That this House takes note of the case for the urgent levelling up of opportunities available to the children of the United Kingdom which have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, in particular with regard to (1) education and skills, (2) health, (3) inequality, and (4) the elimination of child poverty.
My Lords, I am delighted to introduce this debate on a very important topic. It is a widely drawn debate, and having seen the speakers’ list, I look forward to good contributions from knowledgeable people on a whole range of issues that affect children and young people. I suppose we will disagree with each other as the debate goes on—we should do, because these are contentious issues in some cases—but I do not doubt that everybody who has chosen to speak in the debate is committed to the well-being of children and young people, wants the best for them and wants life for children in the future to be better than it is at the moment.
Children have had a rough deal in the pandemic, though I am not sure whether they have been the most affected group. It is not a competition; I am not sure what is to be gained by pitting one group of our population against the other to see who has fared worse. But as adults, we have a natural obligation to look after children—in fact, it is a legal and moral duty. It has been our inability, as adults, in whatever role we have, to do that as well as we would have liked that leads us to be more concerned and worried about the effect that the pandemic has had on children.
I do not believe that these children are a lost generation. They will grow up to be a generation of adults that does wondrous things: they will be teachers, doctors, business leaders and parents, who shape society with exactly the same opportunity we have had. Do not talk them down. There is a real worry that, in talking about the lost generation, expectations will be fulfilled; no one would want that to happen. But how easy it is for them to become a great generation depends a great deal on what we do now, as we come out of the pandemic.
Even before the pandemic, we were a country that probably had greater inequalities than any other country in the developed world. In poverty, in health and in schools, the inequalities that seem to be structural in our society have bedevilled us for decades. If you are poor, you are less likely to be healthy; and if you are poor and not healthy, you are less likely to do well in school; and if you do not do well in school, you are less likely to be able to take advantage of opportunities as you grow older. When you put that structural inequality in the United Kingdom together with the economy of austerity that we have had in the decade prior to the start of the pandemic, you realise that children went into the pandemic with an unequal chance of thriving.
It was not easy for any child: whether rich or poor, and from whatever part of the country, it was not easy. But when services closed in March, some children were hit worse because they depended more on those services and institutions than others did—children who depended on schools for space to study, books to read or food to eat; young people who felt safer, more valued and more cared for at school than at home; and children whose parents relied, week in and week out, on social services and healthcare professionals for help and support in bringing them up. Thousands of aspirational parents from low incomes and with few facilities at home found that their working partnership with their children’s teacher was disrupted. All those things happened above and beyond children not having their lessons taught.
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on securing this vitally important debate and on her excellent opening speech. She has clearly demonstrated that, from the early years through to childhood and adolescence, the pandemic has left its mark on disadvantaged young people. I want to focus briefly on three areas: early years, social care and mental health.
It is well documented that the early years are a crucial stage for social mobility. This is when the gap in outcomes between disadvantaged children and their more affluent peers first takes hold. Recent polling carried out by the Sutton Trust found that over half of parents of two to four year-olds feel that their child’s physical, social and emotional development has been adversely impacted by the pandemic. To transform prospects for children in all parts of the country, we need to start young, and I believe that early years education should form a central plank of our nation’s education recovery. Above all, we need to see early years provision as an opportunity to provide a great start in life for children, and not just as a way of providing childcare.
Many disadvantaged three and four year-olds are currently locked out of additional government-funded childcare. Bizarrely, they cannot access these vital early years opportunities simply because their parents do not earn enough money. Surely such levelling down is an unintended consequence of policies just not being properly thought through. All children deserve the same opportunity to play, learn and thrive, so it is vital that eligibility be extended to those in low-income households if levelling up is to mean anything. Could the Minister explain this anomaly to me?
Child poverty destroys childhoods and causes irreparable damage to our children’s future health and productivity, but even before the pandemic we were heading in the wrong direction. There can be no progress on the Government’s plans for recovery and levelling up while child poverty continues to rise, and this has a direct impact on children’s social care. Simply put, funding for children’s social care is insufficient to support families and protect children. The independent review of children’s social care published its first report today, setting out the case for change within children’s social care. The report found that the system is weighted against early intervention and family support, that a lack of co-ordination across national government is reflected locally, and that more older children are going into care, partly due to a lack of early intervention and support for families. These things need to change, but this will happen only if local authorities receive sufficient funding from the upcoming spending review. What assurance can the Minister give that children’s social care will be given real priority in the spending review discussions, rather than languishing in its usual Cinderella status?
My Lords, I start by reminding the House of my registered interests, including as a non-executive board member of Ofsted. It is a real privilege to speak at last in a debate in the name of the noble Baroness, Lady Morris. I felt I started an unfortunate tradition whereby she would call a debate, I would put my name down, my own childcare would fall through and I would have to scratch; there is an irony there. I am delighted to be here. I do not agree with her on everything—it is unlikely that I would—but I absolutely agree with her on the call for pace, urgency and leadership at the highest level.
I have “ummed and ahhed” about whether to talk briefly about my own experience of the pandemic, because I am always acutely aware of my own good fortune compared to all the families the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, talked about so powerfully. But your Lordships’ House is quite often accused of being out of touch or somehow other-worldly, and I thought it worth reflecting on the fact that a few of us parents—mainly mums, but a couple of dads—in your Lordships’ House have spent the last year home schooling. In my case, I home schooled my three daughters, who are at various stages in primary school, and I offer a few observations.
We as a country owe an enormous debt of gratitude to teachers, early years workers and those who have done their very best. When you go to the school gate, you can see the tiredness etched on their faces. I think we sometimes forget that they have their own worries and families to think about. As the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, said, I do not think we should underestimate the emotional and psychological impact that this pandemic has had on children and on the adults who look after them, not least parents. I do not mind telling your Lordships that—again, while acknowledging my good fortune in the grand scheme of things—there were moments on the home-schooling journey when I was pushed to the absolute limit of what I felt I could cope with as a mother. I can safely tell the House that I will never make a maths teacher. So, we do not need a great leap of imagination to envisage how hard it was if you were in a tower block, had no outside space or were a single parent—I could go on.
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, for initiating this important debate and for her powerful speech. I also wish her a happy birthday.
Although SARS-CoV-2 does not cause the same severity of illness in children as in other age groups, the pandemic has had a devastating effect on children’s education, social development and access to healthcare, leading to anxiety and mental health problems, all of which will have a long-term impact on their well-being, especially for those from vulnerable families. For today’s debate, I will speak mainly about the effect the pandemic has had on children’s education and health. In doing so, I will exclusively use evidence from various surveys and inquiries involving children.
Data obtained from 6,000 primary schools and nearly 1.5 million pupils found a steep drop in the number of pupils attaining the levels expected in maths, reading and writing, particularly in the six to seven age group. Children from disadvantaged backgrounds fared the worst. The survey also showed that the children in this group were slower to improve on returning from lockdown.
The House of Commons Education Committee has been taking evidence from young people regarding the effects of the pandemic on their education. I am able to quote only a brief account of what some of them had to say about their learning during the pandemic, particularly on more after-school learning to catch up. One of them said that
“it is … important that young people have good wellbeing and are still mentally and physically healthy before that kind of conversation begins. Young people’s mental health during lockdown has worsened.”
Their evidence to the committee makes compelling reading.
Covid-19 will continue to have a major impact on young people’s education and skills opportunities for some time to come. That is evident across the learning landscape, from the cancellation of exams to a reduction in apprenticeship opportunities, which are exacerbating existing inequalities in our education system and, in turn, impacting on career opportunities for young people.
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The Lord Bishop of Leeds
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, on a speech every word of which I endorse and cannot really add to. I sympathise enormously with the noble Baroness, Lady Wyld. I did some home schooling for a 10 year- old grandson from Liverpool, who looked at the ceiling when I could not understand his maths and said, “I’ll explain it to you.” And he did. I felt what can only be called the appropriate humiliation. I want to ditch much of what I had to say and just point to a couple of things that I think are worth recording in this debate.
The Church of England, which gets knocked for all sorts of things, has been committed to what is now called levelling-up for some time. We have been investing heavily in initiatives and change programmes such as the strategic development funding, with, up to the end of 2020, 77 projects and £56 million committed to deprived areas. Of the 93 local authorities categorised by the Government as priority 1 for levelling-up, 48 contain projects receiving SDF funding, spread across 20 dioceses, focusing particularly on younger generations and deprived communities in urban and rural contexts.
I could also mention lowest income communities funding, strategic transformation funding and a plethora of social action projects rooted in local communities across the country—by one calculation, 15,100 projects run from churches. In one survey last year, 78% of churches were involved in food banks—a feature of modern Britain that must not become normalised, because the need for them is in itself shameful.
I shall make three points on education and the challenges that have been outlined by many speakers already. First, if children have had their education seriously impacted by the pandemic, then young carers continue to face enormous challenges, sometimes unknown even to their schools. There are more than 800,000 young carers in the UK between the ages of five—I repeat: five—and 18. Prior to the pandemic, 27% missed school and 39% received no extra support, so even extra tutoring will not help them. I ask the Minister whether the Government will commit to strategic funding of extra educational and pastoral support for young carers. The gap is widening between those with the resources to weather the pandemic deficits and those without. You just have to listen to the stories of poor access to IT, some of which we have heard today.
Secondly, the Child Poverty Action Group has reasonably proposed that extended schools be funded as part of a strategic educational recovery plan that holds together the disparate but connected impacts of the pandemic on mental health, welfare and so on. I again flog this horse: removal of the two-child limit in welfare provision would be enormously helpful and fruitful. No educational resource will be effective unless it enables parents to support their children in accessing it.
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lady Morris for creating the space for us to have this debate and for her fantastic introduction to it.
I want to take a step back and talk about child poverty. There is a wealth of evidence of the lifelong impact on an individual of living in poverty as a child. If the Government are serious about levelling up opportunities for children, it is crucial that they act to address child poverty now.
The UK went into the pandemic with unacceptably high levels of child poverty. The latest official figures show that, in 2019-20, 4.3 million children lived in families in relative poverty, which is the globally recognised measure. That is a rise of 200,000 in a year and is up 500,000 over five years—and this is before Covid struck. Do the Government have a plan to reduce child poverty?
If they are serious about levelling up, what are they doing to track and address local variations in child poverty? The official poverty statistics are national. The Government use their own dataset—Children in Low Income Families—to estimate how many children are in relative poverty in different areas, but that does not capture housing costs, which vary hugely by region.
Some interesting new research has tackled this. The End Child Poverty coalition recently released the findings of a new dataset produced for it by the Centre for Research in Social Policy at Loughborough University. It used the Government’s local figures but worked back in data on housing costs to look at the effect on poverty rates of higher or lower housing costs in each area.
The results were striking. In nine constituencies in London and Birmingham, the majority of children were below the poverty line last year once housing costs were taken into account. In the north-east, where I live, the child poverty rate is now 37%. In five years, it has gone up by a third, moving the north-east from just below the UK average to the second highest of any region after London. The report concluded:
My Lords, it is a great pleasure to follow the noble Baroness, Lady Sherlock. I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Morris of Yardley, both on securing this important debate and on her powerful and sincere introduction.
Like my noble friend Lady Wyld and many other noble Lords speaking in this debate, I have the great privilege of serving on the Public Services Select Committee of your Lordships’ House. Over the past year, that committee has been engaged on inquiries central to this debate. A Critical Juncture for Public Services: Lessons From COVID-19 was our first report and, more recently, we have opened inquiries on levelling up and vulnerable children.
Some overriding principles are evident from our work and should be borne in mind whenever government comes forward with proposals to help as we emerge from the shadow of the pandemic—and emerge we will. These principles include the importance of digital provision and local provision, the crucial nature of early intervention—much mentioned already—and the need to commit to mental health, which we have also touched on already. These are some of the most obvious but vital principles from our inquiries; I certainly wish to reiterate their importance.
In looking at levelling up, we as a committee concluded that the concept was not yet clearly defined. It should take note of measures promoting health, social welfare and education, as well as hard infrastructure such as roads and rail and other economic measures. Surely that is something we can agree on. It should also build in local provision—something I have touched on previously—and allow for the local shaping of measures as well.
Turning to children’s education specifically, it seems clear to me that the disruption from the pandemic has affected all children but particularly those from poorer families. It has fairly obviously worsened the position from what existed before the pandemic. Although the Government have increased funding for tutoring, catch-up and classes over the summer and introduced the Skills and Post-16 Education Bill in your Lordships’ House, which will, we hope, provide increased opportunities, it seems that more needs to be done. I trust that the Government will commit to more. For example, will my noble friend the Minister look particularly at extending the school day and the school year, as well as at the importance of vocational training, which has been overlooked?
My Lords, kinship carers are grandparents, uncles, aunts, elder brothers and sisters and friends who choose voluntarily to raise vulnerable children who cannot stay with their parents. They save the state billions in care costs. There are more than 180,000 such children and they have long suffered from insufficient attention in public policy and from decision-makers. Kinship children have suffered tragedy and trauma. According to a 2019 survey by the Family Rights Group, the main reasons for a child being in kinship care were parents’ mental health and substance abuse, domestic abuse, parents being unable to cope and parents in prison. There are different legal arrangements under which children are in kinship care, with differing legal duties, processes and eligibility for support. Legal arrangement rather than need can irrationally determine access to support.
Many kinship children have additional needs or disabilities, but typically no clear route to greater educational support. While some legal arrangements attract priority school admissions and pupil premium plus, other kinship children with similar needs do not get that help. Research reveals that over half of kinship children have needs that are far higher than in the general population, with at least 20% having emotional and behavioural difficulties. Even when they are eligible for pupil premium plus, the Parliamentary Taskforce on Kinship Care found tens of thousands for whom it is not being claimed.
There can be a lack of understanding in schools. Some carers praise the trauma-informed approach of individual schools or staff while others have to deal with teachers and school bureaucracy that show little understanding. The Family Rights Group survey found that 20% of kinship children of school age had been temporarily excluded, 5% permanently. By contrast, the fixed-term exclusion rate at primary and secondary state schools is around 5%. There can be a lack of therapeutic support. The adoption support fund funds therapeutic services for eligible adoptive and special guardianship order families, but excludes other kinship children with the same needs.
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It would have been difficult to promise, going into the pandemic, that no child would suffer; that we would, during that year, be able to make sure that no child was left behind. Anybody who said that was sowing false expectations. But these are children—these are the people for whom we have a responsibility. What we needed at that point was a Department for Education that performed better than it ever had before, and better than it ever dreamed that it could. That is the quality of the leadership we needed and the quality of the vision we wanted.
I saw that quality elsewhere in government: rough sleepers were taken off the streets and into hotels in a remarkably short period of time; the furlough system got money in people’s pockets in a few months; the help for creative and art institutions came through in a bigger amount than they might have expected; and there was the vaccination programme. People speak well of those initiatives, and our citizens are proud of what the Government were able to do. But when you look at the department that was charged with being the best it could be for our children, you do not see that story. You do not hear people say what a wonderous thing it was and what great services it delivered during the pandemic.
I would make one exception to that: the Oak academy was a real success. It will last for years and leave a legacy for teachers to use in future. But that was universal provision; every child benefited from the Oak academy. The other initiatives were targeted at the most disadvantaged children, and they were not successful, such as the laptops that should have been in children’s homes. I talked to teachers as the summer holiday started; they were still chasing worn-out laptops from local businesses because they were not getting them from the Government. Schools were made to drop the systems they were running themselves and take up the Government’s free school meal vouchers—and they did not work by summer school. On the catch-up programme, only half the number of schools anticipated were involved and fewer than half of the children were from less advantaged backgrounds. In all that time, the DfE managed, in one month from mid-March, to send 150 documents to head teachers telling them what to do.
Teachers tried to compensate for that. I heard too many stories of teachers taking school meals round to children’s doors; of teachers trying to fix worn-out IT kit; and of teachers who spent their time knocking on kids’ doors, to make sure they were safe. While they were doing that, they were not teaching children. All this meant that the children from the least advantaged backgrounds ended up having less time in the classroom. Some 80% of children from private schools got live, online lessons; almost 60% of children in state schools from more affluent backgrounds got the same; and 40% of children from less affluent backgrounds found themselves with online lessons. Of course that will lead to an achievement gap. Whether it is stated by Ofsted, the NFER or EF, it does not matter, I am not going to argue about the degree of left-behindness: no one I have heard from says that those children were not left behind.
The same is true of health. Although one of the consequences of the pandemic has meant that we cannot collect the statistics, I do not think anyone disagrees that reported mental health difficulties and the demand on services have increased. The one figure we do have shows that infant mortality in all four nations has increased as well. The figures for poverty show that one in three children in Birmingham is on free school meals, and one in five schools in our country has now opened a food bank.
However we went into the pandemic, we are emerging from it with a generation of children who have lost learning, have less confidence and feel greater insecurity. That is what the Government’s catch-up programme had to address—that was the task. Unless it can meet those needs, overcome those obstacles and see a future for those children, it is not worth its name.
They made a good start: they appointed one of the best educationalists I know, in Sir Kevan Collins. No one who has worked with Sir Kevan would not want to work with him again. He has decades of experience and has never shied away from a hard fight or a tough task. He must have, over those months, developed a programme that got the approval of both the Department for Education and the Prime Minister—without that, it would never have been presented to the Treasury. All that was wrong was that the finance was not agreed. What message does that give to our nation about how much we care about children and young people? Having a departmental leader who did not deliver during the early stages of the pandemic and a Prime Minister who would not give the money to sign off the catch-up programme hardly fills us with confidence about what the future will be for this generation.
What we are left with now is basically a meagre programme of tutoring and a very small amount of money going into teacher development for teachers and early years. We can argue about the money—whether it is more than Holland, less than America; whether it is this amount per day, or that amount per year—it is not enough. I have not met one teacher or one citizen who said, “That’ll do; that’ll give us a good start and set us on our way”. It is not enough and will not do enough things. Boris Johnson should not have said in his press release, “We will make sure no child is left behind.” Gavin Williamson should not have said in his press release that he is “incredibly proud” of this programme. It is not a programme of which our Government should be proud.
It is no good saying that the money is on its way; that will be too late. Look at the damage done in 12 months; it will just potentially cause more damage as well. That is why Labour, through our shadow spokesperson, Kate Green, has put forward a far more wide-ranging programme that brings together not just education but includes health, recreation and leisure, small-group tutoring for all children, more professional development, as promised by the Government, breakfast clubs and extending free school meals, a good education recovery premium and proper mental health support. But it is not just about the money. What really worries me in this debate is that it is about the lack of ambition and the lack of a vision for our country.
I remember when I was a Minister—anyone who has been in that position will feel the same—that it is often difficult to bring about the big changes you want, because the time is not right: the public are not ready for it; the arguments have not been made; there are too many people who oppose it; there are too many conflicts in taking those policies forward. We have all been there, but at the moment there is a public wish for change in how we provide services for children and young people. The people are inviting their Government to be bold. The argument has been made; we just need a department that will seize the opportunity.
We have changed as a nation. We are a different nation coming out of this pandemic than we were going in, and I think that all of us better understand the barriers to learning. All of us now know that children are poor and that makes a difference to what they can achieve and how they live their lives. I hope that I never again hear the idea that the problem for poor children is that they go to poor schools and have the worst teachers, because very often the reason those schools are not at the top of the list is because of the barriers they have to work with, with children, to overcome. I think that is understood in a more widespread way in our country than it used to be.
As a nation we have come to terms with the importance of digital technology and know that we have to make the leap. As a nation, we are no longer prepared to put academic excellence ahead of a child’s mental health. We have learned to value a broader range of activities—the sports, the arts and creativity for children. We have been reminded of what our values of compassion, citizenship, care, giving and receiving have been. I think we appreciate now that the best thing we can give our children is the resilience and the commitment both to themselves and to others that has been so much needed during the pandemic. People want something different. It is an invitation to the Government to be bold.
I am reminded of the last opportunity when that probably existed, which was at the end of the Second World War. People wanted change. There was an invitation to the Government to be bold. They wanted a different world, and I think back to what changes there were for children in those Acts: school nurses, dental checks, school meals, eye checks, school milk, orange juice. In education, whatever you think about it—and I did not like it—the tripartite system was a massive change, as was free secondary education for all. We had the introduction of child benefit, the development of council housing, the beginning of municipal, local authority leisure facilities. Looking round, we were the beneficiaries of that; we are the levelled-up generation. It is us, sitting here, at our age, who are the levelled-up generation, and we ought to remember what that has done for us and make sure that that is what we do now for the next generation.
It needs an umbrella such as the welfare state. Whether you call it a children’s plan or whatever you call it, it needs to be a range of activities that are brought together. I do not mind who leads it, I just want somebody competent to be in charge, to take us forward. I do not think the DfE, health or the Department for Work and Pensions can do it alone: it has to be people who work together. If we had a children’s plan now, and if the Prime Minister undertook that every policy his Government look at will be viewed for its impact on children and making this a more equal society, we might actually get somewhere. I do not claim to have all the answers to this, but I am as confident as I can be that unless we take this radical, bold route, we will not deliver for our people and we will not be able to successfully respond to the call for a different sort of society. Here are my starters for 10, and I am sure we will hear others throughout the debate.
I wonder whether the new office for health promotion could have, at its core, looking after children. I really am persuaded—as an educationalist, I must say—that if children were healthier, a lot of other things in education would be easier as well. So, can we charge the office for health promotion with putting children’s health at its centre? Can all children’s services be based on school sites, so that they are more easily delivered? Is it too difficult to have a regulation that means children should not live in flats without gardens, but should live in houses with spare space around them? Can we not provide money to local authorities so that they do not have to close swimming pools and other leisure facilities? Schools must change as well. Have we not learned that children need computers? Can we not give every child that starts school a laptop computer in the way that I was given an exercise book and a textbook to take home? It is the equivalent for this generation, under what could be a children’s plan.
To be honest, the curriculum has not changed for 30 years, and one more push for a year 1 phonics test will not get us out of this pandemic. We need a curriculum that is broader, that values creativity, values sport, and, more than that, understands how they all fit together so that children can flourish. It is not that children need to do those things; it is that children are complicated beings—they need those things to come together so that they can be at their best. I think that people have turned back or spoken aloud. I do not think anyone in this country ever lost their values or their vision of what kind of country we could be; I think, in a strange way, that the pandemic has given them permission to talk about it and say how important it is. I think that adults want a school system that works with parents and the wider community to instil citizenship and values in our schools.
The trouble is that the Minister could stand up and say that all those things are done already—and she would be right, as there is little tick box for each of them that she can tick off, but it does not deliver. It is not big enough, bold enough or delivered in a way that excites people and manages to do what it should do for children and young people. I am not confident at the moment that the Government understand the extent of the challenge or have the will and the wisdom to take us forward, but I am entirely confident that that is what is needed. I very much look forward to the contributions in the debate today, because I suspect that if we can put them all together, we will have been of great assistance to the Minister and her department in taking forward a plan for children and young people for the future.
With councils reporting growing overspends on children’s social care and struggling to fulfil their statutory duty, many have shifted funding from early intervention to late intervention and crisis services. But if prospects are to dramatically improve for children, we need a far greater focus on family support and early intervention before things reach crisis point. After many years of advocating this, I have come to the conclusion that it will happen only if the Government introduce a legal duty on local authorities and statutory safeguarding partners to provide early help to children and families. Could the Minister say what plans the Government have to introduce such a duty?
The same argument holds true for children’s mental health. All the recent evidence suggests that the pandemic has had a serious impact on children’s mental health, including traumatic experiences such as bereavement, social isolation and a breakdown in networks. A YoungMinds survey in January found that 67% of young people with mental health problems believe that the pandemic will have a long-term negative effect on their mental health, with real concerns about not being able to access much-needed specialist support. But the crisis in young people’s mental health long predates the pandemic. Despite significant government investment in children’s mental health, children and young people have not felt the impact, with waiting times continuing to be long and children often not being seen until after they reach crisis point. We will not break the vicious circle of increasing need and lack of provision until we take a preventive approach. That is why I am supporting calls from charities and campaigning groups in the sector for a national rollout of early support hub models, which would ensure that young people in every area across England can access early support for their mental health on a self-referral basis.
At the same time, the Public Services Committee has been taking evidence as part of our inquiries into levelling up and looking at how best to support vulnerable children. At times, this challenge is daunting, but there is hope that we are moving into an economic recovery and, fingers crossed, the end of restrictions. I do not think we have any choice but to avoid catastrophising and to avoid phrases such as the “lost generation”, as the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, rightly said. We have to move at pace to deliver services that work.
I do think there is a wider debate to be had about where parental responsibility begins and ends—for example, for school readiness—but it is not for today. We are talking about levelling up and what the Government can and should do for those families most in need of support. I want to add my voice to the argument for greater investment in family hubs and, crucially, for more pace. Family hubs ensure that families with children from early years right up until age 19—or up to 25 for those with special educational needs or a disability—can access early help or overcome difficulties and build stronger relationships.
Many families are suffering their toughest times. During the pandemic I have spoken about mothers trying to access perinatal mental health services or parents trying to access speech and language support for children who risk falling even further behind without nurseries or play groups. Support services too often are piecemeal and impossible to navigate, but there are examples of effective family hubs that are up and running. I do not have time to do justice to them all, but I will mention Family Hubs Network sites such as Essex family hubs, where 96% of children identified at two years old as not achieving age-appropriate development catch up, when they get help, before they start school.
My worry is that the Government have often cited complexity as a barrier to scaling up but, after all, the job of government is to work through complexity and to grip an agenda. So, I am very glad that the Government have established the National Centre for Family Hubs, and I am also grateful to the Family Hubs Network for its briefing on the principles that can help to simplify guidance to providers. In her summing up, can my noble friend confirm that the Government see family hubs as essential to the levelling-up agenda? How are they planning to provide the guidance and financial and other support to local authorities to ensure they can transform their family support?
Last year, I also raised the issue of funding, and I return to that today in summing up. I am the first to acknowledge that the Chancellor will face some very tough choices at the spending review, but aside from the moral case for investment, there is clear evidence that investing early in family services eases or prevents longer-term strain on services. My noble friend the Minister has a very admirable record of advocating for children, young people and social mobility, and I hope she will use all of her powers of persuasion in discussions with the Treasury.
I may have been a pretty rubbish home schooler—my daughter tells me regularly that I was—but I want to be able to look the next generation in the eye, put my hand on my heart and say that, as a Government, when it comes to restoring their life chances, we will do whatever it takes.
A pulse survey conducted by EngineeringUK last summer of 1,000 11 to 19 year-olds highlighted some of the concerns young people have about their future due to the pandemic and lost learning. Some 62% felt that finding a job will be more difficult; 52% felt that going to university would be difficult; 41% did not think that they would find an apprenticeship place; 44% felt that finding a job they could keep would be a problem.
The Skills and Post-16 Education Bill focuses on skills for jobs in the future. As a health professional, I know that there are job opportunities in the health sector, but outwith that, the majority of jobs will need technical and digital skills. To equip young people to get skills in those areas we need to think about addressing the following: making diversity and inclusion a priority in the context of recovery from the pandemic; a new STEM education strategy; a new careers strategy for England; expanding the careers hub, with a dedicated STEM leader; and a fully funded digital learning strategy for schools. By the way, why do we not give free broadband to children from vulnerable homes? We give them old laptops for free. We also need to embed careers into the STEM curriculum. I hope the Minister will comment on those areas.
The pandemic has also had a negative effect on children’s health. While the pandemic has wider health effects on children, it is the mental health aspects that are of great concern. Evidence from children and young people from YoungMinds, which I already mentioned, estimates that one in eight children has a diagnosable mental health condition. A survey of 4,000 paediatricians found late presentations of health conditions, a drop-off in attendance, increased mental health problems in children and delayed presentation of childhood cancers.
The Children’s Commissioner recently conducted a children’s survey, The Big Ask, to hear from children. More than half a million children responded. I gather that the report will be published in the summer, but preliminary data suggest that mental health is one of the key concerns of the children surveyed. This will be an important report, and I hope that we will have an opportunity to debate it.
We all know that the pandemic has had a huge negative impact on children’s education and health. Any recovery plans should address not only educational aspects but well-being and, importantly, the mental health of children.
Finally, I declare an interest as the current chair of the Bradford Literature Festival, where we invest heavily in reaching children in tough contexts in order to promote literacy, inspire ambition and fire the imagination. The National Literacy Trust rightly recognises that literacy opens routes to health, social equality, reducing poverty and growing the economy—although, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bull, said in a debate a couple of days ago, the arts and humanities do not need an economic justification per se. But if one is required, according to research quoted by the NLT, if every child left primary school with reading skills, the economy could expand by more than £32 billion by 2025. Furthermore, literacy failure is estimated to cost £2.5 billion annually.
Children who suffer now might—not inevitably will, but might—damage or inhibit future generations in aspiration, ambition and imagination. That is more than an economic waste; it will mean that we have failed our children and our grandchildren. That cycle needs to be broken.
“This pattern suggests that child poverty is growing at an alarming rate across the urban areas of the North East, whereas the greatest changes elsewhere are more localised.”
What is the Minister’s response to this?
Secondly, on working poverty, the Queen’s Speech briefing document said:
“This Government champions the principle of work as the best route out of poverty and towards financial independence.”
Of course, the problem with that is that poverty among working households has never been higher. In modern Britain, getting into work is no guarantee that you will get out of poverty. Sadly, declaring that you believe something does not make it so.
A recent IPPR report showed how bad things are. It says that working poverty
“has hit a record high … of 17.4 per cent … Couple households with one full-time earner now have a poverty rate of 31 per cent”.
One significant—and bad—shift is that families where one partner works full-time and the other part-time are increasingly being pulled into poverty, and even households with two full-time workers are at a growing risk of being pulled into poverty. Further, big families have really taken a hit. The report states:
“Working poverty rates among families with three or more children have reached”
42%. This will not do.
The IPPR highlights the need to deal with high housing and childcare costs, as well as to “make work pay”. Sadly, however, government action has been going in the opposite direction by slashing work allowances in universal credit, cutting the value of most working-age benefits and, frankly, making a right mess of childcare support. I passionately believe in the need to level up opportunities for all children, but that will never happen until we ensure that families have an adequate and reliable household income.
What of inequality? The Government’s own Social Mobility Commission surveyed people and found that nearly six in 10 believe that the pandemic has increased the gulf between social classes. The commission also points to the growing evidence that those from the most disadvantaged backgrounds are being affected most by the pandemic. Young people from the poorest backgrounds are losing their jobs while families are trapped in cramped housing and children from disadvantaged families are failing at school. The commission stated:
“Two-thirds (64%) of the population say that those who are ‘just about managing’ are not getting enough support from the government.”
Moreover, the regional differences were marked. The survey found:
“Only 31% of people in the north-east believe opportunities to progress in their area are ‘good’, compared to 74% in London.”
I am sure that the Minister wants to level up but, really, the Government as a whole will be serious about levelling up only when they take action to tackle the scourge of child poverty in our country. I urge the Government to make it a priority, as the last Labour Government did. If you will the ends, you must will the means as well. Fine words butter no parsnips.
I also want to make a particular plea for disadvantaged groups—minority ethnic communities, for example, and especially Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities, who find themselves in last place when it comes to life chances—and children in terms of the provision of public services as we come out of the pandemic. We also should not lose sight of vulnerable children—the subject of the Public Services Committee’s current inquiry. This inquiry has shown us that more than 800,000 vulnerable children are, according to the Office of the Children’s Commissioner, totally invisible to public services. This has not just happened—it is pre-pandemic —but, as in other areas, the position has undoubtedly worsened. This is serious. It is imperative that, through family hubs—again, already mentioned—we act to correct this worrying situation. I look forward to hearing a commitment to family hubs from my noble friend the Minister, particularly on their funding.
During the pandemic, older kinship carers, especially grandparents, were more vulnerable to coronavirus. Carers worry about their children’s well-being and are frightened of what would happen to them if they themselves become ill. Unfortunately, following the return of schools, some carers have been threatened with fines when they have kept children at home. Penalties are imposed rather than solutions found. Census data reveals that kinship households are more likely to be located in the poorest areas and experiencing deprivation. More than one in two kinship carers must give up work or reduce their hours to care for the children but receive little financial support. Kinship carers’ compassion can come at a heavy price. During the pandemic, managing remote learning was challenging, digital poverty was prevalent, kinship children with exceptional needs were often not catered for and some reported loss of support from social services, leaving families under great stress.
My noble friend Lady Morris set out powerfully the strategic challenge that the Government face—as we all do—but may I press particular policies? Educational support should be available based on need and not the legal status of the kinship care. The Government should afford all kinship children, where there is professional evidence or a court decision that they cannot live safely with their parents, the right to free childcare for two year-olds, a designated school member of staff and pupil premium plus. To support kinship children’s education and transition back to school, the Government should extend the remit of the virtual school head and ensure that the national tutoring programme includes kinship children in all placement types where there is professional evidence of additional need.
The adoption support fund should be extended so that all kinship children have the same access to therapeutic support. The holiday activities and food programme 2021 should extend free school meals to kinship children from struggling households, as recommended in the National Food Strategy and by Marcus Rashford MBE. I ask the Minister—indeed, I urge her—to take these proposals back for urgent consideration, together with the need for the interests of kinship children to be mainstreamed into government policies and measures to level up their life opportunities.