Stockport Express Column - April 2009

Ever since I was elected in 1992 one of my special interests in Parliament has been children and particularly those living in our children's homes.

Soon after I entered the Commons, I introduced a Private Members Bill to ensure that small children's homes were also registered for inspection. This was as a result of complaints by neighbours about a home. When I took up the complaint I discovered that homes with less than four children did not have to be inspected.

I was delighted in 2000 when the Labour government made this law.

Since then progress has been made but there is still much more to do as the latest report by the Select Committee on Children has revealed.

For the past year I have again been campaigning hard to improve the standard of inspections in our children's homes. This would help the children themselves and also families who live nearby and have to suffer from anti-social behaviour.

In Stockport there are 225 children and young people in care in our homes from outside areas. These young people often come from very troubled backgrounds and are difficult to manage. They need the highest standards of care to help them deal with their problems. They also need to be managed in a way that does not mean that neighbours are disrupted by unacceptable behaviour in their neighbourhoods or that those children are at risk from frequent running away.

I believe that it is important that there should be the highest standards of inspection in those homes to ensure that good care is being provided and last year I met with Ofsted chiefs and ministers.

I was very pleased that Ofsted has now agreed to publish Children's Homes reports on its website as I believe this will enable those reports to be more easily seen by people and encourage homes to have higher standards.

There is also a review of the National Minimum Standards for children's homes underway and I am hoping these will include inspectors taking into account the number of incidents of running away, anti-social and criminal behaviour. This will encourage homes to better manage the children in their care.

Children in care have the right to expect their life changes to be improved by being in care as indeed does the wider community.