Angela
Watkinson: In her investigations, has the hon. Lady found
a wide variation across homes in the propensity of young people to
abscond? Does she conclude from that that the quality of the staff has
a big influence?
Helen
Southworth: One of the problems that has been mentioned
consistently by some of the excellent social workers and voluntary
organisations working in this field, and by the police, are the push
and pull factors. Young people can leave something that that they do
not like, but they can also be enticed away by people with a vested
interested. Young people in residential homes are particularly subject
to such enticement. That is one of the reasons why there are so many
young people coming into the criminal justice system, and there are
some shocking examples of young women involved in
prostitution—through people who have sought them out and groomed
them—who have not had effective support in the residential
homes. The
purpose of the new clauses is clear. It is to ensure that there is an
underpinning framework that enables the purpose of the main
clause—clause 26—to be achieved. Enforcement can then
happen, but on an evidence base that is drawn from all the stakeholders
involved in the young person’s
well-being.
Kevin
Brennan: I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington,
South for sparking an interesting debate, and I pay tribute—as I
have done before—to her diligence in and around this subject. I
also thank other hon. Members who participated. The debate has been
useful for teasing out some of the issues on inspection—of
children’s homes in particular—and what should and should
not be reported. I replied not so long ago to an Adjournment debate on
the subject, and I am aware of many of the issues that my hon. Friend
raised. On
new clause 39, the Government agree very much that it is important that
reports from Her Majesty’s chief inspector are available. We
entirely agree that local authorities considering placing a child
should consider all the available information in making such a
decision, including recent inspection reports. As the hon. Lady said,
the law currently provides that such reports should be made available.
The chief inspector must send a copy of the report to each person who
has registered in respect of the establishment, make copies of the
report available for inspection at its offices by any person at any
reasonable time and take other steps that she considers appropriate for
publicising a report. Any person who asks Ofsted for a copy of a report
is entitled to one. I know that hon. Members have encountered teething
problems with
that. Ofsted
is currently consulting on whether to publish its reports. That
consultation, which runs until 16 September, seeks the views of the
children and young people who live in children’s homes. That is
important. Of course, it should also seek the views of hon. Members and
I hope that they will give their views to it. The publication of
inspection reports on children’s homes is sensitive, as I am
sure that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South will
acknowledge. Ofsted has not to date published such reports on its
website for that reason. While reports do not name individual children,
a significant number of homes care only for a small number of children
and, in those circumstances, it may be harder to protect children if
the reports are widely
publicised. It
is essential that in seeking to improve communication between providers
and commissioners, which I think is the purpose of her amendment, we do
not place children at risk. While I strongly sympathise with my hon.
Friend’s point and believe that should be taken onboard in the
Ofsted’s consultation, we are not convinced that the
requirement for Her Majesty’s chief inspector
to circulate copies of inspections of children’s homes to every
local authority placing children at such homes is the best way forward.
Inspection reports on children’s homes are currently available
on request by local authorities and local safeguarding children boards,
and it would be inefficient to require Ofsted to create and maintain a
new register of individual children at children’s homes or to
collect that information on each individual inspection of a
children’s home. The
Government are committed to ensuring that inspection is a fully rounded
process, which takes account of all the relevant evidence, including
the views of children and others with an interest, such as local
authorities placing children in the home and the designated teacher at
a school attended by children from the home. Primary legislation is too
unwieldy to make that happen. It is essential that the inspectorate is
able to tailor its approach within a broad framework to take account of
individual and changing
circumstances. Ofsted’s
current guidance on inspecting children’s homes is set out in
its April 2007 document “Are you ready for your inspection? A
guide to inspections of children’s services conducted by
Ofsted.” That guidance explains to managers of establishments
that they may sometimes be asked to help distribute surveys to
stakeholders of their service, for example, to parents, teachers,
social workers or health professionals. That is to ensure that as many
people as possible linked to the service have the opportunity to
express their views and to let Ofsted know what the service does well
or could
improve. In
practice, of course, Ofsted plans each inspection individually
according to the circumstances in each children’s home using,
among other sources, the children’s homes self-assessment and
the inspection of children’s homes questionnaire, both of which
the children’s home complete. They help the Ofsted inspectors to
decide which partners should be consulted.
Regarding,
for example, the designated teacher at the school attended by the
children, we fully agree that it is vital that children’s homes
support the education of children in their care effectively. Building
strong links with the child’s school is an important part of
that. Standard 14 of the “National Minimum Standards for
children’s homes” says that the home should
have
“an education
policy that shows how the home intends to promote and support the
education of children throughout the time that they live
there”
and, as part of this,
the child or young person’s personal education plan
should
“set out which
staff in the children's home have responsibility for liaising with
schools.”
Ofsted’s
practice means that a questionnaire on the children’s home may
be sent to the designated person at the school, which would be taken
into account when preparing an inspection report on the home. In
addition, section 32(5) of the Care Standards Act provides that Her
Majesty’s Chief Inspector must send a copy of the report to the
registered person for an establishment without delay. Prompt reporting
of inspection findings is of vital importance to
maximise their value and impact.
New clause
38 may, by placing other formal duties on Her Majesty’s Chief
Inspector before preparing every inspection report, inadvertently cause
delay in reporting. In practice, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector
would need
to request contact details from the children’s home, request
views from the specified organisation and person or persons, and take
reasonable steps to seek such views. The current law allows for the
seeking of views, and this is Ofsted’s general practice, but it
also allows flexibility to balance seeking such views with the need for
urgency. New
clause 38 would require Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector to inform
local authorities placing children at a children’s home that she
was preparing a report, but would not require her to seek their views.
We are not persuaded of the value of such a provision. It would require
Ofsted either to create and maintain a list of the placing authority
for every child in every children’s home, or to seek this
information in respect of each individual inspection, either of which
would be administratively cumbersome. Every children’s home is
inspected twice a year. Notifying local authorities twice a year before
this happens would not serve any clear
purpose. The
Government agree that inspections of children’s homes should
seek and take account of the views of those with an interest in the
effectiveness of the home, and believe that Ofsted takes steps to
achieve this. Ofsted has made significant progress in terms of
consulting children, parents, local authorities, providers and other
key stakeholders. However, the details of how this is done in practice
should not be for primary legislation. Within the broad framework set
by the legislation, Her Majesty’s Chief Inspector is best placed
to ensure a flexible and appropriate balance between seeking views and
reporting promptly.
New clause
37 requires children’s home providers to collate their
statistics on the number of children who go missing from
children’s homes and incidences of antisocial and criminal
behaviour, and to make that information available on request to the
inspectorate. I entirely understand the point that my hon. Friend is
making because she raises an important issue. Notwithstanding her point
about reporting positive things as well in relation to young people in
children’s homes, I am very sympathetic to her reasons for
tabling this amendment.
In making
placement decisions, local authorities should take all necessary steps
to satisfy themselves that the placement is appropriate and is able to
meet the assessed needs of the individual child. At an earlier sitting
we discussed the factors that may give rise to antisocial and even
criminal behaviour by a small minority of children placed in
children’s homes. We considered, for example, the effects of
inappropriate placements, a long distance from home, and of children
feeling “dumped”, as the hon. Member for East Worthing
and Shoreham put it. Clearly, we hope that these sorts of placements
will become increasingly rare as a direct result of the Bill. While it
is of course important for placing authorities to take account of a
wide range of information in making placement decisions, that
information must be meaningful and useful. It must obviously help local
authorities to make the right placement
decisions.
6
pm What
matters most is that children’s homes take appropriate action to
address the behaviour of the children placed there through well trained
staff providing
the right support and care. As we have discussed,
there are steps that should be taken, and the
Government are taking them to ensure that that
happens. I
know that my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington, South will be aware
that provisions are in place to enable the chief inspector to consider
the information sought by the amendment. The Care Standards Act 2000,
which provides the legislative framework for the registration and
regulation of children’s homes, includes a general power to make
regulations requiring the keeping of records and the notification of
events occurring in establishments and agencies. The Act also contains
the power for the registration authority to require an establishment or
agency to provide any information that it considers necessary when
carrying out an inspection.
Regulations
provide that the procedure for dealing with any unauthorised absence of
a child from a children’s home must be supplied to Ofsted as
part of the initial application to register the home. The national
minimum standards for children’s homes also refer
specifically to the need for the registered person to have such
a procedure in place. In addition, there is a regulatory requirement
that all incidents of absconding—or whatever term we
use—must be noted on the child’s record, and the placing
authority must be notified of the incident.
Where there
are instances of criminal behaviour, the regulations and national
minimum standards are also clear about procedures for making the
consequences of unacceptable behaviour clear to staff and children. Any
disciplinary measures taken must be appropriate to the incident. The
home is required to notify specific serious incidents to Ofsted and to
the placing
authority. My
hon. Friend has raised some important issues relating to statistics,
but for the reasons that I have given, I think that requiring collation
from individual records in the way that she suggests is not the best
solution. Those are matters for professional judgment in light of the
regulatory requirements, the national minimum standards and guidance,
rather than for primary legislation. The national minimum standards for
children’s homes are to be reviewed this year as part of a
review of all sets of national minimum standards for children, and I
assure my hon. Friend that the review will consider how to strengthen
existing requirements and expectations in the areas that she
outlined. On
that basis, I ask my hon. Friend not to press her new clauses, with the
assurance that as part of the review of national minimum standards, we
will consider closely how we can strengthen existing requirements
through those
standards.
Helen
Southworth: I am of course disappointed in some ways by
the Minister’s response, but I hope that it is only a temporary
disappointment and that the review of minimum standards and the various
regulations attached to the Bill will relieve my concerns and those of
other Members. I am sure that both he and Ofsted have taken note of the
fact that there is considerable interest in the House in the
performance of inspectors, the transparency of inspection reports and,
accepting absolutely what he said about respecting young
people’s privacy in the process, the need to ensure that people
making a decision about those young people have the evidence that they
need to make a full and proper decision.
Question
put and agreed to.
Clause 26
ordered to stand part of the
Bill. Clauses
27 to 33 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
Clause
34
Independent
review of determinations relating to
adoption Question
proposed, That the clause stand part of the
Bill.
Annette
Brooke: I have a brief question, which I hope the Minister
can answer by speaking to the clause. Not having served on the
Committee that considered the Adoption and Children Act 2002, although
I have served on most Committees considering that sort of Bill, I am
not sure of the clause’s full
significance.
Kevin
Brennan: The amendments made by clause 34 are minor and
are being made so that the review mechanisms for adoption and fostering
are in line with each other. Subsection (2) clarifies that applications
for a review of a qualifying determination are to be made to the
appropriate Minister, not to the review panel. On receipt of an
application, the appropriate Minister will constitute a review panel to
review the qualifying determination. Subsections (3) to (7) remove from
review panels the power to recover the cost of a review from the
adoption agency that made the qualifying determination under review.
Instead, it will be for the appropriate Minister to determine the sum
that must be paid by the adoption agency. That will be based on the
cost to the appropriate Minister of performing his independent review
functions. In anticipation of this question, it will not and must not
include any element of
profit. The
only practical change for adoption agencies is that the review panel
will not include in its written recommendations an order for payment of
costs. Prospective adopters will not be affected by any of these
changes and there will be no additional work for adoption
agencies. Question
put and agreed
to. Clause
34 ordered to stand part of the
Bill.
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