Care begins at home as Timpson gets to grips with punishing brief

Edward Timpson describes his role as minister for children and families as “challenging”, but “extremely exciting”. He says the prospect of handling some of the big policies currently “exercising” the coalition – such as adoption and children’s residential care reform – is more than he could have anticipated when he entered parliament just four years ago.

The ministerial clear-out at the Department for Education (DfE) on 4 September saw the departure of Tim Loughton and Sarah Teather. Our interview takes place at the DfE seven weeks into Timpson’s appointment.

A former family law barrister, he has been handed a vast, sprawling brief encompassing adoption and fostering, child protection, young people’s services and children with special educational needs (SEN).

“When you factor in the Children and Families Bill, which is in pre-legislative scrutiny, we’re working on some really important changes to SEN, the Office of the Children’s Commissioner and strengthening children’s rights,” he says. “It’s an extremely important piece of legislation that I hope is going to drive through real improvements in the quality of support that young people have available to them.”

Before delving further into the nuts and bolts of his brief, he is eager to set out how his background led him to where he is today. His father John set up the renowned chain of shoe repair and key-cutting shops that bear the family name. But more significantly, his parents are prolific foster carers. They have looked after 87 children during the past 30 years, many of whom Timpson grew up with, alongside his elder sister and brother and two adopted younger brothers.

Sense of compassion
He says a sense of compassion and duty toward the young people he was brought up with led him into family law, and then politics.

“It’s difficult to know how many of the decisions you make in life are instinctive, or whether they are based on wanting to make your family proud of who you are and what you’ve achieved,” he says.

“Clearly, I was influenced by my experiences of living in a family that fostered and having two adopted brothers that grew up with me, so I followed that through into my professional life – representing children, parents and local authorities in care cases for many years in the North West and in North Wales – and have continued that, I suppose, calling, into my political life.

“Siblings in families who foster and adopt are not always recognised for the sometimes quite difficult and demanding role they have, to ensure that the environ­ment that children come into is a stable and loving one, but it was a positive experience for me.”

Timpson, who is 38, comes across as humble and slightly cautious throughout. He says his adopted brothers and the many foster children that he lived with made it “inevitable” that he would concentrate his political energies “to further the cause of children in care” and more widely, “children who are disadvantaged through no fault of their own”.

“Oliver, who is only two years younger than me, was adopted when he was seven, and Henry who is 25 next Monday, was adopted almost as a new-born baby,” he explains. “They both had very different experiences of the care system. Oliver was in a children’s home. He suffered some pretty horrific neglect in his early years. He has made huge amounts of progress in his own life, but it is even now something that impacts on him every day.

“Henry had the advantage of being in the bosom of our family since he was a little baby. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have days when he thinks about where he fits in, his identity and where he came from. On a brotherly level, we still have those conversations.

“There are to this day children who my parents fostered 15-plus years ago who still return to seek the wisdom and support of my parents. Certainly they’re interested in the role that I have now, and it’s good to have that around me, because it keeps me close to what happens after children leave care, which is vital.”

Indeed, one of the first things he will address with local authorities is the inconsistency in care leavers’ grants across the country. “I want to get to the bottom of it and understand why some local authorities recognise the importance of providing the right level of support through the care leavers’ grant, whereas others don’t appear to attach the same level of importance,” he explains. “I am writing to all the directors of children’s services to beg that question, to get a clearer picture of why we still find ourselves in this situation.” A care leavers’ charter was also due to be published this week.

He has heard many young people “vent their spleen” about the injustices they face in his former life as chair of the all-party parliamentary group (APPG) for looked-after children and care leavers. He also chaired the APPG on adoption and fostering.

Timpson insists his appointment to the post of children’s minister was a “genuine surprise” after four years as a backbencher, including a stint as Theresa May’s private parliamentary secretary at the Home Office: “It’s a department not renowned for a lack of activity, so I was very much on my toes.”

But it is likely to be his work at the APPGs that will have qualified him for his current post in the eyes of the powers that be. “I’m obviously new to departmental life, but I have a strong, good working relationship with Michael Gove,” Timpson says.

“We meet regularly, including twice a week as a group of ministers. Fortunately my office is just along the corridor from the Secretary of State, so there are no physical barriers in the way.

“People often complain that politicians don’t have any experience outside politics. I hope I’m the demonstration that there are those who have specific experience that stands them in good stead. But I can only draw on my own experience, so it’s important that I listen to the views of others, particularly young people.”

Professionals have been vocal about the fact they fear the youth services part of his brief is losing traction at the heart of government. At the recent Tory party conference, Loughton warned that youth services risk diminishing in significance at the department, saying he “had to battle against various unnamed forces in the past to keep the youth role of the DfE on the agenda”.

Key initiatives
Timpson rejects suggestions that youth services have been viewed as a “soft cut” in the department, or that he might allow youth issues to play second fiddle to the rest of his ministerial responsibilities. But he admits it is an area he is still learning about, aided by “some of the movers and shakers in the sector”.

Key initiatives begun by Loughton will remain intact, specifically the youth action group, which brings together ministers across government departments with youth charities; and the national scrutiny group, set up to assess the impact of all government policy on young people, which both sprung from the government’s Positive for Youth policy.

“We’ll be following through with the review one year on from Positive for Youth [due in December] and the youth action group, which will be meeting in the next few days, and with the national scrutiny group and other ongoing commitments to keep young people and the youth sector involved in work across government,” he says. “That is all extremely important.” 

He adds that youth engagement must extend beyond the DfE. “I want to see where the voice of young people can play a significant role in making sure that the priorities that government has set itself, whether it be education, welfare or health reform, are got right,” he says. “The voice of young people should be at the heart of government decision making across all of government.

“The same should go for local government. Youth councils and children in care councils – local forums for young people to be able to hold decision makers to account – are going to continue to be an important feature in our work.”

In terms of direct consultation with young people, he pledges to make himself “as available and engaged as Tim [Loughton] was” and he appears genuinely excited about the prospect of spending a day with the UK Youth Parliament (UKYP) in November.

“I have an unblemished record in always voting for the UKYP to be allowed to hold its day’s debate in the chamber,” he says proudly. “I’ve never quite understood why that’s not seen as a forward-looking and important contribution to engaging young people in politics.”

Timpson admits that he is also still getting up to speed on the complex part of his brief that is special educational needs (SEN) and disability. But he has already started visiting some of the local areas that are trialling the SEN reforms, including Coventry.

“It’s clear to me from speaking to parents and professionals that the system isn’t working,” he says. “It’s too labyrinthine, too label-focused, and it’s not providing a smooth and streamlined programme of support.

“The move towards single birth-to-25 assessments and plans, joint commissioning and a more child-centred system is going to be far more effective in delivering the outcomes all children and young people with SEN and disabilities should be able to achieve. At the moment, the barriers put in the way in terms of duplications of assessment, the constant battles that wear parents down and the lack of co-ordination between pre-16 and post-16 and beyond is preventing them from achieving those outcomes.”

But won’t wider reforms – such as the introduction of universal credit and changes to the NHS – reduce support for disabled children and their families, while further fragmenting services? “I’ll be looking at all aspects of government policy and how that affects disabled children, whether that is the Department for Work and Pensions, the Department of Health or anyone else in government,” he says.

“My focus at the moment is to ensure that the SEN reforms fully reflect the views of parents and all the other interested parties. Where there are areas that we can improve, I want to hear about it.”

He refuses to be drawn over the controversy stoked up by proposals to redirect the Early Intervention Grant to mainstream local authority funding, or local budget cuts in general. He argues that funding for early intervention has in fact increased every year since the grant was created. “I’m encouraged by the innovation I’ve seen local authorities are bringing in, to try and do more for less,” he says. “A smart local authority will realise that prioritising resources to intervene early where appropriate is going to be far more socially and financially effective.”

Essential work
He rebuts the suggestion that cuts are forcing councils to retrench to delivering the bare minimum in statutory “crisis” services, citing the example of Hackney Council’s acclaimed efforts to redesign children’s social care services by reorganising social workers into small units led by senior practitioners – now known widely as “the Hackney model”.

Such work is essential to bringing down the spiralling cost of the care system and improving outcomes for children and families, he says.

“Any local authority worth its salt is going to see that fulfilling a statutory duty does not constitute delivering a full service,” he says. “Any statutory duty interacts with other non-statutory functions, which complement that. Local authorities have to ensure that the outcomes they bring about are based on timely and sound judgments about where to allocate their funding, and that is what they should be measured on.

“Much more can be done to make sure we are providing the best quality service for children and young people without unnecessary bureaucracy or duplication and with people working more closely together and pooling their resources in an efficient way.”

It is no surprise that Timpson is an advocate of the government’s decentralising, bureaucracy-cutting drive. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his comments on the revised Working Together to Safeguard Children document, which many professionals believe has been slashed to the point that it is no longer useful.

“We’ve had the consultation on Working Together and we’re looking closely at the responses,” he says. “It’s important to reaffirm that there is going to be no reduction to the statutory duties around safeguarding that local authorities currently have. We are trying to make a much clearer and more effective framework that gives local authorities a clear steer, without fettering their professional judgment. For too long there has been over-prescription, which has sucked professional decision making out of the system.”

The next few months look set to be something of a baptism of fire for Timpson. The Office of the Children’s Commissioner is due to publish another interim report as part of its inquiry into child sexual exploitation at the end of November, to which he will have to respond. And he will also be responsible for taking forward a planned overhaul of the children’s residential care system.

On a personal level, Timpson says he hopes his parents are proud of his work in government. He admits he feels guilty about leaving his young family at home in Cheshire during the week while he is down in London. But he says his son and two daughters will no doubt teach him a thing or two about youth participation in the coming years. “My three children are not shy in coming forward, so I have no choice but to listen to them,” he laughs. “Although when they all speak at once, it’s not the easiest task.

“They very much just see me as dad who helps with spellings, polishes the shoes and cuts up the apple for pudding. The eldest is eight and the other two are six and four, so they only have a passing understanding of where I go and what I do. I’m sure it won’t be much longer before they start their own sort of focus group.”

Timpson on…