Education Secretary calls for more children to be taken into care
Education Secretary Michael Gove has called for more children to be taken into care more quickly and for the courts to be “less indulgent of poor parents”.
In a speech to the IPPR thinktank in London, Michael Gove rejected the argument that there were already too many people in care.
“The current number of around 67,000 is lower than the number in 1981 when it was 92,000 - and there is in any case no such thing as a right number overall - only a right solution for every child in need,” he argued.
The minister acknowledged that there were many things that must be done urgently to improve the treatment of and prospects for children and young people in care.
But he claimed that too many local authorities were failing to meet acceptable standards for child safeguarding.
The minister also suggested that too many children were allowed to stay too long with parents whose behaviour was unacceptable. “I want social workers to be more assertive with dysfunctional parents, courts to be less indulgent of poor parents, and the care system to expand to deal with the consequences,” Gove said.
The Education acknowledged that there were cases where children had been separated from loving parents in stable and secure families and there were subsequently “heart-breaking” battles to bring those children home.
“I don't deny that such cases exist,” Gove said. “But there is no evidence that they are anything other than a truly tiny number. Whereas there is mounting evidence that all too many children are left at risk and in squalor - physical and moral - for far too long.”
The Education Secretary said that when the state intervened, it was often too late. He also said the rights of biological parents were put ahead ahead of vulnerable children, and there had been too great a pre-occupation with the risk to children from strangers rather than from those they know or who are in their family’s immediate circle.
Gove said he found the argument put forward by lawyer Lord Carlile in a report into the Edlington torture case in Doncaster “compelling”, adding that he was instinctively drawn to many of its recommendations. The Government will respond to the report in due course.
The Education Secretary argued that the state was currently failing in its duty to keep children safe. “It may seem hard to believe - after the killing of Victoria Climbie, after the torture of Peter Connelly, after the cruel death of Khyra Ishaq – surely as a society, as a state, we must have got the message. But, I fear, we haven't.”
Gove added: “We are not asking the tough questions, and taking the necessary actions, to prevent thousands of children growing up in squalor, enduring neglect in their infancy, witnessing violence throughout their lives and being exposed to emotional, physical and sexual abuse during the years which should be their happiest.”
The minister also expressed frustration that only 28 serious case reviews had been published since June 2010 of the 147 initiated and of the 80 completed.
“I know in some cases we wait on the termination of legal proceedings before SCRs can be published but this still leaves a large proportion, well over half, unpublished,” he said.
“We need rapid progress towards greater transparency. If that doesn’t happen soon, we may need to legislate – for example to ensure that lessons learned investigations are carried out by investigators with a clear remit to publish the truth in full as rapidly as possible.”
Gove said he was open – “at the very least” – to suggestions for a change to the way chairs of Local Safeguarding Childrens Boards are appointed, pointing to a possible conflict of interest in the current arrangements.
