was for the statement made by Ofsted in its report, “Time for Change? Personal, Social and Health Education (HMI070049)”, that school nurses are providing an important service by offering the morning after pill to pupils; whom Ofsted consulted before making this statement; how many copies of the report were (i) published, (ii) sold and (iii) provided free of charge by Ofsted; how many copies of the report were provided to the Department; at what cost to (A) the Department and (B) Ofsted; how members of the public may obtain the report; at what cost.
Our report states that:
“school nurses can also provide a valuable service, particularly in terms of providing emergency hormonal contraception and advising on other forms of contraception”.
This is in line with non-statutory guidance published by the Department for Education and Skills (DfES). The DfES publication “Teenage Pregnancy Next Steps: Guidance for Local Authorities and Primary Care Trusts on Effective Delivery of
Local Strategies” (2006) sets out the key findings from ‘deep dive’ reviews carried out by the Teenage Pregnancy Unit to identify factors responsible for the significant variation in performance between local areas, including between areas that are statistically similar. The guidance states:
“Provision of young people focused contraception/sexual health services, trusted by teenagers and well known by professionals working with them”. This was the factor most commonly cited as having the biggest impact on conception rate reductions in the high performing areas. Features of successful services reflected the “Best practice guidance on the provision of effective contraception and advice services for young people”, issued by the Teenage Pregnancy Unit in 2000: easy accessibility in the right location with opening hours convenient to young people; provision of the full range of contraceptive methods, including long acting methods; a strong focus on sexual health promotion (as well as reactive services) through, for example, outreach work in schools, work with professionals to improve their ability to engage with young people on sexual health issues; and through highly visible publicity. Effective services also had a strong focus on meeting the specific needs of young men. All high-performing areas also had condom distribution schemes involving a wide range of local agencies and/or access to emergency contraception in non-clinical settings.
Ofsted’s own discussions with young people suggest they want and trust services in schools and welcome and recognise the commitment that schools show to meeting their wider health needs.
The report is only available on the Ofsted website www.ofsted.gov.uk. It can be accessed at no cost to members of the public.
A copy of this reply has been sent to Jim Knight MP, Minister of State for Schools, and will be placed in the library of both Houses.
Young People
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills what steps the Government have taken to implement the policies laid out in the paper Youth Matters: Next Steps; and whether implementation will be completed by April 2008. [137332]
Mr. Dhanda: We published Youth Matters: Next Steps in March 2006, setting out our plans to reform services for young people, particularly to narrow the gap between the most disadvantaged and the rest. Considerable progress has been made to implement these policies over the past year. We have introduced new legislation (Education and Inspections Act 2006) which places a duty on all local authorities to secure access for young people in their area to sufficient positive activities and publicise these. Young people up and down the country are accessing the Youth Opportunity and Youth Capital funds—enabling them to undertake wider activities and decide how the additional £115 million investment should be spent.
The Government established the new charity, v, which has been tasked with encouraging more young people to volunteer. Significant progress has been made to reach a target of one million new young volunteers and attract private sector finance for these new opportunities.
Through our reforms to targeted youth support, we are improving the range and coherence of services that support vulnerable young people in their pivotal teenage years. 14 children's trusts took part in the
targeted support pathfinders during 2006 and guidance on developing targeted services was published in April 2007.
Integrated youth support services will be in place throughout England by 2008. For Connexions, this means a major transition whereby the funding and responsibility for securing delivery of services, currently held by 47 Connexions partnerships, will pass to 150 local authorities working through children's trust arrangements by 2008.
We are also developing new quality standards for young people’s information advice and guidance (IAG) and the new standards will be published by July 2007.
After careful consideration, we no longer intend to run the youth opportunity card pilots. We will continue to explore ways of improving the choices for young people in things to do and places to go while enabling them to have an increasing influence and a real say in what is provided.
Youth Opportunity Fund
Miss McIntosh: To ask the Secretary of State for Education and Skills how much funding has been allocated to the (a) Youth Opportunity Fund and (b) Youth Capital Fund in each of the last two years, broken down by funding stream; and how much each local authority has received. [137331]
Mr. Dhanda: The Youth Opportunity Fund (YOF) and the Youth Capital Fund (YCF) were announced in the Green Paper Youth Matters and have been available to local authorities from April 2006. A total of £115 million is available for both funds over the period 2006-08.
£31 million per year for the Youth Opportunity Fund
£26.5 million per year for the Youth Capital Fund
Information about the Youth Opportunity Fund (YOF) and Youth Capital Fund (YCF) allocations by local authority was sent out in March 2006 in the guidance for the funds. The allocations are the same for each of the two years from 2006-07 and 2007-08 and are set out in the attached annex A of this letter.
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