Q
140Ms
Buck: Following on from that point—maybe each of
you might have a quick view on this—should it be about having an
impact assessment of all that you do as local authorities to see what
the effect on poverty is? One of the things that is very concerning
about government, including local government, is that the delivery of
one service will directly cut across the attempt to achieve
another target. For example, everyone has talked about child care and
agrees that it is an incredibly important engine for delivery on child
poverty, but local authorities are busy increasing their rents to child
care providers, immediately having the effect of pushing up the charges
to parents. That is because there is somehow no read-across from one
area of service to another. Is that something that should be the
basic—probably the starting point—child poverty policy in
each
area? Kevan
Collins: We have brought in a child poverty impact
assessment to how we consider policy across the piece, with the
partnership and the council. I think that that is helpful, because you
do not quite see the connections unless you have the discipline. The
danger is that it becomes another bureaucratic process, which is an
issue, but I agree with you that, otherwise, you miss the connections,
which are very complex. The threads go far and wide in this
one. Catherine
Fitt: First, an absolute yes to the impact assessment
and, secondly, we have had an extremely good experience working with
Jobcentre Plus—we had organisations working with it through the
new futures project. Thirdly, I think that there were three groups
identified: those families in long-term poverty, over several
generations; those families who are in in-work poverty, who worry
people considerably; and those people who were coming in for the short
term but for whom being in poverty was a real shock to the system. It
is not the same for those three
groups.
Q
141Andrew
Selous: Paul, a little while ago you quite rightly made
the point that the Bill is pretty much a blank canvas. It talks about
the mechanisms, the legal framework and the strategies that will need
to be written, but the content is quite blank. I should be interested
to hear from you and anyone else on the panel what you think needs to
be in it, both nationally and locally. You have talked about some of
what you have done in Kent, but I should appreciate a slightly fuller
answer. Paul
Carter: Presumably, we are going into solutions
mode.
Paul
Carter: We are not just going to click our fingers
and bring wealth and prosperity to highly socially deprived areas, so
what can we do against the rather bleak, economic outlook for the
western world and this country at the moment? There is a massive role,
certainly in the education part. The outcome of reducing the number of
NEETs is clearly beginning to work by raising aspiration and ambition,
and introducing a pioneering 14 to 16-years-old technical, vocational
programme. Some 5,000 young people are now choosing to do that one day
a week in our high schools. We have the best careers guidance that
allows people to explore social enterprises and what they might see in
a really interactive, creative
way. We
have the future jobs fund of which Kent is an early adopter. We have to
create 1,700 jobs every six months for the long-term unemployed, 70 per
cent. of whom are young and unemployed. That is an enormous task. How
can we create with the voluntary and public sectors social enterprises
that can be of community benefit and raise the self-worth and
self-esteem of those unemployed—particularly young
people—who will get used to having low self-esteem, and low
aspiration
because they cannot make the world a better place in any shape or form
because they cannot get a job? The role of social enterprises in the
third sector is enormous. I could go on with a continuum of other
initiatives that we are trialling and on which we want to build
momentum in Kent. Q
142Andrew
Selous: Thank you, Paul. That was very
useful. Kevan,
something you said earlier was fascinating and very radical. You were
talking about the possible flexibility of the benefits system and the
fact that it is not flexible. You said that it does not do flexibility,
that it is set down nationally, is incredibly prescriptive and that
there are thousands of pages of rules, regulations and so on. I am
intrigued by the idea of local flexibility. You are on to something
there. Will you outline a bit more of what you would like to see, or
what you were alluding to in that
regard? Kevan
Collins: It goes back to an opportunity to ask for
freedom and flexibilities to be put forward as a package. We have had
good relationships with Jobcentre Plus. What we could not get was the
freedom to have a holiday from the particular benefit in order to put
people into work—that was a few years ago in the Canary Wharf
area. If that policy did not work out, people would go back on to their
benefit without losing their rights. What we know is that the minute
people get a taste of work and are into work for a while, it changes
their relationship with that whole experience. Many people,
particularly those on incapacity benefit, are frightened to come off
that benefit even for a short time because of the task of getting back
on to it—I am not applauding that, just stating
it. With
the benefits system, it is difficult to find the location of
accountability around the table at the strategic partnership. Where is
the person with the authority to take a risk? We are lucky with the
London boroughs in that we are coterminous with our PCT and our borough
commanders—the key players around the table. The right leaders
are there to take a risk to bend their resources. It is a matter of
finding that authority at the right level, when someone from the
benefits system has the power and authority to say, “You know
what, I’m going to go with this, and take the risk and the
flexibility at that level.” In places like Tower Hamlets, as we
have done this work, the localisation of the economy around benefits
strikes you in terms of its enormity, and it could be used to strike
new relationships between individuals and the benefits system. It is
all clunky, and in the end you feel worn down by it, and that is a
challenge.
The
Chairman: I see unanimous nodding heads from our
witnesses.
Q
143Mr.
Stuart: How will children’s trust boards be
involved formally with the work of local authorities to meet their
duties in reducing child
poverty? Colin
Green: They would be the group who would do that. I
do not think that there would be a separate group. Such people are
already engaged in the children’s trust partnerships. However
configured, they all play a role at present, so it would be that group.
In Coventry, I certainly would not envisage having another set of
arrangements because such things are all interconnected.
Q
144Mr.
Stuart: Children’s trust boards may not be working
very well; there is mixed information so far on how effective they have
been—all sorts of things around the difficulties of pooled
budgets, partnership working and junior people turning up after the
first couple of meetings; all that sort of stuff. If they are the main
vehicle and they do not work we have a serious problem, haven’t
we? Don’t we need a plan
B? Colin
Green: Potentially, yes, but setting up another body
is not going to solve that. If the children’s trust body is not
working, that is fundamentally to do with the dynamics—the
difficulties between those partners. Having another group is just going
to replicate those
difficulties. Richard
Kemp: In fact, the comprehensive area assessment,
which, as you know, is in the process of reporting, will not be
reporting any longer on the council but on the partnerships and who is
contributing to those partnerships. That is a call to arms. Local
government tends to be better at partnerships, not least because we
have always done lots of bits of things. In our council chamber we are
used to seeing housing, social services and education, whereas a lot of
our silo colleagues do health, for example. Some do this and some do
that and they find it a lot harder to come together. I think the CAA
will show that. I do think there needs to be more training for some of
our partners. I go along to board members of partners who are listed
here who have a duty to co-operate with the council and ask what they
have done about that and I am afraid they say they do not know it
exists. It is early—only two years—but we have got to
provide more training and support in that sort of
situation. Paul
Carter: May I agree, Chairman, on that? The jury is
out on the trusts. They are great conceptually but they have
to prove to me and Kent that our 23 distributed children’s
trusts across the county are actually delivering and are not talking
shops. Is the joint commissioning going on? Are the PCTs actually
getting their cheque books out and putting their money on the table or
not? Please do not make me suggest that they are not, but I want proof
that they are because the opportunity for cost shunting is quite
considerable. There can be blurred accountability—“We
thought you were doing it. Oh no, you’re doing it.”
Things slip through the net. Conceptually it could work but it worries
me that in Kent they have been rather distanced from democratic
accountability and political
leadership.
Q
145John
Barrett: I want to move away from the wider issues to a
specific group—children in local authority care. You mentioned,
Paul, that there are 1,000 in Kent. There are also unaccompanied
asylum-seeking children. How should the measurements for child poverty
be made for those specific
children? Paul
Carter: You are going into the area of looked-after
children. In Kent there are 1,000 indigenous, 1,000 unaccompanied
minors and 1,000 placed by other authorities. Obviously, we are now
going into how you help and support that significant
number—concentrated predominantly in the coastal areas of the
county of Kent—delivering the best outcomes for those young
people. I think you are going down a path to a category potentially
living in child poverty, but there is a slightly different set of
solutions to that problem in my view.
Richard
Kemp: In my own council last Wednesday we had a
presentation made by some of our children in care. We have all signed a
pledge that has to include a specific example of what all 90
councillors in Liverpool will do as a corporate parent. I was not
actually there but I will be signing up to this. Frankly, this is a
responsibility on all councillors and I guess a lot of councillors do
not even realise they have it and do not do anything about
it.
We have a
series of national targets and local targets. I can either do this with
my heart because I want to help these people or do it with my head. If
we do not help them early we know we will be dealing with them for the
rest of their lives. That is just common sense as well as being what we
want to do. Increasingly I think looked-after children are coming up
the councillors’
agenda. Paul
Carter: May I just add to that, Chairman? This puts a
larger burden on trying to fight indigenous child poverty in Kent. We
are exacerbating the problem by allowing London boroughs and other
authorities to place such children into an economy at considerable
distance from their birth families. Legislation needs to change to say
that they cannot make placements over a certain distance. Guidance has
been produced left, right and centre but there is no actual legislation
that makes placing authorities have a duty of care within defined
restrictions. Colin
Green: Clearly, we have a duty of care to every child
in our care wherever they are placed. I want to come back to the issue
that children who become looked-after are overwhelmingly drawn from
poor families. Our role is to try to ensure that they do not become
poor adults, living in poor families. That is about whether they have
the social, educational and emotional equipment to lead a successful
adult
life.
Q
146Helen
Goodman: I want to connect the points made by
Mr. Green and Mr. Carter. Let us say that one
took a child-centred approach. I was not exactly sure, from what
Mr. Carter was saying, what the benefits to the children
would be of the approach that he proposes. I could see the benefits of
it to the local authority, in that it is easier to organise, better to
run, more straightforward to manage and so on, but how precisely would
what you were saying about not allowing children to be placed away from
the central London boroughs help the
children? Paul
Carter: It exacerbates our problem substantially in
Kent, because it puts up the cost of foster care
provision.
Helen
Goodman: Yes, but I was asking about the child’s
perspective, not the local authority’s perspective; that was my
question. Paul
Carter: Well, I would like to track back some of the
placing authorities to make sure they do carry out their duty of care
sensibly and responsibly. Some of these are the most challenging young
people, with extraordinary special educational needs. The funding
formula and distribution mechanism in relation to our schools funding
does not take into account the extraordinary problems from placing some
extraordinarily challenging young people into Kent and into Kent
schools. If you go round the primary schools in parts of Thanet, you
will talk to head teachers who say that
there might be two young people who started in year 1 and ended up in
year 6 because the transience of the school population is quite
enormous. That places a most extraordinary burden on those primary
schools in Kent in providing good-quality education for all young
people. It exacerbates the problem in concentrated pockets, so it has
an effect not just on those looked-after children, but on the whole
environment in which they
live.
The
Chairman: Just a little one,
Sally.
Q
147Ms
Keeble: You made the point quite frequently about the
mobility of certain children and issues about having a strategy to deal
with that. I used to be a leader in Southwark, which regularly sent
children and people down to Kent. Do you find in the Bill anything that
deals with that specific issue or do you think that something should be
put in to deal with the problem of transience and
mobility? Paul
Carter: I do, obviously. I have clearly explained
that in areas of high social deprivation, I think it places an
unacceptable burden on all the
systems.
Q
148Ms
Keeble: So what do you think should go in specifically to
deal with the transience or the mobility
issue? Paul
Carter: The information that is required on the
placement from a placing authority into the county of Kent needs to be
absolutely robust—from what I hear, I am not convinced that it
is—so that we know the exceptional needs of those young people
when they arrive, with a proper statement of need attributed to them.
The information also needs to be robust so that the authority keeps a
watching brief over those placed, looked-after children, extending its
responsibilities to make sure that its duty of care is carried out with
all those young people placed in Kent and the burden is not just placed
on Kent county council. From what my officers tell me, that is what so
often
happens.
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