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Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords] |
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords] |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:Chris
Shaw, Mick Hillyard, Committee
Clerks † attended the
Committee Public Bill CommitteeThursday 3 July 2008(Afternoon)[Mr. Greg Pope in the Chair]Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]New Clause 11Scope
of inspections by the chief
inspector ‘In section 147 of
the Education and Inspections Act 2006 (c. 40) (inspection
of premises in connection with adoption and fostering functions) after
subsection (2)
insert— “(2A) The
Chief Inspector must consider the promotion of the welfare and safety
of a child when carrying out the inspections mentioned in this
section.”’.—[Tim
Loughton.] Brought
up, read the First time, and motion made [this day], That the
clause be read a Second
time. 1
pm
Tim
Loughton (East Worthing and Shoreham) (Con): I cannot
remember where I had got to before lunch, but perhaps I can finish off
by saying that the aim of this probing amendment is to tease out a bit
more information than was teased out by the amendment that my noble
Friend Baroness Morris of Bolton tabled in the House of Lords. We want
to ensure that inspections of residential children’s homes are
meaningful and not just inspections of the accommodation’s
physical suitability. We want to broaden the scope of what is taken
into account, so that consideration can be given to the promotion of
the child’s welfare and safety.
Much earlier
in our proceedings, I gave the example of a children’s home in
my constituency. It was a nice converted farmhouse in the middle of the
rolling downs of Sussex, but the children were running amok, and their
welfare was clearly not being catered for. However, that did not
necessarily come out in the Ofsted inspection report, and the new
clause is intended to probe such issues. There is no statutory duty to
consider the real aim of children’s homes—to promote
children’s well-being—and such a duty should be included
in the Bill.
The
Minister for Children, Young People and Families (Beverley
Hughes): I hope that all hon. Members agree that the
Government have been very clear about the need to safeguard children
and promote their welfare. Indeed, that is an important part of the
remit of the new Ofsted, which took over the regulation of
children’s social care in April 2007.
Section
119(3) of the Education and Inspections Act 2006, when read with
section 117(2), sets out the factors to which the chief inspector must
have regard in performing her functions. The first item on the list
is
“the need to
safeguard and promote the rights and welfare of
children”. That
is a core responsibility of Ofsted and the chief inspector; it applies
to all their functions, rather than being selectively attached to
individual functions.
This morning,
the hon. Member for East Worthing and Shoreham set out the intention
behind the new clause, which is to secure a broad scope for inspections
of children’s homes. Her Majesty’s chief inspector draws
her power to inspect children’s homes not from
section 147 of the 2006 Act, to which the new clause
relates, but from section 148. Section 148 transfers functions under
part 2 of the Care Standards Act 2000 from the former Commission for
Social Care Inspection to the chief inspector.
There is no
disagreement about what we understand the intentions behind the new
clause to be. When inspecting children’s homes, however, Ofsted
should and does consider a range of matters. Comprehensive law is
already in place setting out the appropriate factors that inspectors
must consider when inspecting children’s homes and, indeed, any
other institutions and services. Sections 22 and 23 of the Care
Standards Act, for example, give the Secretary of State the power to
make regulations and publish statements of national minimum standards
against which children’s homes are inspected. Those regulations
and national minimum standards cover a broad range of issues relating
to the welfare of children in homes, as well as matters such as the
fitness of managers and staff; they are not solely about the premises
and material conditions.
When the
chief inspector inspects children’s homes, fostering agencies,
voluntary support agencies, adoption support agencies and all the other
services within her remit, she must, as I explained, have regard to the
matters set out in section 117(2) of the 2006 Act. As I said, the first
aspect of that remit is
“the need to
safeguard and promote the rights and welfare of
children”. For
those reasons, new clause 11 is unnecessary. It adds nothing in
legislative terms to the existing safeguards for
children. The
primary objective is to ensure that as those legislative requirements
are implemented, the types of situation outlined by the hon. Gentleman,
which may be familiar to other Members, are dealt with to the extent
that Ofsted is much more rigorous in ensuring compliance with existing
standards, which it is Ofsted’s purpose to oversee. I hope that
the hon. Gentleman will accept my assurances and feel able to withdraw
the new
clause.
Tim
Loughton: I am grateful for that answer. In the interest
of brevity and elegance, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the
motion. Motion
and clause, by leave, withdrawn.
New Clause 12Adoption
targets ‘(1) The Secretary of
State shall not impose numerical targets for the number of children in
local authority care who are to be
adopted. (2) The Secretary of
State shall not offer local authorities financial incentives for
increasing the number of children in care who are
adopted.’.—[Tim
Loughton.] Brought
up, and read the First
time.
The new clause
deals with a rather more weighty subject that has been of concern to
many who keep an eye on adoption issues. I flagged up this concern
during Committee stage of the Adoption and Children Act 2002, when the
law on adoption was changed, and the same concern has been raised in
the press and by other hon. Members. It is that a perverse incentive
arises from the way in which the Government financially incentivise
adoption targets, such that some adoptions may be taking place that do
not meet the thresholds for an adoption that would normally need to be
met. I shall not give reams of categorical evidence that that is
happening—
The
Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Children, Schools and
Families (Kevin Brennan): Is there
any?
Tim
Loughton: I will if the Under-Secretary wants. There is a
suspicion—an impression—that needs to be either allayed
or dispelled.
Through the
use of certain targeted grants, as announced by various Ministers and
confirmed in parliamentary questions answered by Ministers, including
the hon. Gentleman and the Minister for Local Government, performance
reward grants have operated in past years. According to an answer on 3
September last year, the figures for how much grant money each local
authority received between 2004-05 and 2006-07 in relation to their
performance on adoption targets were released in a table. The figures
show that authorities have been incentivised for meeting national
adoption targets. The Under-Secretary defined those targets in an
answer to the hon. Member for Birmingham, Yardley (John Hemming) on 23
July. He said
“A
national adoption target was announced in 2000 to increase the number
of adoptions of looked after children by 40 per cent. by the year
ending March 2005, and to exceed this by achieving, if possible, a 50
per cent. increase by the end of March
2006.”—[Official Report, 23 July 2007; Vol. 463,
c.
838W.] Most
of us would agree that we need to increase quality adoptions to give
damaged children the very best second chance to enjoy the benefits of a
stable family life, which might put them back on the straight and
narrow, for want of a better phrase. It was particularly envisaged that
we would concentrate most on getting children out of the care system
who had been there for a long time and ensuring that, if there was no
prospect of them going back to their birth parents or kinship family,
they would be placed in stable adoptive situations. I think that we all
agree with that objective, although there are other countries that take
a different approach. The other day I cited Denmark, where in the year
before last—the last year for which I have figures—only
20 adoptions took place, but that has much more to do with the
flexibility of the system in and out of care, the greater use of
residential children’s homes and so on.
I disagreed
at the time the 2002 legislation was passed with the use of numerical
adoption targets—a very blunt instrument—backed up by
financial incentives, which could create a perverse incentive for a
local authority that had not met its adoption targets to clamour around
desperately at the end of the year to find a few soft targets to boost
its adoption figures. Theoretically, that could happen. Although we
know that an authority would have to go through all sorts of procedures
for the care proceedings and pass the various
thresholds, there could be a perverse incentive to try to find some
adoption candidates to meet those targets before a year
ends. The
fear that something along those lines may be happening is borne out
when one looks at the demographics of adoptions that have taken place.
I pluck out the example of Hammersmith and Fulham, which has received
about £500,000 as a reward for placing more than 100 children
for adoption in three years. It exceeded its goal of 101 adoptions and
secured 106 by the target deadline. It is interesting to look at what
happened after those adoption targets ended—they no longer exist
in their old form. The number of babies placed for adoption by that
authority fell substantially. In 2005, there were 21, in 2006 there
were 23 and in 2007 the figure dropped to 10. The figures are also
likely to be low this year. These are not children who have been in the
care system for some time, but new babies who are taken from their
mothers at an early
stage. I
am not trying to undermine the system of fast-track baby adoption that
we approved in the 2002 Act. If a mother with or without another parent
is incapable of taking on the responsibilities of caring for her baby,
there is a case for that child being placed for adoption as soon as
possible, subject to the checks, procedures and appeals. I am not just
picking on Hammersmith and Fulham; there are many similar cases. If one
looks at the overall figure, the number of babies placed for adoption
rather than returned to their parents is very high. It increased during
the years when the performance targets were
operating. There
is a perfectly justified suspicion that the targets are leading to
perverse incentives to adopt more children than would normally be
adopted, particularly focusing on babies. That does not do anyone any
good. I am not trying to suggest that there is systemic abuse of the
process, with social workers going around assuming the role of child
snatchers, as many in the more sensationalist media would have us
believe. Such views have not been beneficial and have not helped the
perception and the image of social workers, which we talked about
earlier. One way of dispelling that is to say that these targets should
not be
allowed. I
know that the targets have changed in the last couple of years, but the
principle is wrong. The principle can lead to the wrong outcomes and to
all sorts of allegations that are harmful to the adoption process and
to the work of social workers. The commission on social workers that I
chaired concluded that the Government should not use such targets. That
is why new clause 12 states the case quite simply. It is a probing new
clause, and the Minister will no doubt tell me that it would not fit
into this part of the Bill, but it is useful to have this debate none
the less. The Government need to state clearly that they will not use
these sorts of targets. They must send out a clear message that they
will come down heavily on any authority that appears to be
over-enthusiastic in its adoptions. We must ensure that we increase
adoptions, but we must do so for the right
reasons. Annette
Brooke (Mid-Dorset and North Poole) (LD): Does the hon.
Gentleman agree that it would be helpful if the Minister explained why
there has been little change in the number of adoptions from the older
age group while there has been a large increase in adoptions of very
young babies? I would sincerely like an explanation for
that.
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