Special report: Conservative Conference 2009 - Tory fringe debates focus on the quality of services
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Fringe events at the conference in Manchester looked at Tory plans to rid children and young people's services of bureaucracy and to boost the quality of education and family life. CYP Now brings you some of the highlights
Early years
The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) came in for considerable flak from the Conservative front bench during a couple of fringe debates. Shadow schools minister Nick Gibb said the EYFS typified the "bureaucratic approach to education that we oppose" and "we've got to get rid of that kind of approach", raising doubts as to whether the EYFS would survive under a Tory government.
Megan Pacey, chief executive of Early Education, said: "I'd be very concerned if the Conservatives did abandon EYFS. We surveyed our members and the large majority of early years professionals feel EYFS has given them the landscape to meet the needs of children."
At another event, shadow families minister Maria Miller was more measured in her criticism of the early years curriculum. She said a Conservative government would endeavour to revive childminder numbers as part of a review of the EYFS next autumn. She said the initiative had resulted in "a number of unintended consequences, the biggest being the decline in childminders", driven out by its "bureaucratic burdens". Miller expressed concern that Montessori settings, which typically had a good record of early years care, were finding it difficult to accommodate the curriculum. So a slimmed-down EYFS, at least, looks likely.
While the EYFS was a target of some hostility, the Tories eulogised about Sure Start children's centres and made suggestions about how they would improve them. Clearly irked by Labour's claims to the contrary, Miller professed the party's "100 per cent commitment" to Sure Start at every available opportunity. But the party would seek to give the voluntary sector a bigger role in delivery because it was better equipped than the state to reach out to vulnerable families, she said.
4Children chief executive Anne Longfield responded: "We now want to hear from shadow chancellor George Osborne that the necessary resources will be made available to make this commitment a reality."
Elsewhere, Barnardo's chief executive Martin Narey courted controversy by suggesting disadvantaged families should be forced to attend Sure Start children's centres. "Sure Start is outstanding, but I frequently worry about the extent to which the hardest-to-reach are elbowed out the way," he said. "Is there a case for conditionality? Maybe requiring the hardest-to-reach to attend?"
But Daycare Trust joint chief executive Alison Garnham warned: "As soon as you make it somewhere you have to go, people will vote with their feet."
Parenting
Couples who break up should by default have shared parenting responsibility, shadow children's minister Tim Loughton told an event hosted by charity consortium Kids in the Middle.
He suggested couples who could not agree on joint arrangements should be made to go through a mediation process.
"At the moment we have an incredibly adversarial system when parents split up," he said. "There should be a default mechanism for shared responsibility, unless there is a welfare reason why there can't be."
Duncan Fisher, chief executive of the Fatherhood Institute, said efforts should be made to work with parents before their child was born. "Ninety-five per cent of couples are together during pregnancy," he sad. "If we get their names and addresses registered then, we will not have to chase after them once the baby is born."
Youth work and young people
A Monday breakfast event hosted by CYP Now erupted into life when Shaun Bailey, co-founder of youth charity My Generation, blasted the professionalisation of youth work. "Every single time, youth work is done better by the people in and around communities," he said. "All the youth work disasters I've seen have been caused by the person with the best qualifications - they have a great CV, but they're an idiot."
Bailey, who is the Tory parliamentary candidate for Hammersmith and Fulham, added: "We need to ask ourselves, as professionals, are we asking for money to build career paths for ourselves, or are we asking for money to influence communities?"
But Fiona Blacke, chief executive of The National Youth Agency, warned that youth workers needed both qualifications and the right attitude. "We don't interview doctors for jobs purely based on their attitudes; we would never say we don't give a toss about their skill and knowledge base," she said. "Understanding the theory of how young people develop and how society works, and having a range of educational tools, are things that youth workers need."
The Tories are continuing to test the idea of a National Citizen Service, a six-week "rite of passage" programme of community work and outward-bound challenges for all 16-year-olds. Tim Loughton revealed that London trials this summer had attracted a disproportionately high number of black girls and the challenging nature of the activity caused some young people to drop out. "This is not a holiday; it is about taking kids out of their comfort zone," he said.
But concerns persist about the programme's staffing and logistics. Shaks Ghosh, chief executive of the Private Equity Foundation, warned against an over-reliance on volunteers, saying the programme needed to be properly staffed to be effective.
"Let's not go for the cheap option - we have to be realistic that this is a huge cost to the nation. You will need professional staff, especially for young people from particularly difficult backgrounds," she said.
Ghosh said the initiative should be made attractive to businesses in order to secure financial support.
Education
Teachers, step aside: advisers from specialist charities should be on hand to deliver sex education to schoolchildren, Tim Loughton argued at one event. "Clearly what is needed is to have a trained pool of specialists, probably not teachers, maybe outside organisations such as Brook, to give more sensitive and sensible messages to young people," he said.
Loughton despaired at the lack of sound advice from the media for boys and young men. "I spent half a day at a girls' magazine and saw the hugely challenging problems children are writing in with to the problem page and the big role played by that form of media," he said. "There is not an equivalent for teenage boys. Zoo and Nuts are about fast cars and fast women, rather than sensible advice. We need to think about how to get the right message across to teenage boys."
Elsewhere, teaching unions found it difficult to conceal their frustration at the Conservatives' fascination with academies. Responding to shadow schools minister Nick Gibb's assertion that a Tory government would "break the monopoly of state education", NASUWT general secretary Chris Keates asked: "Where is the evidence that academies do better than community schools? Where is the evidence that private and other providers offer value for taxpayers' money?" But Gibb claimed a diverse schools system would give parents more choice. "We want schools to provide the high-quality education that parents want for their children," he said.
Employment
More than 1.9 million children and young people - one in six - are raised in households where no-one works, and they are therefore victims of intergenerational worklessness. According to David Freud, Tory welfare adviser, welfare-to-work programmes fail young people in workless families because they focus on individuals rather than the family as a whole. "Negative attitudes to work are reinforced if everyone in a household is unemployed. Unemployment is entrenched in families."
He said a new government would need to support programmes that "work with the family to break that mould of worklessness".
Debbie Scott, chief executive at national employment charity Tomorrow's People, said: "So many young people we deal with are in families where no-one works. Their aspirations are checked when they go home."
The charity is planning to launch what it claims will be a groundbreaking two-year pilot in Maidstone, Kent, next April. It is predicated on the assumption that a family-centred approach to worklessness is more successful than working with individuals in isolation.
The pilot will run on an estate where a high number of Jobseeker's Allowance claimants live, and it will target up to 25 families.
Safeguarding children
Tim Loughton warned that the much-maligned Vetting and Barring Scheme would "drive a further wedge" between young people and adults.
He told a Children's Society event the scheme amounted to a "cotton-wool, risk-averse mentality that is counter-productive".
Elsewhere, Loughton raised concerns about the quality of students being trained as social workers. "My fear is that the social work degree is the easiest to get on to - students are getting places with two grade Es at A-level," he said. "We need to better identify the people we're training."
He also claimed there was a "huge disconnect" between children's services managers and practitioners working at the "sharp end" to safeguard children, and said managers should spend more time out on the front line.
Campaigners at a debate hosted by Women's Aid warned of an urgent need to protect funding to tackle cases of domestic violence.
The charity's chief executive, Nicola Harwin, said: "Independent advocates are essential, especially where there is a conflict of interest between the non-abusing adult and the child."
The charity wants domestic violence to be a compulsory part of the personal, social and health education curriculum. Deputy chief executive Nicki Norman said: "Domestic violence is already being talked about in the playground. By not talking to children about this, we are colluding in making it a secret."
Reporting by Ravi Chandiramani, Lauren Higgs, Janaki Mahadevan and Neil Puffett
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