Childcare Bill

The hon. Gentleman will be pleased to know that that is exactly what the Genesis project provides. It is expanding across Wales. Let us hope that, for once, we will send the project over the border—over the Dyke, as we say in Wales—to England. I would like to look at the issue of children with disabilities. Much of what I planned to say has already been said by my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool, North and Fleetwood. Like me, she is aware that families with children with disabilities are one of society’s most disadvantaged groups: 55 per cent. live in poverty or are in serious debt. Parents and children suffer loneliness and social isolation. As hon. Members have said, there are 770,000 disabled children in the UK, and there are 46,500 in Wales. Every day, 75 children are born or diagnosed with disabilities. Having come from a background of working in social care, I am conscious of the fact that, when working with children with disabilities, social services departments and education departments perhaps focused a lot on the disability. What they forgot perhaps was the child’s need for fun, for friendship and for normality. The majority of disabled children live at home, yet because of a lack of child care, their mothers are seven times less likely to have paid work, although disabled children cost three times as much to raise. Confined to their homes, disabled children are missing out on opportunities for learning, having fun and making friends. Again, Bridgend is leading the way. I invite hon. Members to come to see our Y Bont project. I promise them that they will be amazed. It is a model of best practice in the provision of care and support for children from the age of six weeks to pre-school. Y Bont provides support and information to parents and carers and high quality training to staff and to local playgroups catering for children with disabilities, with which it shares its toy library facilities. My hon. Friend the Member for Bishop Auckland (Helen Goodman) spoke of the provision of toy library facilities. Y Bont is a registered charity and survives thanks to rigorous fundraising and local commitment to its invaluable service. We know the quality that we have. We are desperate to keep it, but it provides for only 12 children. It needs to be expanded and I hope that the Bill will allow for that. We have said that local authorities must be flexible in their provision of child care. Child care must be looked at holistically, so that there is provision for different working patterns and provision that ensures that, for example, if a disabled child needs to attend school both before and after normal school hours, the transport arrangements and child support arrangements are in place. Many children with disabilities are restricted in the activities that they can engage in after school because the paid, one-to-one support that they have during the school day is removed the minute the school ends. They cannot then engage in the social activities that are critical to their having the normality that their school peers enjoy. Transport arrangements must be not only flexible but secure. When tendering for school transport, my local authority circulated to more than 100 taxi companies the names, addresses and pick-up times of disabled children in my constituency of Bridgend and in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), placing numerous children at risk. When making child care arrangements, local authorities must be mindful of the need to ensure that all aspects of the care have in-built flexibility and meet the most rigorous child protection standards. My local authority certainly failed to do that. If we are to build in flexibility, there must be guidance for local authorities on tendering for school transport. Access to information can be a barrier to good-quality child care, and we know that access to information is most difficult for those living in poverty. In areas where children are most likely to live in poverty, parents are least likely to have paid work and, consequently, have the least assistance to get out of poverty. Bridgend county borough council’s children information service is excellent. I invite hon. Members to look at its website. It has a specific area for child care and children’s issues. There are leaflets and other very good attempts to engage with communities. I attended two excellent fun days held in the recreation centre. Families were bussed in from outlying areas to spend time meeting and talking to representatives of the whole gamut of child care provision that is available throughout the county borough. We need such practices to be rolled out throughout the country. One of the most important aspects of which we must be aware today is the great expectations that are being raised by the Bill. As politicians, we must be aware of the danger of a gap developing between the promises that we make and the expectations that people will have outside the House. The commitments laid out in legislation must meet the day-to-day reality faced by parents and children. Parents’ expectations following the Bill will be high. We cannot fail them or their children. The clear message of the Bill to parents, children, employers and all levels of government must be that children are vulnerable unique individuals for whom only the best will be good enough. The Bill places a responsibility on local authorities to spearhead the growth in the availability of child care. I shall conclude with a reference to the Genesis project, which I mentioned earlier, and its aims. The project will work alongside parents to help them to explore long-forgotten hopes and aspirations and to provide guidance and support to help them to achieve their hopes and build a brighter future together. That is what I see the Bill offering throughout the United Kingdom. I commend it to the House.