Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 74: 74: Clause 17, page 14, line 4, leave out from ““must”” to ““(““the”” in line 5 and insert ““ensure that a member of the staff at the school is designated”” The noble Baroness said: I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 75 and 76, which are grouped with Amendment No. 74. The amendments are all about the designated person in the school to be responsible for the welfare of looked-after children. First, may I say how much we welcome the fact that the Government have now agreed to put that on a statutory footing? However, what concerns us is dealt with first by Amendments Nos. 74 and 76, which should be seen as linked and which seek to remove from Clause 17(1) the words, "““designate a member of the staff at the school””," and to insert different words so that the clause would read that the governing body of a maintained school must, "““ensure that a member of the staff at the school is designated””." We think that it is for the head teacher to make such staffing decisions. The head teacher knows what is required, knows the people available to do the job, knows their qualifications and their characteristics, and should be the one to carry out the task, overseen, as are all other major decisions in the school, by the governors. That is why we tabled Amendment No. 76, which would designate a governor to carry out that role. Amendment No. 75 is a probing amendment, not an Oliver Twist amendment this time. We wonder what sort of person the Government have in mind when setting up this statutory duty to have a designated person. The amendment says that it should be a teacher, but we are not necessarily totally wedded to that. It is important that the person should have the appropriate status in the school and the appropriate power to bring about change, if that is what the looked-after children attending the school need. The qualified teachers on the staff tend to have that status and power. The other issue is training. The designated person must have the appropriate training to be able to understand the needs of a looked-after child. Subsection (2) states: "““The governing body must ensure that the designated person undertakes appropriate training””." Given that 28 per cent of looked-after children have a statement of special educational needs compared with 3 per cent of children generally, will it be insisted on in regulations that that training must include training in special educational needs? That is most important, whether or not the person is a qualified teacher, particularly given that even qualified teachers, unless they are specialists in this area, have relatively little training in special educational needs during their initial teacher training qualification course. Many of them fortunately continue their professional development by learning about SEN. Given that every teacher is a teacher of special needs, every teacher should do that. It is, however, particularly important that this designated person, whether or not they are a teacher, has that sort of training. I hope that the Minister will be able to reassure me that subsection (2) includes that. This is an opportunity for the Minister to explain to the Grand Committee what sort of person the Government have in mind and what qualifications and qualities they will have. I beg to move.