Clause 44 - Duty of local authorities to promote educational achievement
Children Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Mr Hilton Dawson (Lancaster and Wyre, Labour)
Any Member of Parliament can meet and talk with looked-after young people, and those who have been looked after, on the third Wednesday of every month at 5 pm, which is the usual meeting time of the all-party group for children and young people in care. If hon. Members attend those meetings, they will be challenged enormously by highly intelligent, extremely able, very articulate and extraordinarily resilient young people who have been through experiences that would have floored anyone here. Some of them are achieving extraordinary things.
Last February, my right hon. Friend the Minister presented certificates to achieving young people in care from all over the country. Many of them had achieved things such as settling down, being a little happier and
getting into school. Some of them were training to be barristers and doctors. Several of them were poets, and one of them was an extraordinary singer and musician.
There is nothing wrong with children and young people who are looked after. It is the local authorities—the corporate parents—who have comprehensively failed them at every turn. We will get no further forward until we provide stability, and until everyone working for any local authority, not only those who work in social services or education, takes seriously and enjoys their corporate parenting responsibilities towards these children and young people.
My right hon. Friend is absolutely right: it should not be beyond the ability of people of good will at all levels in Government, local authorities and elsewhere to sort out the problem of 60,000 looked-after children, and it should be sorted out.