Childcare Bill

My Lords, it is a great privilege to follow my noble friend Lady Howe. I second what she says, and what other Peers have said about the opening and closures of provision and how this will impact on the parents, the staff and particularly on the children. It is clear in the research that having a number of different placements for a child tends to be disruptive for them, so it is also detrimental from their point of view. I also strongly support what my noble friend Lady Howarth said about the need for expertise in local authorities and careful commissioning, and how one will ensure adequate expertise at a senior level in local authorities so that those making decisions about childcare recognise that good quality childcare may be costly, but is a necessity. I would be grateful for some response from the Minister to that question. My noble friend Lord Northbourne is sadly unable to attend this Second Reading. He has two longstanding prior commitments this afternoon. As your Lordships will be aware, there was somewhat shorter notice for this Second Reading than is customary. I will mention a concern of his that he would like to bring up in Committee with regard to kinship care. This Bill could do much to enhance the quality and availability of professional childcare, but does little to support the largest and most popular source of childcare in the country, which is kinship care—that is to say, care by grandparents or other members of the child’s family. Kinship carers also need support. Any significant reduction in the current level of kinship care would place an impossible strain on the human resources likely to be available to provide quality professional care. Kinship care is the first choice of most parents and part of the culture and tradition of many of our ethnic minority populations. There is a strong case for doing more to encourage and support kinship carers, especially those who are prepared to undertake any training that may be necessary to support their practical experience and to ensure the quality of the care they give. I know the Minister referred to kinship care in his opening remarks, and other Peers have referred to it as well. I also thank the Minister for the clarity of his presentation of the Bill. I note in particular what he said about the education of young looked-after children, and I look forward to hearing more on that in later stages of the Bill. I applaud the Government’s intention to reduce the number of children living in poverty, provide them with opportunities to associate with other children and benefit from that association early on prior to school, and enable more parents to enter work. I thank the Minister for the letter he kindly wrote to me recently about the issue in the Work and Families Bill on maternal leave. I warmly welcome the important step forward the Government are taking in increasing paid maternal leave to nine months, and then, at some time to come, to 12 months. That is a step in the right direction of permitting parents choice. I recognise the benefit of this Bill to the status of those who provide childcare. This is the first piece of legislation in their area, and we all recognise the low status they often feel they have. It should enable more parents to enjoy the satisfaction if they choose to work, and the sense of well-being they experience needs to be considered in the light of the isolation they can feel at home bringing up a young child. I cannot wholeheartedly welcome this Bill, however, particularly the crux of it—the duty of local authorities to provide sufficient access for parents to childcare. This will inevitably increase the supply of childcare. I am sure that your Lordships are aware that capacity in this area is of a low level. The good-quality childcare which the noble Baroness, Lady Walmsley, emphasised, and which is essential for providing the outcomes that are described in the EPPE research to which the Minister referred, is not widely available. If we press on the accelerator now, might that not depress still further the quality of childcare currently provided? That is very much my concern. Perhaps the Minister will say that improvements in inspection will help to allay my concern, but I understand that inspections take place about once every three years—perhaps I might check that with him—and that they last for perhaps for a morning. They may be brief and not so helpful an indicator; nor will they assist the setting to improve. The quality assurance programmes may be better. They take more time to interview the staff and observe practice, and take a portfolio from the staff of the work that goes on in the setting. However, the one programme of which I am aware takes place only once every three years. That a review of a new portfolio is sent through once every year is welcome, but that is still not enough. That does not give me the confidence that a sufficient lever exists to improve quality. The Government are hoping to introduce a great many more teachers or pedagogues—people with high professional qualifications—into these settings. I can see considerable benefit in that policy, and it is already working in some settings. However, I recall the report of the noble Lord, Lord Warner, Choosing with Care, from 1992. It looked at the selection of staff in children’s homes and strongly recommended that consultants should work with those staff to push up the quality. I heard about three years ago that that recommendation largely failed to take because the poorly paid and trained staff in children’s homes would often feel some resentment at an outsider coming in and telling them what to do. I know from my own experience that this can be an issue. I recall working in a hostel some time ago and saying to one of the members of staff that a table in the dining room which had been wobbling for three months—there were only two tables there—really needed to be replaced. She replaced the table promptly, but we did not speak after that. Working in a hostel is a difficult job in a difficult environment. A few weeks later, the manager said that two of her staff had gone home in tears because of the pressure and the environment. One has to be modest about what one thinks one can achieve in terms of improving quality. People who do not have training and education behind them, are poorly paid and have low status are not very amenable to being told how to improve their practice. It is a good deal more difficult to do than one might imagine. Why is quality of care lacking? First, there is a chronic shortage of supervisors for this work. Secondly, as I have said, the pay is poor. Thirdly, the transformation fund, while welcome, is but a small sum given the challenge. Rates of staff turnover are in the region of 30 to 40 per cent—perhaps the Minister will provide me with a more accurate figure in his response. All the time, new and unqualified staff are coming into settings, which is disastrous for the relationships between staff and children. The providers of care to whom I have spoken recognise the staff problem. Academics emphasise that it will be several years before we can rely on good quality in this area. I have observed practice in nursery settings; for example, in a nursery in a difficult area of north London. The Government are seeking to benefit the most disadvantaged children. I applaud their desire to do this and to take them out of poverty, but if the provision in these settings is of a poor quality, the children who will be most harmed are those who are most vulnerable. I was observing a group of three or four year-olds with one childcare assistant in the nursery concerned. Three boys were playing at putting a steel ball into a tower and letting it fall. One of them kept on stealing the turn of the others. The child care assistant was not intervening and looking very much overwhelmed. Another member of staff told me that the mother of one of the children in the nursery was a heroin addict. The staff member said that something more should be done for the child, but that the mother was clever enough not to reach the extreme point where the child would be removed from her. It is such difficult work and it is so poorly supported. I welcome so much of what the Government have done in the Birth to Three Matters guidance, which, as other Peers have said, is very welcome. A recent edition of Nursery World refers to it emphasising the following:"““‘A relationship with a key person at home and in the setting is essential to young children’s well-being’ and ‘Caring adults count more than resources and equipment’””." That is absolutely right. I welcome that. The article continues:"““Young children never show that they feel ‘too attached’; I hear this worrying phrase sometimes from practitioners or team leaders. Many babies and under-threes now spend many hours in out-of-home care. For their emotional health, they must be allowed to become close to their non-family carers. If very young children are blocked from developing a bond of affection, then they will remain ill at ease and fail to benefit from the play experiences and resources on offer, however well organised””." I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, for her reference to my interest in this area. I cannot emphasise enough how crucial it is that the sound emotional bond between carer and child is established at an early stage. All the things that we want to see later on stem from that sound start. I do not wish to take too much of your Lordships’ time. I am sorry to be so slow this afternoon. Why is it so important that social workers are well trained and well supervised? It is important to support them in this difficult work but it is also crucial that, when people intervene in families’ lives and have so much power to do harm and to do good, they have the capacity to do so. It is extremely alluring for those who are involved with families to go beyond their power and to do more harm than good. The noble Lord, Lord Hurd, is present. I give the example of a statesman in a first-world country looking at the developing world. He must think carefully about his true capacity before he becomes involved in a chaotic, developing-world country and about the consequences of imprudent interventions. I respect the ambitions of the Government and remember the low point from which we started. When Margaret Hodge was the Children’s Minister, she emphasised that we were 20 years behind our neighbours in this area. If consistent exposure to poor quality of childcare—even if it makes a child’s experience less good than it was previously—spread through 100,000 children, it could make a significant difference. I ask the Minister to pause for thought. If he can provide any information that might reassure me, or any information on the progress of the Children’s Workforce Development Council, that would be welcome. Perhaps some of its early recommendations could be added to the Bill. The success of every child in this country is more vital now than it has ever been, with the current birth rate and an ageing population. I absolutely laud the Government’s intentions. However, I beg your Lordships to take full account of the workforce issues. I leave those thoughts with the Minister. I also apologise for speaking at such length.