I am very happy for us to look right across the board. We need to focus on the individual child or young person and their experience throughout the system.
Coming to Amendment 109, we can assure the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, and the noble Lord, Lord Touhig, that the term, “finding employment” in the Bill goes wider than providing support for young people in looking for jobs—important though that obviously is. As the noble Baroness, Lady Hughes, noted, the draft code of practice refers to the local offer including information about support available for job coaches, for example, who can support young people when they are working, and the financial support available, including accessing any benefits from the Department of Work and Pensions, both when looking for work and when employed.
Noble Lords pressed harder about support to stay in employment, which is extremely important. I assure them that we are well aware of that. Preparing for
adulthood is an important element in the SEN reforms. Clause 30(2) requires local authorities to include in the local offer,
“provision to assist in preparing children and young people for adulthood and independent living”.
That term is defined in subsection (3) as,
“finding employment … obtaining accommodation … participation in society”.
Support for preparing for adulthood would include the kind of support that young people can expect when they are in employment. I hope that noble Lords find that reassuring as a very important point is being made there.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, said that he was pressing the case again, rightly, on speech and language communication, and the provision for children and young people. No doubt we will continue to discuss this as it is a very important area. We recognise the importance of this, and the Government are supporting the work of the Communication Trust—I expect he knows that—including through a grant of £550,000 over two years to pilot an online speech, language and communication qualification for early years practitioners. That shows our commitment. We are also providing £1.5 million to the trust to identify gaps in provision and services, which will no doubt spark more amendments from the noble Lord, to promote and extend the What Works database of evidence-based interventions and to implement the reforms in Part 3. I hope that that is an indication of the seriousness with which we treat this.
Regulation 10 of Schedule 1 to the draft local offer regulations sets out the requirement to include:
“Speech and language and other therapies, including any criteria that must be satisfied before this provision can be provided”.
The noble Lord makes a very important point about how practitioners, from health visitors to those supporting children in school, need to work together. That is one of the reasons for the local offer: to try to bring all this together so that support for these children is delivered in a much more effective way.
The noble Lord, Lord Ramsbotham, asked about child development and is expecting a letter from my noble friend Lord Nash. I think that that is in train, if it has not already come out. If it has not come out, I am sure that it will speed along.