Children and Young Persons Bill [HL]

I very much support all three amendments. This gives me the opportunity to ask the Minister a question. If he does not have the answer now, perhaps he could write to me. Given, for all the reasons that we have heard about, how important it is to get the earliest possible help to children who are in need of one sort or another—certainly those who go into care—does the basic teacher training course pay enough attention to this area? In other words, does it give teachers enough training to be able to help to diagnose such things at a very early age—not necessarily diagnose them themselves—and pick up signs that they can then refer to a specialist? I would be particularly grateful if we could look at that. Otherwise, I intend to table an amendment on Report. Secondly, I support the governor idea. I declare an interest as president of the National Governors’ Association; I have been involved with governing bodies ever since we had a body called the National Association of Governors and Managers, which goes back a long way. The points that have been made by all noble Lords who have spoken are crucial. The culture of the school certainly needs to take account of all the areas that we have been discussing, and the members of the governing body perhaps need to have extra support. The idea might well be tried out in the pilot schemes of the social work practices, if it is not happening already, because there, within an area, there would be the sort of resource that we are looking for, so a governor from the school could have that sort of contact with specialists in these areas. This comes back to the point that, after prevention and early diagnosis, resources are crucial. What we are asking schools to do is so important that we must also ask the Minister—I know how committed he is to all these areas—for extra resources to see that this is not just another thing that has to be met out of whatever resources the school has.