Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40-59)
BEVERLEY HUGHES
MP AND MR
TOM JEFFERY
20 NOVEMBER 2006
Q40 Mr Marsden: Minister, I would
like to turn to progress on children's trusts, if I may. Obviously,
the Committee understands that there is no one-size-fits-all model
for children's trusts, and that they are proceeding at different
speeds and in different ways across local authorities. What analysis
have you done of the first round of plans that have been submitted
to you? I ask this particularly because there is a growing concern—and
I can say this is reflected by a number of colleagues who have
constituency experiences—that disabled children and their
families in particular have sometimes felt left out of that process;
and there are concerns being expressed by voluntary organisations
and charities associated with them. Where are we up to? Are you
reasonably happy with the progress in terms of the plans, and
what are the pinch points?
Beverley Hughes: In terms of general
progress, I have been almost overwhelmed with the extent to which
local authorities and their partners have grasped this opportunity
and produced developments to a timetable that was far faster than
initially people thought they would. Every area has a Director
of Children's Services post. All of those authorities, 108 of
them, that were required to produce a children and young persons'
plan have done so, and many of those that were not required actually
have done them. There has been rapid take-up of the common assessment
framework, lead professional mechanisms and so on. I think we
have to remember on the plan, because you asked specifically about
that, that for this first plan local authorities had quite a short
time period to develop the plans. They all did so. The plans are
variable. We have commissioned some research by the National Foundation
for Educational Research, which looked at a sample of 75 plans.
They showed good progress. In terms of disabled children, they
did show that a very significant proportion of them had made disabled
children a priority within the plan. Children with learning disabilities
and/or disabilities were the most frequently referenced specific
group in all of those 75 children and young persons' plans, and
this is confirmed by MENCAP in its recent report Off the Radar.
Q41 Mr Marsden: It is one thing to
reference groups in reports like that; it is another thing to
consult and involve them in the actual roll-out. I do not want
to rehearse some of the things that this Committee said in its
SEN report—you have probably seen some of the details there—but
are you concerned that there is not perhaps yet enough understanding
as to how radical the changes that children's trusts are going
to be in terms of bringing in the health and social services side,
working together as a fit; and that if we are not careful through
the law of unintended consequences some of the groups that we
are talking about will miss out in the middle? I have said on
other occasions and in other places that there is no point getting
things right for autistic children for example before 3.15 in
the afternoon, if we do not get things right for them afterwards.
That obviously focuses on the whole issue of how close the educational
and social care aspects come together. Is that an issue that you
recognise?
Beverley Hughes: Certainly there
is variation in the extent to which there are strong partnerships
at local level within the children's trusts between education
and social care but also health and some of the other partners.
There are though some fantastic examples that are breaking new
ground. Brighton and Hove for example—the entire primary
care trust, children and young people's budget and staff have
been transferred into the local authority on a Section 31 agreement
under the Children Act and joint management arrangements. Every
locality within that area will have a completely unified service
across education, social care and health with a single management
structure drawn from both organisations, but it does mean that
certain professionals will be managed by somebody who is not from
their profession. Kent is another trust where commissioning has
been jointly planned for some time. A director of health for children
and young people has been appointed jointly by the NHS and Kent
County Council with plans to fully integrate again on a slightly
different model in Brighton. There are some excellent examples
that honestly I want to promote as really good practice. There
are other areas which are not yet at that point. That is certainly
the case, but we are on a journey here and what I am trying to
do is to bring most areas up to the standard of the best. It is
encouraging that we have some really good examples of authorities
that are breaking new ground here.
Q42 Mr Marsden: You have mentioned
the review. What do you think you can do in that review to make
sure that the concrete examples you have given on the ground are
continued? There is a danger, is there not, always with these
sorts of things that they become a sort of tick box culture at
a certain stage? We touched on the role of the extended family
and grandparents earlier on in the issue of care but in terms
of involvement often, especially with children with SEN, grandparents
and other family members are critical. What more can be done to
make sure that local authorities take their representations on
board as well?
Mr Jeffery: You might have spoken
about the children's plans, about the degree of engagement, not
just on the part of agencies but also on the part of children
and young people themselves and parents. There is, in the NFER
evaluation, a good deal of evidence of the considerable effort
to which local authorities and others have gone to engage children
and young people, families and communities in drawing up plans
and having drawn up plans to produce children friendly documents
and to continue their engagement. No doubt there is a great deal
to be learned, particularly in involving some of the hardest to
reach children and young people in further children and young
people's plans, but I think they have made a very serious start
in that sort of engagement. The same would apply to involving
parents. Perhaps there is further to go in involving parents in
the planning process than children and young people.
Q43 Chairman: We understand that
there is a Cabinet Office review and a Prime Minister's review
of Every Child Matters. Do you know anything about these
reviews? When will they report and when are the results likely
to be made public? Will they come to this Committee?
Beverley Hughes: There is not
an ongoing Cabinet Office review of Every Child Matters.
We did some work jointly with the Cabinet Office over the summer
period prompted by a concern to make sure that the Every Child
Matters agenda and the school standards agenda were not only
going in the same direction but were seen to be going in the same
direction. We had some teams go out and do some empirical work,
talking to schools and children's services providers, directors
of children's services, in a number of areas to test the perception
amongst the different partners. That was a very positive piece
of work and it has endorsed the findings of the Head Start survey
that The Guardian does jointly with DfES which showed that
over 70% of head teachers had the Every Child Matters agenda
as one of their top priorities and were very supportive of it.
Q44 Chairman: We see it in your job
description where it says DfES said you had responsibility for
what are called ECM deep dives in a Cabinet Office review. We
are puzzled by what all that means so you are telling us this
was a piece of work over the summer.
Beverley Hughes: I did introduce
this process and officials call them "deep dives" which
we are trying to get away from now. It started with a particular
issue. It started with teenage pregnancy. I noticed that in the
context of an overall reduction in teenage conceptions, when I
looked at the local authority figures there was huge variation.
There are some local authorities coming down dramatically; there
are others very similar demographically where teenage pregnancy
rates are going up. I asked officials to do this kind of empirical
work with six local authorities to see if we could learn from
the ones that were doing well and disseminate that to the ones
that were not. This became deep dive. I am continuing that process.
It is a process of getting under the skin of certain issues, going
out to do empirical work and to garner qualitative data about
what is happening out there, what is best practice, what is not
best practice, so that we can supplement the harder data that
inspection gives us so that we have a clearer picture of development
on the ground. The ECM and school standards issue was one I also
wanted to explore. We are doing another one on safeguarding.
Q45 Chairman: Would you be kind enough
to give the Committee a note on what has been done and what the
Department is doing in that direction?
Beverley Hughes: Certainly, yes.[2]
Q46 Fiona MacTaggart: I wanted to bring
your attention to the issue of vulnerable and looked after children
and ask why you think, in an era where the outcomes for children
generally educationally have improved so much, the gap between
looked after children and other children continues to widen.
Beverley Hughes: There are a number
of reasons. The attainment for children in care has risen but
it has not risen even at the rate of progress for children generally
so the gap has widened. The Green Paper that we produced on children
in care identified the factors that we think are important and
put forward proposals to address those. One is that the thresholds
for intervention from many social services departments over recent
years have become higher. Intervention is later on in a family's
problems than it needs to be, so we are asking ourselves the question:
how can we intervene earlier and maybe prevent some children going
into care? A second issue is around how strong—it is a terrible
phrase but it is one that is common currency so I will use it—has
been the role of the corporate parent in really having a grip
on what is happening to the children in its care at a very senior
level and supporting social workers and others who are responsible
for progress. Thirdly, we know we have a problem with the quality
of some placements, particularly in the residential sector, but
also in terms of some children who need almost a professional
foster caring standard and we need to improve that. Fourthly,
I think children in care largely have not had a very good deal
from schools. It is nobody's direct fault or intention but the
number of children moved in years 10 and 11, for example, just
before they are to do GCSEs, is astonishing. I will give you the
figure; I cannot remember it now, but it is a really astonishing
figure.[3]
They tend to be in the poorer schools rather than having the right
to a place in a very good school. I think there has been a lack
of clarity about who, within the team around a child in care,
would be doing the parents' job of going to parent teachers evenings,
chivvying the school, looking at their progress. Is it the social
worker? Is it the foster carer? If the child is in a residential
setting, is it the residential worker. For many children in care
there has not really been anybody having that really strong grip
on what is happening to them educationally in the way that a very
good parent would have. Fifthly, many of those children need help
with problems that are going to be barriers for learning. They
need mental health services; they need help maybe with drug and
alcohol problems. They need support to overcome some of the lack
of confidence and self-esteem that their family experiences might
have left them with. The extent to which services have wrapped
around children has been patchy and that has to be better. Those
are some of the factors and those are some of the areas that we
were trying to address in the Green Paper as to how we would improve
things across all of those factors.
Q47 Fiona MacTaggart: Much of the Green
Paper gave quite an optimistic picture but I was depressed by
the reference to the new advocate role because one of the things
that it seems to be suggesting is that independent visitors, which
are a legal requirement on local authorities, have not been taken
up by every local authority. There is this project to look at
developing the role but, with that history of allowing something
which has been in the law since the Children Act 1989 not to happen,
how can we be confident that we are going to have a system where
the proposals in the Green Paper when they are legislated forward
will occur?
Beverley Hughes: That relates
to one of the other issues which is about how we can make the
accountability and the performance management much stronger than
it has been in the past. There is a number of proposals in the
Green Paper. We have suggested a range of measures around regular
inspection, around the virtual head teacher idea in terms of school
progress, an annual stocktake at ministerial level, looking at
progress across the board and putting further stimulus into the
system, outside commentary, not only the independent advocates
but also making independent reviewing officers much more independent.
They are employed by the local authority now but they are supposed
to be independent. I gather not a single independent reviewing
officer has queried the care plans for a child. That is important,
as is giving young people themselves much more of a voice in the
local authority. I was very impressed, going to a number of authorities,
one of which was St Helens in the north west. They had set up
a children in care council which is one of the recommendations
that we have included in the Green Paper. It might sound like
a soft option but helping those young people develop their capacity
to start having a real say, to speak directly to the director
of children's services about what it is like to be a child in
care, about how frequently they really are seeing their social
worker and all of that was having a real impact on the understanding
of what it was like and therefore changing the way in which children
in care were being looked after.
Q48 Fiona MacTaggart: I can certainly
believe that that can make a difference but I handed out awards
to children in care in Slough just ten days ago. The most common
statement in their nominations—some of them had done very
well with their GCSEs and their A levels—was that this child
had exceeded expectations. How can this virtual head teacher role
stop us letting down those children by starting off by underestimating
what they are capable of?
Beverley Hughes: That is incredibly
important. I have also seen places where local authorities have
explicitly challenged this issue of expectation. I went to Lewisham
recently and I was talking to young people there. Through the
role of the local authority in demanding more from schools for
those children and in making sure that there are options for them
when they are coming to the end of their schooling too, there
is tremendous opportunity for local authorities and other public
sector organisations to do that. They are big employers. They
can provide opportunities for jobs and training for the children
in their care and this was happening in Lewisham. I fully expect
the virtual head teacher to play a pivotal role in doing that.
That is the concept that, being if you like the head teacher for
all of the children in care in an area, working with the different
schools in which the children are located, brings both to the
local authority and also to Ofsted who will have to look at performance
in relation to children in care as a discrete subset that the
virtual head teacher will be pivotal in challenging what I think
can be benign but very misguided low aspirations for children
in care. That person will have a whole view. That person will
be there to chivvy the schools, to demand more, to expect more
and to help children achieve more.
Mr Jeffery: This is the application
of the concept of personalisation to children in care that we
expect and are increasingly seeing across the school system, based
on a much fuller understanding of the standards the child has
reached and where they should get to. The involvement of the school
improvement partner with the school, the involvement of the virtual
head teacher with the whole population of children in care should
serve significantly to raise aspirations and standards for those
children.
Q49 Fiona MacTaggart: Will the local
authority be able to make an academy have a child in care?
Beverley Hughes: I do not think
a local authority can make an academy admit a child in care. Is
that right? I think that is the case in terms of their independent
status.
Mr Jeffery: That is right.
Q50 Chairman: The Government wants
more and more academies so how is this going to affect the chances
of children in care?
Beverley Hughes: Many academies
will take children in care. I do not have any concern about that.
The academies, remember, are in the most disadvantaged areas at
the moment. They are taking children, whether in care or not.
Q51 Chairman: If you look at the
profile of the admissions to some academies, they are taking more
and more children from outside the area in which they are situated.
Beverley Hughes: I have seen a
different account of that in terms of statistics from the Department
and I will be happy to send you what we have.[4]
Chairman: I will let you have a look
at the answers to my parliamentary questions which were answered
by your Department.
Q52 Fiona MacTaggart: I want to ask about
joined up government between the Home Office and you. At present,
more looked after children end up in the criminal justice system
than end up in university. One of the responses that the Home
Secretary has made is to suggest that he is going to do some stuff
in relation to parenting and I wondered how involved you had been
in that. I gather he is going to make an announcement tomorrow.
I wondered if you would predict that, while you have these responsibilities,
we might be able to swap over the percentages of children who
get into the criminal justice system and children who get into
university so that the latter is higher than the former.
Beverley Hughes: That certainly
should be our aspiration, or at least one of them. In terms of
the Home Office and parenting, yes, we have been involved. We
are the lead across government in DfES for developing policies
and practice around work with parents, but we are very involved
with that end of the spectrum in terms of what the Respect task
force are doing. For example, they have a number of family intervention
projects based on the Durham model of NCH up and running now and
there are going to be more of those. We are providing the resource
for the parenting support in those projects. These are very intensive
projects that take a very dysfunctional, troubled family and work
very intensively with both the children and the adults, sometimes
involving a residential placement, sometimes not. We are providing
the resource and the oversight around the parenting work with
those. This is something I personally feel quite strongly about.
I have visited many schools and places where parents are in real
difficulties, where children are behaving badly. The difference
that being on a well evidenced, well run parenting support programme,
something like Webster Stratton, can make to a parent's ability
to start to take charge of their own child's behaviour is very
impressive. I have talked to many parents who have said to me,
"I did not want to come on this programme. I really resented
the fact that I was being made to go on a parenting order"
or whatever, "but it has made such a difference. I have talked
to other parents and we feel it has been really helpful."
Although it looks very sharp end stuff and it is, because in many
of those instances it will be part of a parenting order if it
has arisen as part of a child's behaviour, the outcomes in terms
of building the parents' ability and confidence in using their
authority with their child in a positive way, starting to control
that behaviour, can be very profound.
Q53 Stephen Williams: Can I turn
around what Fiona was asking about? Fiona was asking about looked
after children. I want to ask about children who look after. One
of the most moving meetings I have been to as a constituency MP
was with a room full of children from age nine to 13 who had responsibilities
within their family, either for their siblings who may have a
disability or a behavioural problem, or for a parent who might
have MS or some other illness. They gave me some pretty stark
examples of where the school did not take those caring responsibilities
seriously. If they stayed away from school they were marked as
a truant and so on and felt that they were not getting the emotional
and educational support that they needed. How confident are you
that your department understands the scale of the situation and
what measures would you put in place to support these children?
Beverley Hughes: I too have had
more than one conversation with groups of young carers. I have
heard a range of views from young carers. I have heard very strongly
the views that you have just expressed that children get homework
in late and it is not accepted. They have difficulty sometimes
sitting exams, are late to school or absent from school, feeling
that schools do not take sufficient account of that. I have also
heard from young carers who say they feel ambivalent about schools
knowing the full details of their family circumstances and about
being labelled or stigmatised because of the difference between
their situation and that of other children in the school. There
is a balance here. I would want to see the level of awareness
raised amongst some schools that this can be an issue for some
young people and, with that level of awareness, use the changes
that Every Child Matters is instituting to make sure that,
if that particular young carer is in serious difficulty of jeopardising
their education or is enormously stressed because of their care
the responsibilities, then to use the quick and easy referral
as part of the extended school to get support for that young carer
and for the school to consider what it needs to do to give that
support appropriately. My colleague, Lord Adonis, was very pressed
on this issue during the passage of the Education and Inspections
Bill as it was then. He agreed to consider whether or not we needed
to give some guidance to schools just about raising this level
of awareness. He is still considering that but I will certainly
go back from this Committee and talk further with him about it,
as to whether we do need to say something to schools about just
being more aware that this can affect some young people pretty
badly.
Q54 Stephen Williams: It sounds as
though at either end of the department ministerial awareness is
rising. That hopefully will roll out to schools. Can I move on
to bullying? You are aware that this is anti-bullying week. How
important is tackling bullying to the department? What assessment
have you and your ministerial colleagues made of the effect of
bullying on children's attainment?
Beverley Hughes: The specific
evidence about the impact on attainment is very difficult, to
be honest. I do not think there is any systematic evidence about
that specific relationship. We are very clear that the reporting,
the willingness of children to talk about bullying, is increasing.
Whether or not that means bullying is increasing is a moot point.
We have to be very strong about bullying. I do not think it takes
much imagination to imagine that if you are a child being bullied,
to me, that is a form of interpersonal terrorism. If you are being
bullied, every day of your life is blighted. You wake up in the
morning and think: what is this terrible thing I have to remember?
Oh, God. I am going to see these people at school today and I
do not know what they will do to me. I do not know what they will
say to me. It seems to me very likely that if you are being bullied
then not just your educational attainment but your whole wellbeing
is being jeopardised. That is why I feel very strongly that schools
and other adults have to deal very strongly with bullying. There
is no equivocation about it as far as I am concerned. That does
not mean that you do not also have to deal with the bully in a
way hopefully that will enable that person to remain in education,
to change their attitude and behaviour, to give them a way forward
in terms of stopping bullying. However, that must not compromise
the very unequivocal stance that bullying is wrong and that people
should not do it. The focus of the week this week is an interesting
one because it is focusing on the potential role of so-called
bystanders—children as well as adults—that they can
play, research has identified, firstly in establishing a culture
that bullying is not acceptable but, secondly, in relation to
certain specific incidents to take a stand, report it and to be
part of the process by which incidents get dealt with.
Q55 Stephen Williams: One of the
effects of bullying would be truancy. A children's charity has
shown through their research that about a third of truancy is
probably to do with fear of children going to school because they
fear that they are going to be bullied. In the past, some of your
colleagues higher up the ministerial chain have talked about fining
parents as a solution to truancy. Would it not be better to recognise
that bullying is a major contributor to truancy and therefore
to depressing attainment levels amongst children?
Beverley Hughes: You link the
two and I am sure for some children there will be a link. I think
it is important that schools, when they are investigating truancy,
try and establish what is behind a child's non-attendance at school
and to entertain the possibility for some children that it might
be to do with what is happening in school and bullying specifically.
Q56 Stephen Williams: Can I move
on to how effective tackling bullying might be in schools? I guess
all the MPs round the table and maybe yourself as well have had
casework to do with bullying in schools. I have one example in
my constituency where six families have withdrawn their children
from school but where the bully, the source of the problem, is
still there. Research by Bullying Online shows that roughly three-quarters
of the parents who complain to a school about a bullying problem
affecting their children feel that the problem has not been tackled
effectively. How confident are you that schools are taking bullying
seriously?
Beverley Hughes: I think generally
they are, increasingly so. We want to change our focus somewhat
now in terms of not only campaigning more generally about bullying
but making sure that every school has embedded a sound policy
that it is implementing robustly around bullying. The proposals
that the Secretary of State has announced today are designed to
support that, for example, requiring the national strategy teams
to identify schools that are weak in their approach to policy
and practice on bullying and to support them to get much stronger
and more robust. Secondly, an extension of what I think has been
a very successful programme that has been done in conjunction
with Childline, called CHIPS, Childline in Partnership with Schools.
They are developing the role of peer mentors in schools. That
is, trusted, capable children and young people who will be visible
to other children and will support children who are being bullied.
I think there has been another 480,000 put into that project which
will allow another 60,000 peer mentors. Those measures are designed
specifically to do what you rightly say needs to be done, which
is to make sure that every single school is as strong as it can
possibly be in its approach to bullying.
Q57 Stephen Williams: I have not
seen the Secretary of State's announcements yet. I will study
them afterwards.
Beverley Hughes: I hope I have
not pre-empted them.
Q58 Stephen Williams: Do you think
there is enough training in place for teachers both at PGCE level
and in continuing professional education once they are in post
in order to identify children who have been bullied and also to
deal with the bullies themselves?
Beverley Hughes: I certainly know
that this has been increasingly strong in teacher behaviour management,
the identification of behaviour management in training for new
teachers in training courses now. Obviously we need to make sure
that we extend that to teachers who have been in post for some
time. That would be part of what we would expect a school to think
about when it is developing its policy around bullying: what needs
to be done to raise the capacity and the ability of all its teachers,
not just newly qualified teachers, to implement the policy that
it outlines.
Q59 Stephen Williams: Fiona MacTaggart
earlier mentioned the links with the criminal justice system of
one collection of children. Some research presented to us shows
that roughly a quarter of adults who are identified as being bullies
while they are in school go on to get a criminal record. How confident
are you that there is joined up thinking within the government
to look at these children beyond when they leave school and to
tackle their behavioural problems later on in life?
Beverley Hughes: The point you
are raising is a very important one. It is as important to deal
properly with the person who is doing the bullying at the time
that demonstrates itself in school as it is both to protect and
to empower the victim. Somebody who is bullying is going to be
somebody who has not internalised the normal rules around what
is acceptable behaviour, what is acceptable in terms of self-discipline
and therefore is more likely, if not checked, if not helped to
understand how to do that, to go on to do other things that transgress
society's rules of one kind or another. The thing to do is to
make sure that when schools see this it is for them to act early
and make sure, as far as they can, that young people demonstrating
this unacceptable behaviour get help to understand why it is wrong
and to change their attitudes and their behaviour. I was also
hearing today about some pilots that the Home Office is funding,
I think, in some areas which is using a reparative justice model
in some schools to deal with some of the issues around bullying.
Obviously in that model it is also young people themselves who
are being used, in broad terms, to come to a view about bullying
in particular circumstances. That can be a particularly powerful
model for schools to adopt which potentially could have even more
impact on the bully if it is other young people who are saying
very clearly that this behaviour is unacceptable. There is a range
of different ways in which schools can tackle this. It is just
important that they do it very robustly.
2 Ev 17. Back
3
Ev 17-18. Back
4
Ev 18. Back
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