New Clause 31
Children and Young Persons Bill [Lords]
3:51 pm
Beverley Hughes (Minister of State (Children, Young People and Families; Minister for the North West), Department for Children, Schools and Families; Stretford and Urmston, Labour)
I am grateful that my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford acknowledged the important debate that we had on Tuesday, during which I set out our view on advocacy in the context of clause 11 and made it clear that listening to children is crucial to improving outcomes for them, both individually and in relation to the system as a whole, and to improving system-wide standards. New clauses 31 and 32 pick up on the related issue of how local authorities contract and make arrangements for advocacy provision, and how they should be making effective provision for those services.
I can tell both my hon. Friends that we already require local authorities to monitor their services by keeping a record of each representation received, its outcome and whether there was compliance with the time limits set out in regulations. They are also required to compile a report at the end of each financial year on the operation of their complaints and representations procedure. However, I intend to go further and through statutory guidance require local authorities as part of that report to review their advocacy services annually, to ensure compliance with national standards. We will set out that that will necessarily involve local authority staff seeking regular feedback from children about their experiences of the service.
In revising that guidance and including that provision, we will of course consult widely. We have no doubt that the expertise of third sector advocacy services and the charities represented on the National Children’s Advocacy Consortium will make an invaluable contribution to ensuring that we get that guidance right and that it takes into account good practice on how all children should be listened to, including those who are hard to reach, such as those who require additional communication assistance or help from translation services so that local authorities can ensure that their views are heard. I do not want to require local authorities to publish a separate assessment of advocacy, but I think that extending the statutory guidance in the way that I have outlined will cover the issues that my hon. Friends are concerned about.
I will include another provision: the general quality of advocacy services that we get from those reports and from elsewhere will be included as an item in the annual ministerial stock-take of services to looked-after children that we committed in the White Paper to having every year. Moreover, when Ofsted inspects local authority services for looked-after children, as it will do regularly in a thematic review, it will take into account how local authorities, as corporate parents, are listening to children’s voices and providing for the advocacy service to enable complaints or representations to be made.
I hope that that with those three additional levers in the system, my hon. Friend will accept that we are strengthening the way in which local authorities will have to monitor the quality of their advocacy services, show compliance and take steps to improve them if that is necessary. I hope that those assurances are sufficient to persuade my hon. Friend not to press the new clause.