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Our worry, for the very reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Meg Munn) has mentioned, was that the local authorities were concentrating on the “home market”—children from the UK—and were not paying sufficient attention to those who arrived here and, within hours, went missing from their home. The information put into the public domain by The Guardian suggested that those Chinese children, having arrived here, were given mobile phones, were able to ring the adults who brought them into the country, walked out quite openly from the home and then disappeared into some part of the UK never to be found again. Unless a very important relationship is developed between the local authority and those who deal with children at our ports of entry including
Heathrow—the responsibility of the UK Border Agency—and that is monitored so that we know who is in and who is out of a local authority home, that seems to be the fate of children who are human trafficked into this country.
That is why the Home Affairs Committee will be looking at the subject again next Tuesday, to assess the Government’s response to our report, which we published earlier this year. We asked the Government specifically to take appropriate steps in order to protect children who had come from abroad, who have the added problem of not being able to speak English. There may be the greatest training in the world for social workers dealing with these issues, but if such children cannot access translation services they will not be able to explain why they came to the country.
There is also the situation of children who come from elsewhere in the EU, and we know of the important work being done by the Metropolitan police human trafficking unit through Europol. In particular, there is an initiative for the Romanian children, who are largely from the Roma community in that country, who were trafficked into this country and then disappeared from care. They ended up on Oxford street and began to get involved in begging operations.
I am very sorry that the hon. Member for Totnes (Mr. Steen) is not present, because if there is an expert on human, and especially child, trafficking in this House, it is almost certainly him. He has told the House of his activities when he has been to Oxford street with the Metropolitan police. He saw children being apprehended, and there was nothing that the police could do other than put them into care. They then went missing from care again, and ended up back on the streets. Clearly, these issues go beyond the narrow remit of the Select Committee report and the estimate motion before the House, but they are within the remit of the Government as a whole, and I know that the Minister will want to bring them to the attention of her colleagues in other Departments, because we cannot deal with them merely on a departmental basis.
My final point is on the human trafficking unit that is operated so effectively by the Metropolitan police. As we concluded our inquiry into human trafficking, we took evidence from that unit, and it informed us that its funding was to be cut. It said that the funding had been reduced over a number of years and that it would end up with no funding from the Government. During Prime Minister’s Question Time a few weeks ago, I raised that with the Prime Minister, and he stood at the Dispatch Box and said that the money is not being cut but being increased because of the important work done by the Government on human trafficking. I was delighted by that statement.
I asked the Prime Minister about the issue again when he came back from the European Council meeting in Brussels, because, as the Minister will know, the Swedish presidency—like the Czech presidency—has decided to make human trafficking a key priority. The Prime Minister said that the issue had been discussed at Brussels. I asked him again whether the money for the human trafficking unit had been increased, and he said yes. Before the Minister comes to reply, I hope there will be sufficient time for her to get a message to the Home
Office to find out whether that is, in fact, correct, because the replies I have received to the letters I have sent suggest that nobody has received this money which the Prime Minister thinks has been increased. I am sure that if the Prime Minister announces it at the Dispatch Box, it will happen, but even if the money has not yet been received by the organisation it would be nice to know that it is on its way—in the post or about to be transferred—because it is crucial in our fight against human trafficking in this country.
2.32 pm
Bill Wiggin (Leominster) (Con): It is a pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Leicester, East (Keith Vaz). I think that the Prime Minister should answer his question. The Prime Minister does seem to have problems with increases in spending. He has said, for instance, that
“total spending will continue to rise, and it will be a zero per cent. rise in 2013-14.”—[ Official Report, 1 July 2009; Vol. 495, c. 294.]
Perhaps that is the spending rise that the right hon. Gentleman was told was taking place. He is absolutely right to push on that point. I wish him every luck, because I agree that it is extremely important.
We all want our children to get the best start in life by having the right support, food, nutrition, shelter, education, mentoring and emotional support. That is what is needed in order for them to grow up and develop into responsible, independent adults. Looked-after children consistently do not get the same levels of support and care that children in families receive. Looked-after children under-achieve in education—just one in eight gets five good GCSEs. They are twice as likely to be convicted or cautioned; almost a quarter of prisoners have been in care. They are also four to five times more likely to have mental health problems; one third of homeless people have been in care. One fifth of women who leave care between the ages of 16 and 19 become pregnant within one year, compared with just one in 20 in the general population. They are also far more vulnerable to drug abuse, school exclusions, sexual exploitation, truancy and other symptoms linked to social breakdown. They are also more likely to be NEETs— not in education, employment or training.
Being in care affects young people’s life chances, and the Select Committee report into looked-after children has highlighted some of the weaknesses that need to be addressed. On our estates and in our communities, we are seeing second generation looked-after children whose parents have also been through the care system. There are three crucial areas for improving the life chances of looked-after children: education, family, and the role played by the local authority, social services and their partners. When I read Dickens, I felt that things had moved so far forward, yet there is still a failure to deliver the sort of 21st-century changes that we all want and believe in. This is, therefore, a tremendously important subject.
We need to improve access to education, because that is important and looked-after children need better chances and opportunities to succeed. Education and individual learning plans may need to be more tailor-made to suit individuals in order to encourage them to remain in education or some other form of learning or training. Having a good educational foundation can make a huge difference to job opportunities, as well as to a young
person’s confidence and self-esteem. Young people who have these challenging backgrounds need to be in environments where they feel valued and where their talents can be nurtured. The development of academies—and academies with residential facilities—will help to drive up the educational standards of those who are looked after. Mentoring in school makes a huge difference, and we also need to look at developing the role and expertise of school governors in matters concerning looked-after children so that they can oversee the performance of schools and how they are educating these young people.
In Herefordshire, an education liaison support service is available to children and young persons looked after by the council. It offers advice and support to children and parents, it develops individual support packages and it provides information and resources to carers. Herefordshire has delivered positive outcomes, including the fact that 92 per cent. of its young people aged 16 or over leaving care managed to obtain a qualification, which compares with the average in England of 53 per cent. That makes the council the top-performing authority in England.
Herefordshire’s looked-after children are also healthier and they have lower levels of truancy from school and fewer criminal convictions than average. The council has a good record, despite receiving—this is a real shame—the third lowest school grant per pupil and despite the council’s grant being 17 per cent. lower than the national average per head. Despite that financial disadvantage, the council is still achieving a fantastic outcome for these particularly vulnerable young people.
Supporting families early on can prevent children from going into care, and we should take measures to prevent family breakdown. Where possible, and when it is safe and appropriate, we should try to keep families together. The hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Laws) made the important point that that will not always be appropriate, and that is also mentioned is the Select Committee report. However, where it is safe and appropriate, that is what we should try to do. Strong families support vulnerable children and reduce the risk of children needing to go into care. I believe that the Government could do a great deal more to support families; parents are currently financially better off living apart, and that cannot be right.
Health visitors can help families, particularly those with problems and those struggling with parenthood. Local authorities, health care professionals and schools need to be equipped with the expertise to be able to identify those families where there is serious and wilful neglect; those families where the parents and guardians are a danger to children and the children need to be brought into care; and those circumstances in which the parents need help and support to improve their parenting skills. There is a difference between the circumstances of a single mother with post-natal depression who is struggling to look after her children, wants to be a good parent and needs support, and cases such as those of baby P or Victoria Climbié where the children were the victims of despicable and sickening acts of neglect, harm, violence and brutality. The people committing those acts need to be identified earlier and they should feel the full force of the law.
I come to local authorities, social services and their partners. Social services in local authorities throughout the country have a very difficult role in identifying when
they need to intervene and the action that they need to take. It is through contact with social services and health and education professionals that vulnerable children can be identified and early intervention can take place.
In these discussions, there is considerable emphasis on the importance of corporate parenting and multi-agency and partnership working, and that is an important framework. But however good the systems are on paper, we need to ensure that the individuals and professionals delivering the support services on the front line can take difficult decisions and feel confident in exercising their judgment.
Inspections are important to raising standards. Can the Minister reassure me that the new Ofsted unannounced inspections, for which 30 minutes’ notice is given, will not interfere with an authority’s delivery of services? If a children’s services director can get a call from the Ofsted inspectors saying that they are just 30 minutes away, we need to ensure that the inspections are done in a way that does not cause authorities to panic, and that while the inspectors are present for two days they are not interfering in the work of social services and causing resources to be used serving them rather than young people and families. Giving inspectors access to files and making staff available for interviews are important to assessing an authority’s performance, but we must also recognise that that is time and resource-consuming for the authority. I hope that the Minister and Ofsted will be able to ensure that inspections are carried out in a sensitive and appropriate manner. It is good to have quick inspections, but they must be done right.
Building strong and long-term relationships between looked-after children and those involved in delivering their care is essential. Children going through the care system can feel unsupported when their carers change on a regular basis, and the answer is as much down to the professionalism of staff as any legislative requirement. One area that needs strengthening is the support given to young people in the transition period from leaving care to becoming an independent adult. I asked the Committee Chairman about the need for support up to the age of 25, and his answer was compelling. Children who have spent most of their lives going through the care system can suddenly feel abandoned once they are no longer of school age and no longer within that system, whereas children who have not gone through the care system continue to get family support for many years, through university and beyond.
One final aspect for the Government to consider is how often the child is consulted. Time and again, we see cases in which problems could have been avoided if only those involved had asked the child. The fear seems to be that children will not tell the truth, but in my experience it does not take Einstein to tell when a child is telling the truth. We need to be much better at listening to children as well as providing the support that the whole House agrees is so vital for these vulnerable young people.
2.42 pm
Mr. David Chaytor (Bury, North) (Lab):
I think that this is the first time during my time as a Member that we have had a debate on looked-after children in the Chamber. There may have been short Adjournment debates in Westminster Hall, but this debate indicates a growing level of interest in and understanding of the
importance of this group of young people and the historic neglect by the state of their interests and welfare. I hope that the Committee’s report has contributed to that increased understanding and concern.
Tim Loughton: On a point of information, we have never before had a debate on vulnerable and looked-after children in Government time, but we have had debates on that subject in Opposition time.
Mr. Chaytor: I congratulate the Opposition, but I also congratulate the Government on eventually finding time for this debate. Of course, it builds on the significant improvement in Government policy in recent years, which has moved the interests of looked-after children much further up the political agenda.
These children are often the poorest of the poor. They and their families are at the bottom of the pile. In contrast with most children, whose interests, welfare, health and education are universally popular among the population at large, looked-after children, especially when they reach their teenage years, are frequently reviled, stigmatised, discriminated against and scapegoated by the adult population. That is the fact of the matter. It shows the difficulty that we have—as local authorities, health authorities and Governments—in re-establishing this group as victims.
The figures are quite stark. Other Members have mentioned some of the statistics, and still only 14 per cent. of looked-after children gain five A to Cs at GCSE. Among the population as a whole, that figure is 65 per cent. Only 46 per cent. of looked-after children get past key stage 2 level 4 in English, compared with 81 per cent. of the population. The most striking figure, of which I was only reminded earlier today, is that whereas in the population as a whole 3 per cent. of children have statements, 28 per cent. of looked-after children have statements; the figure is nine times higher in that group of young people.
Let me mention two brief anecdotes that seem to me to encapsulate some of the difficulties experienced by these young people, and perhaps how the state’s approach has changed. One of my earliest and most enjoyable experiences as an MP in my constituency was an awards evening for looked-after children in Bury. The children and their families were invited to the town hall for a wonderful party and celebration of their achievements organised by the then director of education. Every child received recognition in some shape or form, whether they were on their way to university and celebrating their A-level results or whether they had very modest achievements. The evening culminated in music, dance, a disco and plenty of food and drink for the children, their families and the teachers and support workers who had worked with them.
I vividly remember one of the most outgoing of those children, a young woman, partly Afro-Caribbean, who came to talk to me about Members of Parliament, Prime Minister’s questions and Tony Blair. She had watched Prime Minister’s questions on the television and wanted to know what it was like. I thought, “What an amazing young woman. She’s come through the most difficult experiences—moved around from foster family to foster family—yet she still has, at the age of 14 or 15, this high degree of optimism. She will probably survive and have an interesting future.”
Four or five years later, that young woman came to my advice surgery, heavily pregnant, dressed in a way that could only be described as eccentric, clearly under the influence of some substance and clearly with mental health problems. She came to ask me for assistance, but did not quite know what assistance she needed. She came also to complain about social workers, but was not quite able to put her finger on the source of the complaint. She wanted to complain about the national health service, but was not able to explain where it was not dealing with her needs. Her experience over the four or five years between the age of 14 and the age of 18 or 19 seemed to me to be almost a metaphor for the way in which the state had failed so many young people in care.
My second brief anecdote concerns an experience the Committee had when we were compiling the report. We met, in the Jubilee Room, a group of young people in care who had come to tell us about their experiences. They provided informal evidence to our Committee and they were incredibly resilient, confident and outgoing young people. They were older; they were aged 18, 19, 20 and 21. We listened carefully to what they had to say.
There was one thing that I occurred to me as we spoke to them—and I reiterate the comments made by the hon. Member for Leominster (Bill Wiggin) about the importance of listening to children. I found it remarkable how astute they were about how their experience had gone wrong, pointing out the awfulness of the instability of not having a regular social worker and of frequent moves from one foster family or care home to another. They demonstrated that, in spite of that, with the right kind of support—they had all had significant support from voluntary organisations and charities, and particularly from committed individuals—children in care can come through and can survive. In their late teens and early 20s, those young people seemed to be getting their lives together. The message of that second experience was positive, because attitudes and policies have changed in the past few years. The result is that young people in care get a slightly higher priority and a slightly better share of the cake.
One reflection of that is the document published in May by the Department for Children, Schools and Families which tackled head-on the need to improve educational attainment in schools. I very much welcome the proposals that every local authority should have a virtual head for looked-after children, and that every school should have a designated teacher for them. Other proposals include ensuring that all looked-after children have a personal education plan and get the one-to-one and small-group tuition that are so important for those who are vulnerable and uncertain about their relationships, and who find it difficult to cope in larger numbers.
I welcome the fact that the Government have already introduced the £500 educational allowance pledge. It is not yet clear how that is working or exactly who is responsible for allocating the money, but it is crucial if we are to give looked-after young people the benefits, advantages and extra-curricular activities that are taken as read by most average families in this country. Above all, I welcome the changes in the most recent code on school admissions, which prioritise the needs of looked-after children and are central to giving their schooling greater stability. The Government’s track record, in recent times and in that latest document, shows that they are moving very much in the right direction.
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