Commission on Families and the Wellbeing of Children
Executive Summary
Families and the State
Two-way
support and responsibilities
An inquiry
into the relationship between the state and the family in the
upbringing
of children
The Commission
on Families and the Wellbeing of Children (the Commission)
was established
in April 2004 to consider the relationship between the state
and the family
in providing children with a humane and caring upbringing in
the 21st
century. It was established by the National Family and Parenting
Institute and
NCH (previously known as National Children’s Homes), with
support from the
Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
The Commission
considered the developing boundaries between the state
and the family,
what is supportive on the one hand and insufficiently
supportive or
detrimental to human rights on the other. It addressed three
core questions:
• How and to what
extent should the state intervene in the care and
upbringing of
children, and what kind of reciprocal responsibility, if any,
does it have to
support families?
• To what extent
is it right for parents to be held responsible for the
actions of their
children? Where should their responsibilities begin and
end?
• How far and in
what way should the role of the state in supporting and
intervening in
families be formalised and made transparent?
Values. The
Commission’s recommendations have been informed by these
values:
• A recognition of
the importance of families in all their various forms as
the environment
in which most children are brought up and cared for.
• A recognition
that families, as well as having the potential to offer a
caring
environment, can also be a place where people experience
violence and
abuse, and may not, in certain circumstances, serve the
best interests
of the children living in them.
• A recognition
that families mediate between people as individuals and
the wider
community, and have an influence on society as a whole.
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• Following from
the above, an acceptance that the state has a role to
play in
supporting and regulating families, in respect of their impact on
both society and
individual family members, and children in particular
because of their
vulnerability.
• A recognition
that, notwithstanding the above, many changes and static
features in
family social and demographic trends are not and should
not be subject
to significant influence by the state.
• A recognition
that, because of their vulnerability, the wellbeing of
children should
be the paramount consideration in constructing family
policy. This
entails the adoption of an “ethic of care” in the development
of family
policy.
• A recognition of
the need to reduce inequities within society and to
address
discrimination associated with, inter alia, ethnic, cultural
and
social
background, disability, gender and sexual orientation.
In determining
the dividing line between family autonomy and legitimate state
intervention,
and the scope of the state’s obligations to support families, the
Commission has
been guided by two internationally accepted instruments
establishing the
dimensions of human and children’s rights – the Human
Rights Act 1998
and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child
1989.
Evidence. The Commission
has considered evidence in relation to:
• demographic and
social trends indicative of family life as it is lived;
• the impact of
supports, regulations, interventions and other aspects of
the interface
between the state and the family on the wellbeing of
children;
• the views of
children, parents, support agencies and the wider public.
It has also
conducted a consultation with policymakers, service providers,
researchers and
other interested organisations and a series of focus groups
with parents from
disadvantaged backgrounds.
Background to the establishment and work of
the Commision.
While outcomes
for most children are good, there are nevertheless legitimate
anxieties over
the stress experienced by some parents and its implications for
family
relationships. Care in the context of employment is an ongoing tension
that is acute
around the needs of young children. There are behavioural
issues and
safety concerns within communities and families, and a growing
number of young
people with mental health problems. Child poverty and
disparities in
outcomes in education and health must also be on the agenda
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for redress in a
society with a commitment to provide the best start in life for
all children.
These multiple
anxieties have prompted the Government to undertake
initiatives
across the family policy domain ranging from support service
enhancement
through to criminal justice measures that reinforce parental
responsibility
and children’s agency. Reacting to this high profile programme,
reservations
have been expressed in some quarters that the Government has
not been able to
respond in sufficient measure to the support needs of
families, on the
one hand, while on the other it may also have become too
interventionist
in family life.
There is a difficult
balance to be struck between the caring and control
functions of the
state, a tension that is particularly significant for the
governance of
the family. The Commission has taken a step back from the
emotionally
charged debate around families to assess the evidence. Building
on the strong
commitments to relationships that exist in today’s families, it
makes
recommendations in relation to the delivery of a measured,
proportionate
and caring response from government that is mindful of the
needs and interests
of children, parents and the wider community.
Content of the Executive Summary
In relation to
each significant area of policy there is a brief summary of the
issues
considered by the Commission followed by the principles it proposes
should inform
public policy. Recommendations derived from these principles
are drawn
together from across the policy areas in a final concluding section
of the Executive
Summary.
Evidence of the Impact of Upbringing on Children’s Outcomes
Family
relationships and their implications in terms of children’s wellbeing are
complex. Genetic
as well as environmental factors need to be understood and
taken into
account, as do bi-directional effects – the impact of parents on their
children and
vice versa. Nevertheless it is clear that parenting and the
environment in
which children are brought up matter, and that the risk factors
and optimal care
standards in upbringing are understood. These are reflected
in the
Government’s Framework for the Assessment of Children in Need.
Principle
The
Commission’s assessment of the standards of care required to promote
children’s
wellbeing points to the need for the following core principle to underpin
public
policy.
• The Framework
for the Assessment of Children in Need, with its
supportive
approach grounded in child development research, should
constitute the
corner-stone for government policy in relation to
expectations for
the care of children. The state’s role should be to
support these
standards of care through universal and targeted
services,
through promoting an economic and social environment that
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is conducive to
families being able to give children adequate care and
in some, more
limited, circumstances through regulating family life.
Regulation
Child protection
There will be
occasions when a child needs the intervention of the state in
family life
without parental consent. This is the sense in which the term “child
protection” is
used here. Having considered the scope of child protection
needs across
physical and emotional abuse and neglect, and evidence of the
impact of state
intervention, the Commission has concluded that the following
principles
should inform policy.
Principles
• In child
protection cases intervention may be needed that does not
require the
consent of the parent. The principle of minimum
intervention
should be adopted, restricting intervention to cases where
children are at risk within the
definition of the Children Act 1989.
• The state’s
expectations of standards of care for children who are
adopted,
fostered or in institutional care should encompass a high duty
of care secured
through a system of stringent checks and therapeutic
services.
Prospective
parents and caring for children after parents separate
I
n order to safeguard
the interests of children, some element of state
regulation is
needed in respect of adoptive parents and assisted conception. It
is also needed
to determine the caring arrangements for children after parents
separate. In
making its proposals as to the nature of such regulation, the
Commission has
been guided by the evidence relating to children’s outcomes
in these
particular family situations.
Principles
• In terms of
regulating prospective parents and parental contact, an
approach is
needed that involves an assessment of the risks and
benefits to the
child. It should not be unduly restrictive, but the
overriding
concern should be to safeguard the welfare of the child.
Thus:
Checks on
prospective adoptive parents should be principally concerned with
child protection
and the overall welfare of the child. They should not be
unnecessarily
rigid and inhibit adoption by giving disproportionate
consideration to
matters such as age, sexuality or religion of potential
adoptive
parents.
Assisted
conception clinics should be required to adopt the same acceptable
standards of
counselling and assessment. Operating from a problem solving
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rather than
bureaucratic perspective, these should involve enquiries of
prospective
parents and their GP, and if a significant problem is identified,
other pertinent
agencies such as social services, in order that the clinician
should be
satisfied that there is no foreseeable substantial medical or social
risk to the
child. An effective monitoring process should be established to
ensure that
these standards are applied.
The legal and
social support response to the issue of contact between
children and
parents post separation should be to optimise contact with both
parents, subject
to the primary consideration of the welfare of the child and
the need to
provide the child with a stable home environment.
Physical
safety and the family
The preservation
of children’s safety is, or should be, a core function of caring
for children.
However, this is an area of government policy where there is a
considerable
degree of imprecision.
Safety and
physical discipline. While recognising that there are distinctions
to be made
between different levels and frequency of the use of smacking,
overall, the
evidence relating to child outcomes from physical punishment is
negative. There
are significant concerns in relation to child abuse and
behavioural
outcomes. There is also a human right for a child, like an adult, to
be free from
inhuman and degrading treatment. Despite these concerns
relating to
child outcomes and human rights, the defence of reasonable
chastisement can
still be used by parents in relation to charges of “common
assault”. The
Commission regrets this state of affairs.
Safety and
supervision. Regulation for parents and other carers in respect of
children’s
safety requires greater clarification, particularly in relation to the age
at which it is
deemed safe for a child to be unattended.
Principle
• The preservation
of children’s safety and freedom from “inhuman and
degrading
treatment” should be a primary concern of government.
Management of children’s behaviour
With measures
such as the Crime and Disorder Act (1998) and Anti-Social
Behaviour Act
(2003), the Government has sought to tighten personal
responsibility across
the generations. A central problem arising from recent
developments in
juvenile justice is the growing contradiction between the
effective
lowering of the age of criminal responsibility to 10 through the
abolition of
doli incapax, which implies that children over the age of nine have
the same
knowledge of what constitutes crime as a mature adult, and the
simultaneous
raising of the presumption of parents’ responsibility for their
children’s
offences. In particular the abolition of doli incapax and the coercive
nature of
parenting orders have created a new reality of dual responsibility for
juvenile crime.
This inconsistency blurs the crucial distinction between
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parents’ duty of
care and their responsibility for conduct. The Commission is
of the view that
the lines of criminal responsibility should be redrawn to
achieve a proper
balance between legal and moral obligation.
In developing an
appropriate set of principles to inform the state’s relationship
with families in
managing children’s behaviour and protecting the community,
the Commission
has examined the legal implications and evidence in relation
to:
• children’s
psychological development;
• parents’
capacity to control their children’s behaviour;
• the Scottish
precedent of welfare-orientated Children’s Hearings;
• and options to
enhance informal social controls.
Principles
• Government
policies concerned with the management of children’s
behaviour should
embrace the principles of minimum intervention and
enhanced support
for families in difficulties due to the offending
behaviour of
their children.
• Parenting
support should become available for parents of children of all
ages as part of
the implementation of broader family support strategies.
There should be
an emphasis within parenting support services on
encouraging
parents to take broad responsibility for the actions of their
children and on
imparting to them proven strategies to help them in
handling
children’s difficult behaviour. Policies for reducing antisocial
behaviour and
truancy in children should seek to divert parents and
children away
from prosecution, with due consideration given to
identifying and
dealing with the underlying causes of behavioural
issues.
• Offers of
support, rather than coercion, should be the initial response to
families coping
with children’s behavioural difficulties. However, where
such support is
declined, and dependent on the seriousness of the
case, coercion
to accept support, for example through parenting
orders, may be
required (see Family Services below).
• Account should
be taken of children’s psychological development in
determining the
age of criminal responsibility and the flexibility required
in order to
establish whether a young person is capable of criminal
intent.
Clarifying Policy
The Government’s
expectations of standards of care in the upbringing of
children are
insufficiently defined, and where definitions can be inferred from
legislation and
statutory intervention, they are sometimes based on
approaches at
variance with each other. In particular, contrasts can be drawn
between caring
and welfare approaches on the one hand, and more clearly
enunciated
expectations of responsibility in the criminal justice field on the
other. There is
also a lack of clarity over who bears caring responsibilities,
and the degree
to which they bear them.
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There is an
obligation in the interests of open government and human rights
to set out the
government’s expectations of parents/carers, providing
transparency about
the sorts of issues that will be taken into consideration in
depriving a
parent/carer of their caring responsibilities.
Principle
• There is a need
for consistency, clarity and public information in
relation to the
Government’s expectations of standards of care in the
upbringing of
children.
Family Support
The state’s role
in supporting the upbringing of children encompasses the
whole
environment in which a child grows up. It ranges from relationship
support,
parenting education and health services through to financial matters.
It includes
addressing the structural causes of relative deprivation and
remedial
responses to counter hardship. It is concerned with the multiple
faces of
parents’ lives as they impinge on children, for example parents’ role
in the work
place and adult caring relationships. It is also concerned with the
commercial and
communal environment that impacts on children's upbringing.
The Commission
is of the view that there is a need for the state actively to
promote a shift
in social ethos towards an ethic of care, with caring
relationships
between parents and children supported across social relations,
including
governmental and commercial concerns, and civil society.
The Commission
is also of the view that, in order to realise an ethic of care,
and to enhance
trust and a partnership between the state and families, both
parents and
children should be widely involved in the development, shaping
and delivery of
services that have implications for children’s upbringing.
Family
Services
Family
services support the emotional wellbeing of children within their
families and
directly target the parent/child relationship. They include
information,
advice, parent/child leisure and learning activities, befriending,
group-work,
counselling, therapeutic facilities, couple relationship support,
help with
special needs and the monitoring of children’s wellbeing. They range
from low-key
universal services to intensive targeted provision.
Following a
review of research into the impact of family services, service
availability and
users’ perspectives, the Commission has developed a set of
principles that
encompass the scope of services and entitlements, investment
priorities and
process issues, and the relationship between service providers
and users.
Principles
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• A balanced menu
of universal and targeted services should be
available to all
parents (see box Menu of Services). While investment
in universal
services and a preventative approach is to be supported,
consideration
should also be given to resource limitations and the
importance of
ensuring that children in need or at risk receive sufficient
support
involving expert facilities where required.
Menu of
Service
Universal
services should:
• provide
information and advice about child development and the
services that
are available to support families in bringing up children;
• enable welfare
services to monitor and identify situations where further
support is
needed;
• foster a culture
where families are encouraged to accept support in
bringing up
children which is appropriate to their needs.
They should be
available to every family as a legal entitlement, and families
should be
supported to use them.
Universal
services should support families and monitor the wellbeing of the
child at the key
stages of vulnerability and change in a child’s life.
Birth. Pre and
post-natal support should be provided universally during this
period including
support from midwives and health visitors, and a post-natal
class to address
child development and support service issues.
Child
development. Child development checks should be provided regularly
though early
childhood and in to secondary school. These would enable
parents,
children and professionals to identify any developmental, behavioural
or emotional issues
in a universal, non-stigmatising service facilitating access
to remedial
assistance or treatment.
On-going
information. Information on child-development, support services
and significant
issues for parents as young people grow up should be
provided through
workshops at key transition points in nurseries, children’s
centres and on
entry to primary and secondary schools. Access to information
of this nature
should also be available as and when the parent identifies the
need for it
through help-lines and children’s centres. This support should be
offered to other
carers acting in loco parentis, for example grandparents
who
undertake a
caring role.
Targeted
services should meet needs that go beyond universal services.
Recipients
include:
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• families where a
particular issue-related service may support their
caring role;
• families where
children fall within the definition of being in need or at
risk and who
require specialist support facilities.
These services
should be available to every family where there is either a self
or
professionally identified need. Access should be facilitated by integrating
services into
mainstream provision, customising their use, reviewing referral
mechanisms,
enhancing ease of use and periodically reviewing the
relationship
between support and needs through national and local needs
assessments.
The menu of
targeted services should include:
• facilitated and
self-help parenting groups or courses beyond universal
provision;
• individual
counselling/support in home or clinic;
•
special
needs support (disabilities; mental health; behavioural and
learning issues);
• other respite
support;
• child
protection;
• Relationship
support/couple counselling
Taken as a
whole, the range of services should relate to children of all ages. It
should include
support for mothers, fathers, grandparents acting in loco
parentis and other social
parents, and all cultural groups should be catered for
appropriately
and inclusively.
Account should
be taken of the differing capacity of families to take advantage
of services.
There are particular issues for socially disadvantaged families,
and there may be
service barriers where there are cultural or language
differences. Strategies
for developing sensitive, culturally competent services,
easily available
in terms of physical access and backed up by outreach work
are needed to
redress this imbalance. A higher level of investment will be
required
relative to the general population.
The Government’s
Green Papers Every Child Matters and Youth
Matters,
underwritten by
the Children Act 2004, intend a similar range of provision,
although there
are concerns that under-resourcing may hamper
implementation
and there is no offer of a legal entitlement to universal
services as
recommended by the Commission. The Commission’s proposal
for an extension
of child development checks as a support and monitoring
facility is a
further significant addition to the Government’s programme.
10
In order to
provide optimal services, there should be a focus on the process of
implementation
and the development of individual and service competence
and
accountability.
There should be
minimum invasion of families’ privacy and an emphasis
placed on the
development of trust between providers and the families they
support.
The Material Environment and Growing Up
Public sphere
The
state is responsible for investment in a range of physical environments that
impinge
significantly on children’s lives, such as road safety, the creation of safe
walkways,
recreation spaces, high standard school buildings and the like. It also has
regulatory
powers in relation to planning and delivering the spatial environment, and
in
respect of health and associated consumption. Regulating the marketing and
retailing
of alcohol and tobacco and the standards of food in schools are significant
examples
here. These matters affect children and they need a high status lobby
structure
in order to ensure that their interests are adequately addressed.
Principle
• The material
environment in which children are brought up requires a
high level of
scrutiny, and powerful advocacy is needed in order to
protect the
interests of children in this sphere.
Private sphere – Families and Poverty
The
reduction of child poverty and the structure of cash benefits for children,
linked
as
they are with economic redistribution, are highly controversial matters. They
are
influenced,
not only by government, but also by the wider economic environment and
importantly
by families themselves. The state’s protective role in these circumstances
is
difficult to establish. For these reasons, and because of the deleterious
impact that
poverty
can have on children’s lives, the Commission has examined this issue in
some
depth.
The
Commission has examined the evidence of the impact of poverty on child
development
and has concluded that, whereas poverty may not directly cause
children
to have problems, it is nevertheless important because it makes effective
family
functioning harder to achieve. It engenders stress and puts barriers in the way
of
social integration. It is also associated with poor health outcomes. Both
relative
and
absolute poverty have this adverse effect on families.
There
has been widespread concern over the extent of family poverty in the United
Kingdom.
The Commission has considered whether this concern is well founded, and
has
concluded that it is. Currently an accepted definition of poverty is income
that is
below
60% of the median level of the population at that time. Assuming normal
population
statistical distribution rates of income generating human potential, such as
intelligence
and health, a 60% threshold based on the mean should result in some
2%
of the population falling below the poverty line. However, as measured in 2002
the
proportion of children in poverty in the UK was found to be approximately 30% –
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more
than 10 times higher than expected1. The
evidence points to disadvantageous
societal
influences that make it very difficult for many people to achieve their
potential.
If child poverty is to be addressed, the state needs to not only guarantee
minimum
income levels for families with children, but also to consider ways in which
escalating
income differentials in society might be tempered. The former is
achievable
and the Commission makes recommendations to help secure this end.
The
latter is subject to global economic trends that are difficult to control. It
should
nevertheless
remain an aspiration of government to shift society as far as possible in
the
direction of minimising children’s relative deprivation and to secure for
citizens a
more
equal start in life.
The Commission
has reviewed current measures to tackle child poverty. It
considers that
the reduction of child poverty, with its potential for long term
positive
outcomes for society as a whole, should form a consensus objective
and that there
should be a long term programme broadly endorsed across the
political
spectrum. It proposes the following set of principles in relation to the
monitoring and
redress of child poverty to inform such a programme.
Principles
• The state should
systematically provide, through its taxation and
benefits system,
some transfer of resources to people with children.
• The level of
this transfer should overall be greater for people on lower
than on higher
incomes, but should not be negligible for the majority of
the population –
i.e. people on middle incomes should feel that the
state is making
some significant contribution to the cost of bringing up
their children,
even though the bulk of this cost remains with them.
• Such a system
should broadly keep pace with living standards over
time.
• Governments
should seek to guarantee a minimum level of income for
families with
children, based on prevailing living standards and rising in
line with those
standards.
• The foundation
for an acceptable minimum should be some form of
independent,
systematic measurement of what is adequate, informed
by public views
of what everyone should be able to afford in today’s
society.
• The state’s role
in supporting families should include reducing the
negative impact
of low earnings through the provision of benefits
and/or taxation
credits in order to remove disincentives to participation
in the labour
market.
1
This
figure is a substantial under-estimate of the level of poverty as it would
be occurring
‘naturally’ if there were no governmental benefits and subsidies
of various
kinds.
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• When attaching
conditions to the receipt of out of work benefits by
parents,
governments should consider the need to guarantee a
minimum level of
financial support for dependent children.
• The partnership
between parents and the state in paying for children
should seek to
offer parents choice and opportunity in balancing the
priorities of
looking after their children and participating in the labour
market.
• This partnership
should aim for equity in the support offered to families
in and out of
work.
• The law on
cohabitation should be amended so that children’s financial
position post
separation is equally protected whether they are born to a
cohabiting
couple or a married one.
• Families should
retain autonomy in how they provide for the everyday
material needs
of their children, but there are circumstances where, in
the interests of
children’s welfare, subsidies and support in kind may be
appropriate.
• Policies for
state support of families and young people should
acknowledge that
children’s dependence on parental help does not
stop at any one
age, and thus seek to assist young people from less
advantaged
families to make effective transitions to adulthood.
Reviewing Family Support in the Context of
International Governance
The Commission
has reviewed the implications of international governance
for family
support in the UK, including instruments and case law associated
with the Council
of Europe, the European Union, the United Nations
Convention on
the Rights of the Child and the European Convention on
Human Rights.
These instruments have been influential in the development
of family
support policy and children’s rights in this country. However, they
require further
integration. The absence of a rights perspective recognising
international
governance in Every Child Matters is regretted. As a
consequence of
this omission, there is a lack of entitlement of children and
parents to the
services on offer.
Principle
• Family support
policy should be reviewed and developed
systematically
on an on-going basis in the light of the expectations
placed on
governments to provide support for the upbringing of
children
established in international instruments to which the UK
government is a
party.
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Recommendations
Physical Safety and the Family
1.The defence to
a charge of common assault of reasonable chastisement by
a parent should
be abolished. Parents should be supported in managing their
children’s
behaviour through authoritative parenting practices (see
Management
of Children’s Behaviour and Family Services below).
2.Guidance
should be issued by the Department for Education and Skills, and
made publicly
available to parents, in relation to:
• the age of a
child below which it would not be appropriate for him/her to
be left without
adult supervision;
• the minimum age
at which it would be appropriate for a child to babysit.
Other factors in
addition to age could be flagged up and examples given of
circumstances
where exceptions might be made.
Management of Children’s Behaviour
The Law
Commission should consider the framework of juvenile justice in
England and
Wales in the light of the principles described above and the
following
recommendations.
3a.The age of
criminal responsibility should be raised to 12.
3b.A doli
incapax presumption until the age of 16 should be reintroduced. This
would allow for
the gradual and highly variable process of moral development
in children. A
system should be adopted, as recommended by the Scottish
Law Commission,
of normal immunity from prosecution until the age of 16,
with an
equivalent to the Scottish Children’s Hearings introduced based on
the principles
of, and the experience gained from, family conferencing,
restorative
justice and youth offender panels. A range of supportive and
remedial
services to work with children committing offences and their families
should be
available for deployment. The criminal prosecution route should be
the exception
rather than the rule. One option for a “sliding scale” of maturity
would be for the
presumption of incapacity to stand, unless proven otherwise,
for children
aged 12-13, but reversed for those aged 14-15.
3c.Parenting
orders should be restricted to parents who have rejected
parenting
support offered to them on a voluntary basis. Legal sanctions, such
as fines and
imprisonment, against parents on account of the misbehaviour of
their children
should be restricted to parents of children who are below the
age of criminal
responsibility and parents of children found to be incapable of
criminal intent.
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4.The criminal
standard of proof of “beyond reasonable doubt” should be
introduced in
respect of anti-social behaviour orders (ASBO’s), and the
anonymity of
young offenders in receipt of them should be preserved.
Clarifying Policy
5a.The range of
expectations, standards of care and responsibilities for
children’s
upbringing contained in legal and quasi-legal documents, including
social care,
education, criminal justice and financial sources, be collated and
reviewed by
government with a view to developing a principled and consistent
approach,
reconciling contradictions in policy and filling significant gaps. The
review should
involve all government departments with a locus in family
policy, in
particular the Department for Constitutional Affairs, Department for
Education and
Skills, the Department of Health, the Home Office and the
Treasury.
5b.The outcome
of such a review of expectations, standards of care and
responsibilities
for children’s upbringing should be made available to the wider
public. The
nature of this public information exercise should not involve
legislation, and
the manner of its presentation should be informed by research
into
parents’/carers’ views of helpful options.
Family Services
The principal
government departments that would be responsible for the
implementation
of these recommendations include the Department for
Education and
Skills, the Department of Health, the Home Office and the
Treasury.
6.Children’s
services authorities should be required to provide a menu of
universal and
targeted services as described in Menu of Services above.
Parents should
be legally entitled to universal services.
7.Implementation
and Resources
The Government
should develop a national implementation strategy for a
programme of
family service enhancement. The strategy should be developed
in partnership
with local government and other service providers.
Within that
strategy:
a.Redressing
deficits in the delivery of current core services should be
prioritised.
b.There should
be an assessment of the relationship between demand and
the resources
available for family services.
c.Taking into
account differing locality profiles, guidance should be developed
for children’s
services authorities in respect of relative investment levels
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across early
prevention, support where children are in need, support where
they are at risk
and local authority care.
8.Optimising
Resources and Service Competence
Working with
service providers, the Government should enhance the capacity
of practitioners
to respond effectively to family support needs through
measures to
improve individual and service competence and accountability. In
particular:
a.Where a child
has been identified as in need, one professional within the
multidisciplinary
network should be allocated responsibility for ensuring that
appropriate
support services are provided.
b.Frontline
workers in schools, nurseries and primary health care should be
trained in
providing basic advice and support to children, couples and families.
c.Financial
incentives within and between caring agencies should be
reformulated so
that they do not encourage staff to close cases or to move
them to other
agencies inappropriately.
d.Adult services
should be required to consider the needs of children
associated with
any adult they treat.
e.Investment in
“service hubs” – children’s centres and extended schools –
should continue,
while ensuring that alternative venues are also available for
the receipt of
specialist services.
f.Parents should
be involved in family service development and
implementation
at every level through:
• consultations on
policy and service development;
• parent advisory
representation in relation to local strategic planning
and the
operation of 'service hubs' in schools and children’s centres;
• user involvement
in service monitoring and inspection;
• training for
providers in effective approaches to parental involvement.
9.Monitoring and
Child Protection
a.A national
child welfare database should not be established.
b.Protocols for
information sharing between professionals in order to protect
children, and
the management of associated database systems, should be
drawn up by the
Government in a way which minimises the risk of:
• inaccurate
information being held;
• trust between
families and caring agencies being undermined.
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c.Greater
emphasis should be placed on the use of sensitive instruments to
monitor child
welfare, such as the midwifery and health visiting service and
the child
development checks provided throughout childhood as proposed in
Menu of
Services above.
d.Guidance
should be provided for the courts and welfare agencies so that
Care and
Supervision Orders (Section 31, Children Act 1989) and Family
Assistance
Orders (Section 16, Children Act 1989) are used more effectively
as interventions
where children are identified as being at risk of significant
harm.
The Material
Environment and Growing Up
Public Sphere
10a.The
Children’s Commissioner should be charged with monitoring, and
making
recommendations to government in respect of investment in and
regulation of
the physical environment, marketing and consumption,
advertising and
business operations, with a view to promoting children’s
health and
safety and ability to lead fulfilling lives. The office of the Children’s
Commissioner
should be expanded to enable this function to be undertaken
effectively.
b. Local
authorities should be required by government to assess investment in
and the planning
and development of commercial and public space and
housing with
reference to the needs of children and their carers.
Private Sphere –
Families and Poverty
The Commission
is pleased to acknowledge that in a number of respects,
present
government policy conforms to or is working towards the principles
proposed by the
Commission in respect of families and poverty. These
principles
would, however, benefit from being clearly stated in the context of
that policy,
particularly those pertaining to the vexed relationship between
parents’ caring
and earning roles.
As well as
providing guides to policy development, the principles proposed by
the Commission
point to the need for two overarching measures. The first is
to create a new
mechanism to define what income children need to avoid
hardship. The
second is to entrench a universal system of financial support for
parents in a way
that does not allow it simply to wither as general living
standards rise.
11.The Treasury
should establish an independent review body for the purpose
of defining
income standards that reflect children’s right to an adequate
standard of
living.
The key task of
such a body would be to provide objective evidence to inform
the government
in setting benefit and tax credit rates. Specifically, its duty
would be to
state regularly what minimum levels of income are compatible
with an adequate
standard of living for families with different compositions.
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The review body
would bring together the present dispersed and irregular
attempts to set
budget standards and could draw on a range of existing
methods to
construct an official standard. Some of its possible features are
described in the
main report in the box – A Family Income Standards Review
Body. In setting up
and providing funding for such a body, the Government
would not be
surrendering its legitimate right to make judgements about what
kinds of
benefits and tax credits are affordable and compatible with other
objectives such
as maintaining work incentives, as well as with its other
spending and
taxation priorities. The Government would remain responsible
for decisions on
credit and benefit levels. Rather, it would be creating a visible
standard of
income adequacy and acknowledging the need to work towards
bringing every
family above that standard.
12.The Treasury
should make a commitment to up-rate Child Benefit and the
family element
of Child Tax Credit (i.e. the basic amount going to most
families) in
line with average earnings.
The proportion
of national income devoted to making flat-rate contributions to
the cost of
children across income groups should be standardised in this way,
otherwise there
is a constant risk that such “universal” transfers supporting
parents will
decline in value relative to other elements of income, as other
budget
priorities take precedence. This occurred in the case of Child Benefit
in the 1980s and
most of the 1990s, when at best it was up-rated by inflation,
and for a period
in the late 1980s not up-rated at all, following the removal of
the statutory
duty to consider such an up-rating in 1986. The result was that in
1997, Child
Benefit was worth less in real terms than in 1979, even though
average earnings
had increased in real terms by around 50% during that
period. The
Commission is of the view that the social solidarity required to
sustain adequate
protection for the worst-off children is strengthened if some
significant
benefit is extended to every family.
Reviewing Family
Support in the Context of International Governance
13.The element
of international rights instruments (the United Nations
Convention on
the Rights of the Child, the European Convention on Human
Rights and
European Union and Council of Europe requirements) that has
implications for
families and their interface with the state should be collated
and responded to
by government in a periodic inter-departmental review of
family support
policy encompassing:
• support in kind
including physical and mental health services,
education,
childcare facilities, maternity and paternity leave and the
menu of services
that constitute parenting support;
• financial
support, in respect of which government would also respond
to the findings
of independent review body on family income proposed
at
Recommendation 11.
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• This periodic
review of family support should be published in precis for
a wide public
audience as part of a process of public information and
enhancement of
public awareness.
14.In order to
promote and safeguard the application of its tenets, the United
Nations
Convention on the Rights of the Child should be incorporated into
domestic
legislation.