THE Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill could “represent a step forward” in supporting families, the Bishop of Manchester, Dr David Walker, told the House of Lords last week.
The Bill, which is at its Second Reading, is sponsored by the Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities, Bridget Phillipson. The Lords debate on the Bill was moved by Baroness Smith of Malvern (Labour).
Baroness Smith said that the Bill would strengthen the safeguarding and welfare of youngsters, expand free breakfast clubs in primary schools, provide greater support for care-leavers, regulate using care establishments and social-worker agencies, and “be certain that those in care have the safety and stability they should thrive”.
“This Bill makes vital, practical changes to our kids’s social-care and education systems, and there might be tangible improvements for each young person because of this,” she said.
Reflecting on his own Private Member’s Bill, the Universal Credit (Standard Allowance Entitlement of Care Leavers) Bill (News 2 August 2024), which overlaps somewhat with the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, Dr Walker referred to research undertaken by Barnardo’s, which found that “39 per cent of care-leavers aged 19 to 21 should not in education, employment or training, compared with 13 per cent of young people usually.”
In the UK, a care-leaver is an adolescent aged between 16 and 25 who has been within the care of the Local Authority for no less than 13 weeks and was in care on or after their sixteenth birthday.
Dr Walker told peers that the care-leavers whom he had met though Barnardo’s emphasised that much relied on the whim of their particular local authority.
“Young individuals who move away for work or further education are especially liable to losing support. We need a universal offer for young people leaving care that local authorities are obliged to satisfy,” he said.
Baroness Benjamin (Liberal Democrats), who’s the vice-president of Barnardo’s, said: “Every yr, some 13,000 young people leave care without the support they need. Outcomes for these young people remain much lower than for his or her peers.
“We imagine there needs to be a recent minimum standard of support for care leavers — a national offer no matter where they live, which should include measures beneficial by Barnardo’s.”
Baroness Benjamin, who can be a patron of the charity First Star Scholars, said that she desired to work with the Government to develop a programme to enable more care-leavers to reach higher education.
The Earl of Effingham, Lord Howard (Conservative), welcomed the Bill, but said that “there are areas in Part 1 where we are going to seek to probe, develop and make clear the sensible implementation.”
Although Lord Howard said that he was “keen to see support for care leavers be as effective as possible”, he disagreed with the Bill’s handling of academies: “They seek to undo the progress made through the last twenty years”.
Baroness Morgan of Cotes (Non-Affiliated), who was the Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities from 2014 to 2016, had an statement to make about academies, referring to Clauses 47 and 50 of the Bill.
She asked the peers: “If academisation will not be the reply particularly situations, then what’s? How is school improvement, which has, in any case, been the holy grail of Governments over many a long time, going to be achieved and who does that almost all affectively?”
The Bishop of Derby, the Rt Revd Libby Lane, who chairs the board of trustees of the Children’s Society, registered her support for higher data-sharing to guard children, including with and from faith communities.
She said: “We know that schools across England are already engaged in excellent anti-poverty, anti-racist and anti-neglect work, for instance. As we now have heard, some are already benefitting from collecting and monitoring well-being data to tell their interventions. I trust we will agree that there may be value in equipping schools with a comprehensive picture of the well-being of their students.”
Bishop Lane also commended the provisions to cut back the fee of faculty uniforms and to expand the supply of free school breakfasts: “Poverty is a primary consider the well-being of youngsters.
“I suggest that children themselves are best placed to advise us of the challenges they face and of what would make life higher.
In her concluding speech, Baroness Smith said: “We are committed to constructing a system that removes the obstacles to learning that hold too many children back, with all reforms underpinned by clear and robust accountability.
“The Bill includes many measures to maintain children protected and prioritise their well-being, and I’m glad that they’ve been widely welcomed across the House.”
The Bill now moves to Committee Stage.
