Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

I beg to move amendment No. 71, in clause 3, page 2, line 39, after ‘services’, insert ‘as widely as possible’.

Joe Benton (Bootle, Labour)

With this it will be convenient to discuss amendment No. 2, in clause 3, page 3, line 2, at end insert—

‘(3A)The authority shall publish the criteria used to identify such parents and prospective parents under subsection (3).’.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

One of the issues that we have already covered is the importance of ensuring that the new places and services are as accessible as possible, not least to those disadvantaged people who tend not to come forward as easily as the others who are more conversant with the system and who are able to take advantage of it. Clause 3(2) lays an obligation on the authority to

“make arrangements to secure that early childhood services in their area are provided in an integrated manner”.

I am sure that we all applaud the sentiment behind the reference to “an integrated manner”. It is important that all the considerations that we are discussing—geographical access, the appropriateness of access, the quality of the care and the appropriateness of the care that parents seek to access—are joined-up.

The obligation on the local authority is to

“facilitate access to those services”.

That is fine in as far as it goes. It is important that access is facilitated—that is, that there is a perfectly usable form, poster or leaflet, or information on the internet, so that if someone is so minded and able to find that information, they can seek to gain access to the service. However, it is surely more important that access is facilitated as widely as possible, so that as many people as possible for whom the child care services are appropriate can find out about and gain access to them.

By elaborating slightly on the phraseology in the clause, my hon. Friends and I are trying to achieve what I am sure the Minister intends. It is a helpfully intended probing amendment that would address the disadvantage that we spoke about at length this morning. It would ensure that people were provided not only with access but were encouraged to gain access if they would benefit from the service.

Amendment No. 2 is contingent on that. We suggest including after subsection (3) an additional consideration:

“The authority shall publish the criteria used to identify such parents and prospective parents under subsection (3)”.

That means the parents who are being encouraged to use the child care services that will now be provided. The purpose of the amendment is to ensure that the local authority has not just gone through the motions and made limited access available, but has gone the extra mile to ensure that access is advertised and explained as widely as possible and that disadvantaged parents in particular take advantage of that. If, in the Bill, we explicitly encouraged local authorities to   facilitate access to the services “as widely as possible”, it would be fair that they should publish as part of their reporting mechanisms, which we have already spoken about, the basis or criteria on which they identified the parents who will need the child care services that the Bill is all about.

Again, these are probing amendments, but they would strengthen the intention behind the legislation by giving a little more detail to the phrases used in clause 3.

Ann Coffey (PPS (Rt Hon Alistair Darling, Secretary of State), Scotland Office; Stockport, Labour)

I agree with the hon. Gentleman that it is very important to ensure that those who are most disadvantaged take advantage of the services offered. In my constituency, there is a local Sure Start programme that is health led, as are some other Sure Start programmes. That gives a huge advantage locally, in that it is easy to identify the children and families who need the services because they are already known to the local health services. They know when a child has been born and the birth is followed up anyway by a visit from a health visitor or a community nurse, who is in a good position to encourage the parent to take advantage of some of the local services.

I understand that, unfortunately, that may not be the position elsewhere. Some Sure Start programmes have had difficulty in sharing health information because it is held in a database by the local primary care trust and is, therefore, subject to data protection. In responding, I want the Minister to explain how we can ensure that, in areas where disadvantaged families are in contact with health services, identification is passed to other agencies so that we can encourage and give information to parents. It is not enough to publish information; we have to go a step further for some families. Moreover, disadvantaged families are often happier to take information and advice from a health visitor, but someone new who knocks on the door is, perhaps, not received with similar good will.

Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Children, Young People and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Stretford & Urmston, Labour)

Amendment No. 71 seeks to ensure that local authorities facilitate access to early childhood services as widely as possible. In discussing these matters, it is important to be clear about the intention of clause 3. The best way to pursue better outcomes for young children is by integrating services through children’s centres. Clause 3 represents the legal underpinning for the continuity of children’s centres as the way in which those services will be integrated. Under the clauses, local authorities will have to provide a wide range of services to all families and children living in their areas. Clause 3 places a duty on local authorities to ensure that they secure early childhood services in an integrated manner that facilitates access and maximises benefits to parents, prospective parents and young children. As stated in the Bill, that covers all parents, prospective parents and young children in the local authority area. The population covered by that duty is as wide as possible.

The children’s centre practice guidance that we have issued gives very detailed direction on what provision of information and access should involve, which will certainly not just be the production of posters or leaflets. There is detailed guidance to ensure that all parents are made aware of the services that are available to them. More importantly—certainly for excluded families and hard-to-engage families—the centres will have to provide outreach services so that people go out to identify at-risk children, hard-to-reach families and disadvantaged families to build relationships and to try to get them to the centre where integrated services are more readily available. Outreach work is a very important part of the children’s centre model.

I point hon. Members to clause 3(4)(a), (b) and (c), which state that the local authority must take all reasonable steps to encourage and facilitate the involvement of parents and prospective parents. We have yet to debate it, but clause 12 imposes a duty on the local authority to provide parents and prospective parents with not just information, but advice and assistance in accessing the services that they need—not just child care but children’s services more generally.

I hope that the hon. Gentleman will accept that if he puts those different parts of the Bill together, it shows a strong story of our commitment to engaging parents, to facilitating access and to providing them not just with information but with advice and assistance on how to use those services and get the best out of them. That will be one-to-one advice for certain families, which is the duty in clause 12.

Amendment No. 2 would place an additional duty on every local authority to publish the criteria that they use to identify and target the families that are perhaps most in need and certainly most likely to benefit from integrated childhood services. Local authorities will obviously need to identify and then try to reach out to those people in the groups that are often excluded from services. That is why we have put a duty on local authorities, both to improve outcomes and to reduce inequalities. It is also why in the detailed children’s centre practice guidance that we published last week, we gave examples of the groups that research shows need to be targeted by children’s centres. Those include teenage parents, those in workless households, lone parents, parents of disabled children, and black and ethnic minority families. That is not intended to be an exhaustive list, and I would expect every local authority to take that approach but look also at the local population and local needs.

We are going to issue further guidance for the full set of early childhood services, so we will ensure that those key messages about targeted groups are incorporated. Although I agree with the principle of transparency, which I think is intended in the amendment, and the publishing of criteria, I am concerned about what that would mean. First, putting a duty on local authorities would be overly prescriptive. Secondly, and more importantly, if local authorities start to publish criteria for identifying the kind of disadvantaged families that they want to get into children’s centres, that risks   stigmatising not just people in those groups but the concept of using the children’s centre as a whole by families from all groups. Some parents would not then wish to be associated with people in the identified groups and the children’s centre. That could mean that they avoid getting the support that they need. I do not think that amendment No. 71 is needed, because there are strong arrangements in the Bill that speak loudly about our commitment to information, advice and assistance. I am concerned that amendment No. 2 would not only not help local authorities, but could be a hindrance to encouraging people to use children’s centres.

My hon. Friend the Member for Stockport (Ann Coffey) raised an important point about the integration of health services and the importance of the use of health data, and the need to go further than normal measures to engage hard-to-reach families. Those issues are very important. The existing Sure Start local programmes where health is securely integrated—in a minority of such programmes, the PCTs have been in the lead of the delivery and management of the centres—have delivered some good outcomes for children. It is absolutely imperative that we get their involvement and the ability to share the largely excellent data that health services have about children and families in their communities.

I hope that I have answered my hon. Friend’s second point by stressing, as I did a few minutes ago, the importance of the outreach services in all the models of children’s centres. She rightly identifies that we must ensure that staff go out to families who would not otherwise come into the centres of their own volition, for reasons that we all understand.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

Again, I am grateful to the Minister. They were probing amendments, and the hon. Member for Stockport made some useful comments, particularly about the experience in some areas with Sure Start projects that work well in disseminating information about what is available in them. However, some of us do not have Sure Start projects in our areas; we do not have one in my constituency.

Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Children, Young People and Families), Department for Education and Skills; Stretford & Urmston, Labour)

Yet.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

Indeed. The more I mention that, the more likely it is. I hope, that we will get one in the not-too-distant future.

Where such a framework does not exist already, it is that much more difficult to disseminate such information and ensure that one reaches disadvantaged parents, who are, in many cases, off the radar, but who still count towards the well-being figures that are not being achieved. It is therefore essential that they are included to help the local authority to ensure that figures such as the well-being criteria reflect the improvements in the quality of the services being offered.

Justine Greening (Putney, Conservative)

My hon. Friend says that many hard-to-reach families are off the radar. A more appropriate phrase might be “off the electoral register”. In cities with a high level of population churn, it is vital to ensure that local authorities are properly funded in the sorts of areas in which they need a regular outreach process that might be more intensive than those in areas with a slower population churn. That would ensure that people are not falling through the cracks simply because they are in different places from one day to the next.

Tim Loughton (Shadow Minister (Children), Health; East Worthing & Shoreham, Conservative)

My hon. Friend makes a good point. There is a serious question to be asked about how thoroughly local authorities will track down some of the more anonymous and transient people, particularly in the London boroughs and constituencies such as hers.

There is also the whole subject of private fostering to consider; many of us have serious concerns about how the Bill will offer better child care facilities for children whose carers are determined to keep them hidden from public view. Hence my concern about ensuring that local authorities go the extra mile to ensure that they try to reach all such people. Actually, it is not technically in the interests of local authorities to reach some of those people if they are anonymous from the qualitative assessment figures. Therefore, the legislation that made it more incumbent on local authorities to try to track down private fostering arrangements is a double-edged sword.

I do not accept that there is a risk of stigmatising with amendment No. 2. We are not saying that it should be published that the local authority is doing great things to get down-and-out families involved in all this—that is not the way in which it is going to be put—but information will have to be published in relation to improvement figures anyway. All that I am asking is that local authorities should have to ensure that they range their nets as far and wide as possible, that they are seen to do so and that they are accountable. That should not be seen as stigmatising, because the services will be available to all parents. It is simply that such services are particularly appropriate for disadvantaged children. There should therefore be encouragement to ensure that such children take advantage of such services, to which they are perfectly entitled, when, for a host of reasons, they have not come forward to do so.

I shall not press the amendments. We have had a useful exchange, and local authorities will have heard the Minister’s comments about the various mechanisms in place, such as the outreach facilities that are being encouraged, which are vital to facilitate the plans. The message is clear that they will be expected to do not the minimum, but the maximum to range their nets far and wide. On that basis, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.