Annette
Brooke: Will the hon. Gentleman also consider that a
severely disabled child, many miles from the local authority that is
providing the services, may have formed a relationship with a visitor
to the residential home? It may be easier for somebody who has a close
relationship with that child to interpret what they want, rather than a
distant independent reviewing officer, however skilled they might
be.
Tim
Loughton: The hon. Lady makes a good point. The issue of
children with disabilities is also relevant to the role of an advocate,
as she touched on. One of the consortium papers
states: “Disabled
children placed away from home urgently need a right to
advocacy.” The same
applies to specialist access to IROs. The paper goes
on: “Disabled
children are at least three times more likely to be abused or subjected
to demeaning treatment than other children and those living away from
home are especially vulnerable. Many children in this situation have
little or no contact with their families and are very isolated.
Advocates can help these children stay
safe.” Similarly, the
whole role of the position is also relevant.
The amendment
cites four criteria. It is a probing amendment, and no doubt the
Minister will shoot it to pieces when referring to the practicalities
of putting it in the Bill, but we think that certain benchmarks are
needed to assure the independence of the IRO. IROs should have a
minimal connection to the local authority in question. Clearly, it is
not sufficient for someone who has long been an officer of an authority
to give a judgment on former close colleagues, as their judgment might
be coloured by that, rather than the underlying needs and welfare of
the child. That is why the amendment proposes that the IROs should not
have worked for that authority.
When we debated that during the
passage of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, six and a half years
ago, we looked at the possibility of the officers coming from
neighbouring authorities, but as we know, many social workers who work
for local authorities, as with many other officers in children’s
services departments, can move around quite a lot, particularly among
London boroughs and between the home counties. We therefore propose
that the officer should not have worked for the local authority in
question in the previous 10 years, as that would ensure a good degree
of
independence.
Mr.
Turner: I am listening with some care to what my hon.
Friend is saying. I have a problem, which is that I live on the Isle of
Wight. I am sure that he is familiar with that in relation to other
issues. If the officer has not worked in 10 years, the problem is that
they are likely to have left employment for that time if they lived
locally, or they have retired. There is also the question of how up to
date their knowledge is. Could my hon. Friend give some indication of
how many people we are talking about—one in 10 years, or 20 in
10 years? I know that it is difficult, but that would help make my
thoughts clearer.
Tim
Loughton: My hon. Friend makes a helpful and probing
intervention. The more the Committee’s proceedings continue, the
clearer it has become that the Isle of Wight is a separate universe
with a microclimate of its own, and that poses all sorts of problems.
The narrow stretch of water between Hampshire and the Isle of Wight has
much to answer for.
We are not looking at retired
social workers, but social workers move around the system a great deal.
With the addition of these new practices for social workers, that flow
is likely to be greater. We do not want people who are out of date and
lack the necessary training, which is why I quoted from the GSCC
earlier and commented that IROs would absolutely need to be capable of
doing the job, to be registered and to meet all the standards expected
of them. In no way are we trying to have a sort of “Dad’s
Army” of IROs—I hasten to add, lest I start to get
complaints about that analogy, that the Home Guard did a fine job.
There is no question of the individuals in question not being trained.
My primary concern is that the IRO is not too close to the people who
are effectively paying them or giving them the business, and that their
absolute primary concern is the welfare of the child.
The amendment’s third
requirement is that the IRO should be previously unconnected with the
child in question. They should have an entirely dispassionate
view of the child’s circumstances and the experiences leading up
to the event on which they are required to make the report. They should
not be coloured at all by the fact that they might have heard of that
child when working as a social worker some years before, if it was a
child who had been in the care system for many years. As a sort of
catch-all addition to the amendment, we have said that there should be
no conflict of interests. I am sure that the Minister will point to the
difficulty in defining that, but this is a probing amendment. The key
point is that there should be no conflict of interests that would
hinder the IRO’s capacity to make an independent
report. 11.15
am I should like
to touch briefly on the comments about advocacy. I have in the past
supported greater advocacy as applied to certain groups of vulnerable
people. I am sympathetic to what the hon. Members for Mid-Dorset and
North Poole and for Stafford have said. We may have more of a debate on
that when we come to new clause 31, which deals with the subject of
advocates. Certainly, the report from the children’s rights
director cited by the hon. Gentleman is excellent, as so many of them
are. I agree with his comments. I certainly endorse the responses of
children who said that it is essential that they can associate and
identify with the IROs, and they need to be able talk with them
privately and to be assured of their
independence. A
costing has been placed on the availability of advocacy for
children’s services. An estimate by the National
Children’s Advocacy Consortium showed that on the basis of a 15
per cent. take-up, introducing such a service would cost what it
described as a relatively modest £3 million, excluding on-costs.
Is that an entirely unrealistic figure? Have the Government done their
own costing? Whatever the Minister may say, there is a cost element to
the reason why advocacy has not been included in the Bill. The
Government set an interesting precedent in the Mental Health Act 2007,
and I challenge them to say why it was done for that group of people
but they do not propose to include it in this
Bill. The
hon. Member for Stafford, who also sat on the Committee on that Bill,
will remember that well. Advocacy services for people with mental
health problems were included in the draft Bill that was first produced
in 2004 and they had mysteriously disappeared from the Bill that was
introduced after the Queen’s Speech of 2006. After the
pre-legislative scrutiny Committee report, the Government put advocacy
back in the Bill and are greatly to be congratulated for doing
so.
Advocacy was
deemed to be essential for people with mental health problems for three
main reasons. The first was to ensure a statutory right to an
independent mental health advocate for all patients subject to
compulsory powers, for which we can substitute “for all children
subject to care orders”, in a perfectly legitimate parallel. The
second reason was to make patients aware of that right; making children
aware would be perfectly legitimate. The third was to ensure that
patients have a right to meet their advocate in private. Again, we
could substitute “children” and we have already touched
on the importance of meeting in private.
The structure
and the rationale behind introducing an advocacy entitlement for mental
health patients subject to compulsion sits quite easily with a similar
entitlement for children subject to care orders. The pre-legislative
scrutiny Committee estimated that the whole-time equivalent of 140
advocates, which was the number deemed to be required, would cost
approximately £5 million. There was debate about
whether those advocates were physically available or not, so there is
question of capacity. Although it is early days for that legislation,
has that turned out to have been a realistic estimate and how would a
similar measure pan out for children?
The Government still do not see
that it is appropriate to introduce similar provisions, for perhaps a
lower cost, for children subject to the care system. Given that the
criteria for mental health patients could easily be transposed to
children in the care system, why does the Minister think that the
Government were right to make that provision for mental health
patients? They were subjected to close scrutiny and a lot of lobbying,
and I did not think that they would but, to give them their due, they
did. I am keen to push amendment No. 12 as a probing amendment. I have
some constructive questions in support of the principle of advocacy and
I will be grateful for the Minister’s response on why the same
principles could not be applied here.
Mr.
Turner: I would like to look at clause 11, to which the
hon. Member for Stafford has tabled amendments. I am concerned: that is
not to say that I am opposed to the provision but I would like to
consider it further. Do the advocates have to give continued and
repeated help, or is someone else to do that? My concern is that the
advocates will deal with one person one day, another person another day
and a third person on a third day. It would be much better if a
youngster had continuous help. The problem with these youngsters is
that they are likely to be moved from one person to another. Can the
Minister ensure that these youngsters have continuous
help?
The
Minister for Children, Young People and Families (Beverley
Hughes): We have had an interesting debate and there is
very little difference between the views of Ministers and of hon.
Members on both sides of the Committee about what the amendments are
trying to achieve and the assurances that they are designed to elicit
from
me. Before
turning to the specifics of the amendments, I shall reiterate what we
were trying to do when we developed the White Paper around four key
underpinning principles, one of which was the centrality of the voice
of the child. That is why “Care Matters” set out a vision
for a care system that systematically and consistently promotes the
voice of children and ensures that their voice is heard. Taken
together—it is important to see them together—the whole
thrust of the proposals is systemic change, with the entire care system
being child focused and decisions being made in the best interests of
the child after having considered properly the child’s views and
needs, just as any parent would. That is the intention of the
proposals. The people
who are best placed to ensure that children are actively engaged in
decisions that affect them are those who already have a professional
responsibility for the child’s day-to-day care, and who
therefore have practical experience of involving the child in day-to-day
decisions. We agree completely that advocacy can have an important role
to play for looked-after children. As hon. Members have noted, under
the current statutory framework, all looked-after children should
already have access to advocacy services to help them to pursue
complaints and make representations about the services that they
receive. I accept that the latter has not happened as much as it could
have or as much as it needs to, as my hon. Friend the Member for
Stafford said. However we believe that our proposed changes,
particularly in clause 11, will address
that. Statutory
guidance makes it clear that we expect children to have access to
advocates beyond the formal complaints procedure: for example, a child
should be able to get the support of an advocate in making
representations about changes that may be required to the service that
they receive. I therefore say to the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and
North Poole that I do not think this is a matter of law, but a matter
of changing practice through the new statutory guidance. I am not
persuaded that providing more advocates for all looked-after children
in other circumstances would necessarily achieve what we are all trying
to achieve.
To the hon.
Member for East Worthing and Shoreham I say that cost was not the
primary consideration. Looking at the subject in the round, as we did
when developing the policy, we see that there are already many
professionals—sometimes a whole plethora—who are involved
with and interact with looked-after children. Increasing advocacy for
every single child and adding an additional person into that mix can
result in more confusion between the adults’ roles and even
greater complication of relationships.
We are doing two things. First,
to improve children’s participation in decisions about their
care, we want to equip all those people who are working closely with
them on a day-to-day basis—particularly carers, social workers
and designated teachers—with the right skills to ensure that
they really are listening to and understanding and taking account of
children’s wishes. In particular, in clause 11, we are
strengthening the role of the independent reviewing officer.
We also want
to improve the practice of social workers who have day-to-day
responsibility for children’s cases by setting out in guidance
clear expectations for visiting looked-after children wherever they are
placed. We are revising the statutory guidance on care planning to make
it clear that social workers, too, have a responsibility to communicate
properly with children and to record information systematically in the
care plans so that care plans are comprehensive and up to date. For the
first time, we also provide for new statutory guidance on the role of
the independent reviewing officers responsible for monitoring the case
as a whole and overseeing regular reviews of the care
plan. I will go
through the various elements of how we want to strengthen that role,
and I ask Members to think about them as a whole. We will require local
authorities to appoint a named IRO for each child to enhance the
personal accountability and individual responsibilities of each IRO. We
will require IROs to spend time individually with each child before any
review, so that that IRO personally establishes the child’s
wishes and feelings about the issues that will be
covered at the care planning meeting. The example the hon. Lady gave
about the child who wanted contact with her sister should simply not
happen, and we are going to make that
clear. Mr.
Kidney: I am anxious to know whether the word
“representation” is deliberate a restriction on the right
to advocacy. In the example that the hon. Member for Mid-Dorset and
North Poole gave, if, at a case review, a child wanted it to be made
known that he or she wanted to have contact with a brother or sister,
would that entitle the child to an advocate to make sure it was said in
the
meeting?
Beverley
Hughes: That is an interesting question. I take
“representation” in the terms in which we describe it
here, potentially including any aspect of the services the child is
receiving. The first and preferred option is to ensure that it is the
IRO who raises the issues that are germane to a child’s future.
If that is not done, there may be room for advocacy or for some other
means of ensuring that it is
done.
Mr.
Kidney: Is it not too late the day after the case review
if it has not been done, and should not my right hon. Friend give a
commitment to the Committee that in the new guidance it will be made
clear that “representation” should be read very widely
and might include the example we have just
discussed? 11.30
am
Beverley
Hughes: Yes, I am happy to give the assurance that we want
“representation” to be read widely, and to put that on
the
record. We
also want to introduce a duty on the IRO to monitor the local
authority’s performance of its functions in relation to the
case. It is important to understand that this duty will extend the
IRO’s existing monitoring role, which is confined to the
authority’s functions in respect of the review. It gives the
reviewing officer a much broader scrutiny and monitoring role of the
local authority’s functions in the whole of that child’s
case.
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