My Lords, this is our first opportunity after the Recess to consider Part 3 of the Children and Families Bill. This is a good time to reflect on how far we have come in taking forward our shared ambition of a new framework for supporting children, young people and their parents—one that raises aspirations, improves outcomes and enables young people to prepare successfully for adult life.
On 17 December, the House passed a number of government amendments responding to important issues raised by noble Lords in Committee. These amendments will include disabled children and young people without SEN in key provisions of the Bill and ensure that local authorities exercise their functions with a view to securing that they identify both children and young people with SEN and disabled children and young people, and that health bodies inform the child’s parents and local authority where they are of the opinion that a child under compulsory school age has or probably has a disability. Local authorities will exercise their functions with a view to ensuring the integration of education and training provision with healthcare provision and social care provision for children and young people with SEN and disabled children and young people where they think this would promote their well-being, including in relation to their participation in education, training and recreation. Local authorities and their partner commissioning bodies making joint arrangements for the commissioning of education, health and care provision for children and young people with SEN will be amended to include disabled children and young people. Local authorities will keep under review all the education and training provision and social care provision for disabled children and young people and consult disabled children and young people and their parents when doing so. Local authorities will arrange for disabled young people and the parents of disabled children to be provided with information about matters related to disability—I have also tabled an amendment, which we shall come to later, to extend the requirement to cover children themselves as well as their parents—and local authorities will include disabled children and
young people both in relation to the information to be published and in developing and reviewing the local offer and in publishing comments.
The definition of disability applied in relation to these government amendments is that in the Equality Act 2010. Since I have already given an undertaking to strengthen the links to the Equality Act duties in the SEN code of practice, they will sharpen the focus on those duties considerably. The code of practice is, of course, statutory and the guidance it provides cannot be ignored.
These changes followed a government amendment in Committee requiring schools to make arrangements for supporting children with medical needs, including children with long-term medical conditions, about whom noble Lords had particular concerns. These changes have improved the Bill and will improve provision for children, young people and families.
We have now had an interesting debate on accountability for services and the local offer. It is an important issue, and one on which a range of views was expressed in Grand Committee. I would like to thank the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baronesses, Lady Howe, Lady Hughes, and Lady Jones, for their contribution today and for bringing their experience into this debate.
I think it is important at the outset to reflect for a moment on the purposes of the local offer and on how the provisions in the Bill, the draft regulations and the draft SEN code of practice have been developed. The Lamb enquiry highlighted the need for parents to have clearer information about the support available and how decisions are made. Brian Lamb was clear that greater clarity and transparency reduces conflict and builds trust. That is why the SEN Green Paper proposed the local offer.
Since the Green Paper, we have worked with our local pathfinders and others to develop the statutory framework for the local offer. From this work, we know that local services will be much more responsive to local needs if local offers are developed with children and young people and their parents. This is precisely what we provide for in the Bill.
I appreciate the concerns that have prompted Amendment 25E, which was tabled by the noble Baroness, Lady Howe, on the review of education and care provision. I understand why she is seeking the publication of an action plan if the education and social care is deemed insufficient. I also understand her wish to ensure that local authorities address any shortcomings, but I think that Clause 30 rather than Clause 27 is the right place to address these issues, and I will say more about this shortly.
The provisions in the Bill will ensure that children and young people with SEN and disabled children and young people and the parents of children with SEN and disabilities are involved in improving provision where it is insufficient. Local authorities must consult and involve them when reviewing local provision, but I believe that the detailed mechanics of how local authorities work with local people and those providing services for them to improve provision are best left to the local authority—I take the point the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, has just made—if we are really to secure services that are responsive to local needs.
As many noble Lords have mentioned, there is a government amendment in this group—Amendment 33C —which I would now like to explain. Local authorities must publish comments from children and young people with SEN and disabilities and parents of children with SEN and disabilities about the local offer, including comments about the quality of the provision available and about any provision that is not available. We make it clear in the draft SEN code that when local authorities publish their response to comments they should include the action local authorities propose to take. However, in view of the concerns raised in Committee I have tabled Amendment 33C to make this explicit in the Bill.
This amendment will add a requirement to Clause 30(6) to make it absolutely clear that local authorities cannot simply publish their response to comments but then ignore them. They must say what action they intend to take. This will provide even greater transparency and help to improve local accountability. As with every other part of the development of the local offer, children, young people and parents will be involved in discussions with local authorities about the action they propose to take.
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The noble Baroness, Lady Howe, asked whether Clause 30 was the right place, as opposed to Clause 27. Clause 27 is only about reviewing provisions and consulting people whereas Clause 30 provides the impetus to reflect provision in a local offer and to shape it in response to the views of children, young people and parents. As I have said, we feel that substantive engagement with children, young people and parents is the way to do this. However, we would be happy to make stronger links in the SEN code of practice between the review duty in Clause 27 and Clause 30 on the local offer. In answer to the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Low, I can also confirm that we expect local authorities to develop their action plans with parents, children and young people, and we will make that clear in the code of practice.
Many noble Lords have spoken to Amendments 30 and 31. I thank the noble Baronesses, Lady Hughes and Lady Jones, for tabling these amendments and for giving us the opportunity to consider further the aims of the local offer. Our aim in requiring local authorities to publish the provision they expect to be available in and outside their local area is to make the local offer as relevant and useful to families as possible. It will not be so informative if it can only set out what is already available rather than what is expected to be available. If, for example, a new specialist provision was due to open in an area, it would be useful for parents and young people to know about that in advance. We would not wish to restrict local authorities to including this facility in the local offer only once it had already opened.
Often, the things that are most important to parents are provided by small voluntary sector groups or informal arrangements such as a trampoline club on a Saturday morning for a child with autism, a local club providing activities for disabled children and their siblings or a circle of friends group for disabled young people set up by local young people. The services may
be expected to be available, but this cannot be guaranteed. Requiring local authorities to publish only what is available may deter them from including such provision in the first place and children and young people will miss out on valuable opportunities.
I assure noble Lords that we intend the local offer to be robust and it was always intended that it would cover what is available. We want parents and young people to have confidence in the information it contains. In answer to the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Morris, and other noble Lords, for the avoidance of any doubt we will amend the SEN code of practice to make it clear that the duty on the local authority to set out what it “expects” to be available is not about what the local authority would like to be available but what it expects actually will be.
Many noble Lords have spoken to Amendment 33D on quality standards for the local offer. I firmly believe that further prescription of additional legal duties and setting national quality standards in law would mean central government deciding what is best rather than local parents, children and young people, and that this would critically undermine the value of the local offer. Since the proposal for a local offer was prompted by the Lamb inquiry it might be helpful to reflect on Brian Lamb’s views. He said:
“I would be very reluctant to create a legal duty to provide whatever is included in the local offer. What you would get is very defensive practice from local authorities. They will be so cautious about what is included and the local offer will be stripped back to the absolute minimum they can commit to and avoid legal challenge. The local offer will become worthless and you’ll lose the prize of collaboration and openness with parents that it’s trying to secure”.
Brian Lamb’s view is that real change comes when local authorities engage fully with children, young people and parents. We share that view; we have seen it in operation in the pilots. That is why we will be looking for evidence of such engagement in the information we receive from local authorities on their approach to the reforms. We will also look at how we might strengthen the code of practice further in this regard.
We have already set out a clear common framework for the local offer in the Bill, particularly the draft regulations and the draft code of practice. This will ensure consistency across local authorities. We heard from my noble friend Lady Eaton and the noble Baroness, Lady Howarth, in Committee and again today, and today from my noble friend Lady Perry and the noble Lord, Lord Storey. All stressed the dangers of a minimum-standards approach and urged us to resist the temptation to place further prescription on local authorities. I agree with them and I am clear that doing so would work against openness and collaboration, and stifle creativity.
I understand why the noble Lord, Lord Low, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, have tabled Amendment 33D seeking regulations prescribing quality standards for the provision in the local offer. However, it is difficult to see how quality standards could be developed for the local offer since it will contain a wide range of services and support provided by a wide range of local providers, including not only local authorities but organisations from across the statutory and voluntary sectors. How would any standards be
meaningful without covering the full range of provision and without taking account of local views, local needs and local circumstances? There are fundamental differences between institutions regulated by statute, such as children’s homes, where it is necessary to set standards of care for children and young people to which all institutions must adhere, and the wide range of services to be embraced by the local offer from schools and colleges to small local voluntary-sector groups. We do not believe that standards—minimum or quality standards—are feasible for, or consistent with the purposes of, the local offer which are to provide children, young people and parents with easy access to information about provision, and the opportunity to be directly involved in shaping that provision.
It is also important to remember that many services in the local offer will already have statutory duties and be subject to statutory regulation—for example, schools, including non-maintained special schools and independent schools. Standards of one kind or another will also be in place for other areas such as fostering. It would not make sense to overlay existing arrangements with national prescription through the local offer. Instead, we want to encourage local engagement and innovation.
In our local pathfinders, the freedom to innovate is already paying dividends. The SE7 pathfinder developed its local offer specifically to answer the questions local parents and young people want to have answered, not to fit a predetermined regime imposed by the Government. As my noble friend Lady Eaton mentioned, North Yorkshire has been developing an interactive site map for the local offer, to improve access to information about available support in a simple and direct way that responds to local views. Leicester, through its parent carer forum, Big Mouth Forum, has set up pop-up shops in local shopping centres for families and young people to access useful information and ask questions about the local offer. This has also allowed Leicester City and the Big Mouth Forum to gather valuable feedback to inform continued development of their local offer. When I visited the pathfinder at Greenwich, Cherry Orchard School gave a presentation on how the local authority had worked directly with local schools from the outset to set out a clear school offer. There is a real sense of shared objectives, joint ownership and co-operation in these examples. We want to encourage this to flourish, not to overburden local agencies with further regulation.
At an open meeting for Peers with some of the pathfinders before Committee, noble Lords heard how, by working directly with parents and across education, health and social care provision had been developed that better met children’s and young people’s needs and was more cost effective, making the most of resources. If we had a tick-box approach to the local offer we would lose this collaboration and creativity, and families and children would lose out.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jones, asked for more information on the Ofsted study. The noble Baroness, Lady Morris, was quite right that when I wrote to Peers about SEN issues following Committee, I promised more detail on the study. Although we will come to that in more detail in a later group, I will give an update now. The Ofsted study will focus on the extent
to which local areas ensure that children and young people with SEN and those who are disabled are identified and their needs met. It will look for improved outcomes, and at the satisfaction of parents and young people. It will establish a baseline from which to evaluate progress in implementing the reforms; provide guidance to local authorities about the development of effective practice and advice about aspects requiring further development; and consider how, if required, effective accountability could take place.
The study will consider how local authorities identify and assess social care needs and will ensure that those needs are met. It will look at how local authorities work with clinical commissioning groups to identify and commission the range and sufficiency of specialist services required to support the needs of children with and without EHC plans, and will evaluate the effectiveness of these services. It will also consider arrangements for personal budgets, transition to EHC plans, and how school and college inspection and other inspection activity could provide ongoing information about the effectiveness of the local area’s arrangements. This will be a comprehensive study. Should Ofsted recommend that an inspection framework is needed we would, of course, take that very seriously. If it does not make such a recommendation, we will consider what further action is necessary.
The noble Baroness, Lady Wilkins, asked about local authorities publishing their responses. The Bill requires local authorities to publish comments about their local offer so that parents and others can see whether their views have been taken into account. We will say more on that in the SEN code of practice, but we still do not wish to be too prescriptive.
I hope that I have been able to reassure noble Lords that appropriate measures to improve transparency and accountability for the local offer will be established by the provisions in Clause 30, the common framework created by the regulations and the guidance in the code of practice. Just as amendments made earlier on Report have improved the Bill, government Amendment 33C will help to reinforce accountability and encourage provision that responds to local needs by ensuring that local authorities make it clear what action they intend to take in response to comments from children, young people and parents. In view of what I have said today I urge noble Lords not to press their amendments.