Good morning, everybody. Welcome to this first public session of the Education Committee in this Parliament. In this morning’s session we are taking evidence from the Children’s Commissioner for England about her work. This is a timely session, given the very recent publication of the new work on deprivation of liberty orders. We are very glad to hear from you this morning; thank you very much for being with us. I am going to begin our questioning. First, you were appointed in 2021. How would you assess your progress against the core priorities for the Children’s Commissioner since that time and are there any particular lessons that you have learned so far that you will be taking forward into the next three years of your appointment?

So many. First, it is a privilege to be here at the first meeting of this Select Committee. You hold me to account on behalf of children, so it is great to be here. The role is virtually 20 years old today. This role was set up after the murder of Victoria Climbié 20 years ago to try to prevent that from ever happening again. Unfortunately there are now cases going through court that we cannot talk about, but we find ourselves in the dreadful situation of seeing these things happen repeatedly. That is the first place I always look to in terms of this role. Let me turn to how I am going to assess myself. For those new to the Committee—I have several powers. One is to call for data from any public body; one is to enter anywhere where children are held in public; and one is to demand a response. I use those powers fulsomely, and I want to talk to you about how I have used them. When I came into this role in March 2021, just after lockdown, I wanted to hear from children. That has to be the most important privilege and function of this role—to hear from children and to bring their views to you, to those who run public services and to the nation. I did The Big Ask survey, where I heard from half a million children and I got myself around the country; 90,000 of those children had additional needs. Every child in the secure estate answered and I met with them. I have met children in mental health wards—in every single place that children are. Recently, just before the election, I conducted my mid-term major survey, The Big Ambition, where I heard from another 400,000 children and asked them what they wanted from the next Government. In all, I have heard from over 1 million children and their work has totally informed what I have done. My strategic plans, which are published, are completely guided by what children have told me. My role is then to translate that into policy and research, and to make sure that is done. On the listening, I am really pleased—although I do want to hear from another million before I finish. I am responsible for about 8 million children of school age. I judge myself against any legislative changes that I have managed to bring about. It is about taking those voices and turning them into reality in our laws. That is a particular privilege. I must be able to advise Government and support lawmakers. Some things I am particularly pleased about are making sure that children were recognised in the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024. When we first saw the draft legislation, child victims were not recognised. We know that children experience being victims differently and the response that they need is different. That was a key thing for me. Taking children’s voices through the Online Safety Act 2023 was key. I am really pleased that that got through, particularly the children’s element and the work we have done to make sure that everybody really understands the things that children now grow up with but which we did not. I worked hard on the Illegal Migration Act 2023. I am afraid I was not as successful as I wanted to be there around children. But, as the daughter of a refugee, I am particularly proud that we managed to get a change in the Illegal Migration Act 2023 around children who might have come here when very young and been fostered or adopted not needing to be deported when they come of age. That is a tiny change, but I have to say it meant the world to me. We have also been advising on the Children’s Wellbeing Bill. We ask ourselves all the time in my office, “Where are we making the change in our laws—in our legal system?” Finally, I want to mention the agenda-setting work that we do. One highlight from the last three years has been the work we have done on strip-searching. We did our fourth analysis of that this summer, and I was able to talk to Home Office Ministers about it. Child Q—a little girl in school—was strip-searched at her school. Her teachers thought she smelled of drugs, and instead of phoning her parents they phoned the police, who came in and strip-searched her—you know the story. When I spoke to her and her team, she told me that she had been told that she was the only person that that had ever happened to in school. I used my powers—this is a classic way that I try to work as Children’s Commissioner to understand what happens—to support her, and got the data on strip-searching from the Met police. Unfortunately, we found that it was not the case that she was the only child who had been strip-searched in school but also that the rules were not followed and the data was not transparent. I called for that data from all police forces, and we used the media. We were out there. We worked with the Home Office. We have done that for several years now. Where are we on that? The Met police strip-searched half the number of children—still too many, in my view—this year than they had previously. I do not think any child has been strip-searched in Hackney since Child Q. More importantly, the PACE codes—which really do not change at a pace—have now reached final consultation and we have managed to really influence the change there. I am going to need your help, though, because there is one thing that I cannot get the police chiefs to change—and I have raised this with Home Office Ministers: I really want it to be the case that children cannot be strip-searched in school. Although everything else in the new reformed PACE codes that are coming through is good and a real change, and feels like a success, I do not believe I will have succeeded until I get that thing done. I think that gives a sense of how we work. I do an annual report to this Committee. In March—because I was three years in and had finished a strat plan—I did a full analysis of all the work that we had done, which was transparent for everyone to see. But I think what I have just said gives you a bit of a feel. On agenda setting, I want to mention our work on attendance. When I came into role, I had been a teacher and a headteacher for 20 years. I became a headteacher in 2005. I had run a trust of schools. I took this job because I was—

We will come to questions on attendance shortly, if that’s okay. You have described some of the recommendations that you have made to the Government and some of the successes you have had with those recommendations. Are there recommendations that you have made to the Government—either this one or the last—that they have not yet acted on, and what are they? How are you continuing to push for change?

New Government is the chance for a fresh new look at how we work with children, and for new opportunities. Since the new Government came in, I have worked with 28 Ministers and senior civil servants, and I think the machine is getting going. It takes a bit of time, but I have been pleased to meet with a huge number of Ministers. I was pleased to see quite a few of the recommendations I have made in the manifesto. I am pushing really hard on unique IDs—ensuring that every child has a unique ID so that we can support them across services. That is so fundamental, as the architecture of a system that can really work. Making sure that that is ambitious enough and that we engage parents with it as well as services, so that it really can support children, is key. We need to ensure that there are measures around parental imprisonment and the identification of children, and that that is done at pace. For 10 years, people have been saying that the elective home education register is going to happen. It is in a manifesto. I need it to happen, and I need it to happen now. It is pace that I want to encourage; I need things to start happening. I have absolutely been able to meet Ministers. I have brought challenge to them—as you can imagine from my recent stuff—about deprivation of liberty and the social care system. I am hearing all the right language but getting these things done is really hard. It is detailed and about bringing along all the leaders on the ground. It is that bit that we really need to make sure happens.

Aside from things you have mentioned by way of introduction—then we will move on to detailed questions on some of the aspects you have touched on already—what are the things that the Government could do right now that would improve the lives of children in England?

I have a massive list—of course I have—because we want this to be the best place for children to grow up in the world, don’t we? That is our ambition. On additional needs, we hear a lot coming out of the Government about SEND. The previous Government had worked on SEND reform, but really getting to grips with additional needs and ensuring that every child’s needs are met is important. Being ambitious, I want them to reject a trade-off between standards and the most vulnerable. The most vulnerable need standards more than anyone, so I think there is something important there. I have been visiting all the children who received custodial sentences and were arrested in summer for rioting, which means I have just freshly been in every youth custody setting—secure children’s homes, the new secure school and youth prisons—and I really think we need the Government to get a good grip on youth justice. I was with Nic Dakin yesterday, who taught me in sixth form, and James Timpson. I am talking to them about prioritising education in the youth justice system. That is something that this Committee can look at. When I talk to children in prison, I ask them, “When were you last happy at school?” And they always say 10 or 11 years old. When I say, “You’ve got a 20-year sentence. What’s your plan?”, they always say education. And I can tell you now that education is not good enough; I have just seen it with my own eyes as a headteacher of 20 years. That needs grasping straightaway. There is a fresh opportunity for the Government to look at our fabulous Children Act, which has been in place for 35 years now. Let’s face it—childhood has changed. The thinking that went into that Act was deep, thoughtful and protective but, as someone whose job it is to constantly think about UNCRC and children’s rights—the Children Act is the vehicle through which that was done—I think this would be a great time to look at that. I also need the Government to re-envision children’s services to be joined up and delivered. I work with the most vulnerable. That is a key part of my job. Over the weekend you will have seen the work I did on children deprived of liberty. We need health, social care and education to be joined up at the local level to deliver on every single service for children. That is for every child but especially for the most vulnerable.

The Government’s Children’s Wellbeing Bill is expected to include a requirement for local authorities to maintain children not in school registers, which is a recommendation that was made by the previous Committee. How effective do you think this will be in reducing the number of children who are not attending school?

We absolutely need that Bill to go through. I visit VRUs—violence reduction units—police stations and professionals from all children’s services, and I find lists of children who are not on school rolls. We absolutely need to get a grip on this and focus on it. I have done sustained work on the substantial number of children who have gone to be electively home educated since lockdown. I would always say that the parent has the legal right to educate their child at home. If they are doing it well, that is great, but I am deeply concerned that many children and families are feeling almost forced to home educate because their needs have not been met at school. I have talked to thousands of children who are at home and not in school, and it is often because they feel that their special educational needs have not been met, they have anxiety or a range of school refusal issues, and we could talk about those. I do not want any parent or child to feel so abandoned that they feel that home education is the only thing for them. We also looked at where children lived in the new cohort that were being electively home educated and were off rolls; it is in many disadvantaged areas. I strongly doubt that it has been made as a positive choice. If we get proper registers and we have our local authorities taking their responsibilities seriously to engage with these families, we may find that we can get lots of them back to school, which is where they need to be.

As you have just said, we know that there are a lot of reasons for non-attendance. Some of it is elective because parents think they would rather school their children at home, but there are many children who are struggling in mainstream settings because of their additional needs. How can efforts to improve attendance ensure that we achieve the right balance between encouraging attendance and ensuring that those children and parents are supported in a system that is not supporting them at the moment? They are not managing in school, so how can we balance that so that more of them come back into school, even if it is part-time or flexibly?

The unique thing that the Office of the Children’s Commissioner for England brings to this discussion is that we go out to speak to those children and have surveyed them; 90,000 children with additional needs responded to our survey about their experience in school. That is a huge number. What we found was very interesting. Those children, particularly with special educational needs, who felt their needs were being met in school were happier than the rest of the whole cohort of their age group. That should give us hope but also tell us about the size of the challenge ahead. We need to ensure that our schools are welcoming and inclusive. We are feeding all the children’s voices into the curriculum review at the moment. One of the best examples I can give you is that I was on the national Attendance Action Alliance in the last Government. I got a bit frustrated, because we often sit up here and talk about what should happen and what should be right for children, don’t we? So I worked very hard, as independent chair, to be allowed to set up the Manchester Attendance Action Alliance. I worked closely with Greater Manchester, and we brought 11 chief executives of all the areas on to that group: the mayoral office was there, health, the VRU and all the services. We worked really hard, and we did not have too long on it—about six months—and we want to continue. We worked very hard to identify who was not attending school and why, and we looked at severe absence in depth. We also looked at issues around inclusion, which children were missing school and why, and trained 420 schools in attendance: how to manage attendance but also how to work with children who were persistently absent because they felt their needs were not being met. I think we managed a 2% rise in the attendance rate, so we were pleased, but we realised that we needed everyone on board to support children who were not going to school because they felt their needs were not being met. That is everything from headteachers working on the curriculum to health—making sure that children’s mental health needs and SEND needs were met. There were lots of children out of school waiting for diagnoses. My recent work on NDDs showed that those who have Down’s syndrome are waiting two years for a diagnosis; those who have cerebral palsy are waiting for three years; and those with autism, at least four years. We have 40,000 children still waiting for a diagnosis, so it was important for us to ensure that health was absolutely a partner in education. At the bottom of that are relationships; if a child comes into school for the first time who has been away, and they are not wearing the right uniform, so they get a detention or whatever it is, they’ll be off. Ensuring that schools are inclusive and supportive is important.

What more do you think local authorities and schools could do to trace children who go missing from education?

With that Manchester example, I have tried to set up what good local working could look like. In Manchester, which is a place where professionals feel a sense of local loyalty, we found that it took a lot to get the schools and the LA colleagues working together and talking the same language. It is about those local relationships across services working on behalf of the child. We set up a severe absence taskforce. There are additional needs taskforces. There is so much that we can do to wrap around the child, but my big point is: it must be done locally. We can set up at the national level and say, “This is what should happen with attendance” but it is local relationships that will do it.

I see a little bit of a disconnect in something that you said. You talked about a child who has been off for a while coming back into school wearing the wrong uniform, and then being given a detention and sent home. I have literally heard that very example in Devon—of a child immediately being sent home after coming back, having been out of school for at least six months. How long is it going to be before that child sets foot in the school again? In some of our trusts, discipline is quite a key thing, and they are strict on things like uniform. Surely this means that we will have to change that approach—whereby, if we are looking at getting these children back into school, that overrides the discipline on something like uniform.

What I hope is that our headteachers have pastoral teams around them that they listen to, who can recognise the nuance of a child coming back in like that and be flexible. That very issue came up in Manchester—there were deep concerns, with people saying, “This happened in this particular school.” I said, “Right. Give me their number and I’ll call them.” We need relationships to be strong enough so that those things can be discussed and overcome well in advance of that child making that step back into school. Something that might be helpful is that, for the first time, I have used my powers to call data from schools. I have just put out a school survey to find out exactly what pastoral support teams every school has in place, what key support staff are there, what the behaviour policies are, and a range of other things, so that we can genuinely have a national picture. I have had 10,000 responses already. I should have them all back in by Christmas. It is absolutely comprehensive. We worked on it with the unions and with the CST. We asked everyone to help us look at it, so we can bottom out exactly what is happening with behaviour policies, pastoral support and attendance support, and get those local relationships working again. The reason for it is that child—so that that child does not have that experience, 100%.

Can I clarify one small point that you made? You said it was taking two years to diagnose Down’s syndrome, which is not my experience as a doctor. It is normally diagnosed antenatally or in infancy, and it is done on a very simple, straightforward blood test, so that is a surprise. Is that what you are seeing?

If you look at our NDD report that we put out a few weeks ago, we looked at the NHS data showing whether a child has been diagnosed before 13 weeks or it has taken longer than 13 weeks. We used our powers to look at the whole range of NDD and at how long diagnoses were taking. We have reported as we found, and Health has agreed that our report is accurate. I would love to have a proper conversation about it, especially given your experience, so let’s have a look together.

That is very interesting. Thank you. I want to ask you about the children not in school. I was part of the Committee that unanimously backed the recommendation to have a register of children not in school. What do you say to the families who, in their view, have chosen the home education route as a positive step, who are educating their children properly and who think that the register is a form of state interference? What would you say to those people?

I would say, “Have no fear”. I have this discussion often with friends and colleagues who home educate and feel they are doing a fantastic job, and when I look at their children they absolutely are. Have no fear, because this is about us ensuring that no child is vulnerable because of the decision to home educate and that the most vulnerable are supported. I have always supported the legal right to home educate. I have seen excellent examples of it, but I do think that the massive rise in the number of children going into home education, and particularly the vulnerability of them, means that I do support the register. I have always been clear on that.

My other question is about the role of parents versus the role of schools, and where responsibility lies. We have heard a lot recently about children not having their teeth brushed while schools must brush their children’s teeth and children not having their clothes washed while the teachers wash the children’s clothes. Some children are coming to school having not had breakfast and we must give the children breakfast at school. Setting aside that there will be a small number of people who are unable to do so, who need social care to step in to support them, whose responsibility is it to get a child out of bed and ensure that they are wearing clean clothes, that they brush their teeth, that they are taken to school and so on?

I always see myself as Children’s Commissioner for children and families because the family is the most important thing to a child, and that is what will ensure that they thrive and grow up happy. That is what children tell me all the time. The families of the children I speak to, who love them and bring them up. want to be the people who do those things. I do think that we have seen greater need particularly following lockdown. There has always been need, but there has been greater need post lockdown, certainly around things like cost of living issues, and parents have been grateful for things like school breakfasts—a relatively cheap intervention. That can be helpful, but the majority of parents I speak to want to do it themselves and we need to think about how some of the services that wrap around schools can support the parents who find those things challenging. Let me think of an example. When I did my independent family review for the last Government, parents told me that family was the most important thing, no question. Also, the first place they went when they needed support was family or friends, and when they had to rely on services they wanted those services to feel familial, local and sustainable. We need to think about how we support the families that do need support—sometimes it is support around parenting—and where that support can come from. Having a good early intervention support workforce is, I think, the best place for that to happen.

Let us look at the example of tooth brushing. We have heard about the number of children coming into hospital to have huge numbers of teeth removed. There is a balance to be struck in ensuring good dental care for children so that this can be dealt with at an early stage. I am interested in the idea that children are going to have their teeth brushed in school, because children are only in school for 30-odd weeks a year and for some parents that may disrupt the routine, making it less likely that the teeth get brushed the other 20 weeks of the year. Are we tolerating a low level of neglect in which some children are just not getting properly looked after and not having their teeth brushed? If it is down to money, could we not give them a toothbrush and toothpaste, send them home with that, and empower parents to do it themselves—or insist that the parents do it themselves?

Interestingly, I have just come back from Norway, where I was looking at the youth justice system. If a child is arrested, they go to the barnahus, where there is a dentist—because they think dental decay is a massive sign of neglect. When I talk to children, and in the children’s responses to The Big Ambition, being able to see a dentist—dental health—and their own health was a really high priority. We know it is important. We have a cohort of children who see their health as important. As a headteacher for 20 years, I see the challenge as: how to do really good health education, including learning how to do this, and how to do parent education. As a head, that is what I would personally want to do.

My final question is also on neglect. As you are aware, there are different forms of child abuse, and some have had a lot of attention in the press, including child sexual abuse and physical abuse. In some respects, neglect and emotional abuse are much more difficult to define and more difficult to prosecute. Does that mean that they get ignored, or insufficiently investigated and managed?

Gosh. Are you talking about in schools or in services generally?

In services generally. Do you think we pick up on neglect less because it is more difficult to define?

I do think services are very finely tuned to focus on abuse, for obvious reasons, but from what I have seen of social care and social workers, there is genuine concern about neglect as an indicator.

Of abuse?

Yes, but I think where the challenge lies probably is in resource to prioritise the action that is needed on some of those indicators, when there are so many cases of obvious physical and sexual abuse.

In one of your earlier answers, you talked about delays in diagnosis and the crucial partnership between health and education. How confident are you that the Government understands the cross-cutting nature of SEND issues and how much engagement have you had with the Government to ensure that there is cross-departmental working?

Yesterday I had my first conversation with the new second permanent secretary in Health on the justice issue. I have met Andrew Gwynne and talked about the part that the Department needs to play, and I have met the Secretary of State for Education and her Ministers to discuss this. I think special educational needs, additional needs, and particularly the interface between health and education in this space, are probably the biggest issues of the next few years. I think Departments work in silos and we see the result. There are conversations with Ministers and good intentions. I hope that the health mission and the opportunity mission—I know this is the idea—will bring together the Departments, but when I am out in the country, that is where I see the divide. We have reached a situation, with SEND figures rising hugely, that all children are being funnelled down a route that was really meant for those very acute healthcare children when the EHCPs were developed. I think we have huge issues to get this working well on the ground, and working well between health, social care and education to ensure that children are supported properly.

That is helpful. What is the most significant priority in overcoming the silos and creating a bridge between different services to do the best for SEND children?

It is when we get down to the local level. At the national level, we need to be working together. That is starting to happen. Education and Health are two of the key partners that need to speak to each other and not just leave social care in the middle, but locally I think we need education, health and social care as joint commissioners of support for children. That will be the only way to do it. I was in Cambridge looking at the new plans for their children’s hospital, and they have some real vision for wanting to reach out to the community, to look particularly at children with SEND and medical needs, and to work across that. My advice to them was that they absolutely must start engaging with school trusts and headteachers now, and we were putting together a group to do that. So if I have a message for the Committee, I think that I would go for joint commissioning and joint responsibilities, because unfortunately we have some services with thresholds and some without, and there is too much passing of the buck between services. Rather than children’s needs being met, we are saying, “Who’s going to pay?” That is the question.

The National Audit Office report on support for children and young people with SEND shares concerns highlighted in your October 2024 report on waiting times for assessments and support, which you highlighted earlier. What specific action should the Government take to address those issues?

Numbers of appointments need to be opened up now. I am cross that I hear fantastic things from Health about GPs and the health of the nation and older people, but not enough about children. I would like to see children focused on by Health and I think there is an urgent need for appointments to be opened up now. We should not have these long waiting lists. We should not have such long waiting for assessments. We need to look at the entire system. I have alluded to what I think should happen, which is that we need health, social care and education to work together, take responsibility and commission together.

Your report also highlights the frustration and impact on families’ health and wellbeing. What steps need to be taken to address those families’ feelings of distress and isolation?

An important thing that is often overlooked is communication. I talk to children on waiting lists, particularly children with neurodivergent conditions or potentially neurodivergent conditions who are waiting a couple of years. Those are not the children who should be left without communication. So communication could be improved, and this unique identifier work is a great opportunity to start thinking about how we could communicate with parents better. I have to say—and I know I must not keep talking about Norway—that when I visited the children’s hospital in Oslo, they said to me that if a parent has a child in hospital and they have to be off work, their company pays their salary for a year. There is so much more we could do with support—getting businesses to support children and families with these needs, and thinking about setting up peer support and different ways of supporting children so that families feel empowered.

One last point from me: building on what you have already said about support, what more specific support could be given to parents and families pre and post their child’s particular diagnosis?

At the moment, the system for parents feels adversarial. We had 13,000 tribunals last year, and the vast majority were won by parents who had gone through years of legal advice to try to win their tribunals. We need reform of that system. The question that should be asked right from first engagement with services, nursery or school is: “How can we help? What can we do? How can we support the child?”—not, “Prove you are not well”. If we are looking at a system answer, I would want to change the system so that we were talking about additional needs, rather than funnelling through. I would be getting the ed psychs, the speech and language therapists and others back working in nurseries and schools, supporting the professionals to ensure that these children thrive—not waiting for an EHCP before you get any support, and that becoming a massively legal and adversarial approach. That could release the capacity to support parents properly both in terms of peer support and professional support. I honestly do not want to answer you by saying, “We could do these little things”. I think we need to do big things on this one.

I have a few questions around family but before that I want to come back to something you were talking about with Caroline Voaden: home schooling. You said the words, “No fear”. You have also talked about personal relationships and communication, and obviously welcome the register. What work have you done with local authorities on understanding home schooling—if it is a choice?

We have done a huge amount of work with local authorities. When I came in, I made this one of my real aims to understand. As an educationalist, I had the hair up on the back of my neck, thinking, “We are in a completely different situation post covid. The data is bad.” Although some spads were very good, the Department for Education did not at first recognise the data as being as serious as it was. It then did, so I went out and did an audit of every single local authority to find out how many children they had on roll, how many children were not in school and where those children were—so we established a national picture. We went and spoke to all those children. We looked at the capacity in local authorities to deal with the issue, and have spent years looking at and trying to be the communication between national and local authorities and the children, to see what authorities need to do to get the children back to school. There are three big buckets: anxiety and school refusal; special educational needs; and children just missing completely from education. That is why we have to get that unique identifier through—because we are talking about the most vulnerable children. Local authorities were really variable in their response. A lot of the capacity has gone into the school system and has often been used well, but that ability to champion the most vulnerable—the data skills you need for it and other skills—is variable and needs building back. We work closely with DCSs and the attendance teams, which are also variable, to think about what the standard should be. If we want to improve attendance, we must look at the local authorities, and ensure that DCSs are supported by directors of either inclusion or education who can convene and have data capacity. It is not about going back. It is not about getting involved in binaries like, “You are either pro this one or pro that one.” It is about how we move forward and use everything we have to ensure that kids get their right, which is to go to school and to thrive locally. It is going to need the local authorities and the school trusts, many of whom do a fantastic job—both sides.

Apologies, but my question was also about those who want to have home schooling.

Oh, sorry. So, how are local authorities working with parents who—

Yes—those who are choosing to home school.

It is very variable. Some are on it and have good up-to-date data and some do not. That is about capacity. It is also about inspection. I feel—and I have challenged HMCI about this regularly—that attendance is an area and a focus in LA inspections that should be there. Fundamentally, we want our children to be able to thrive at school and that bit has not been looked at.

I want to look at two reports that you have done, and that you have touched on in some of your answers. The first is the family section in The Big Ambition. You have advocated for the establishment of family hubs and universal access to parenting courses. What discussions have you had with the new Government on greater support for families?

I am going to meet the DWP Minister after I finish here. Janet Daby and I have discussed family centres—family hubs—at length and there is big support for the brilliant work that was done on them. My challenge is to scale them. When I did my family review, the adults in this country told me that there were two institutions that they trusted: schools and GPs. I would like to see family hubs co-located around places that parents trust and want to go to. I have been discussing that, and I am keen for that work to continue and expand. One issue that I have been particularly raising is around workforce. One problem with lots of early help workforce and family hub workforce is that it is done on a year-by-year basis. If we are going to have those sustained, familial-feeling relationships, they need to be done on a longer-term basis.

You mentioned the family review of 2022. Has the current Government indicated whether they will be publishing a response to that? If so, when would you expect it?

They have not indicated, and I hope that they do. I look forward to that. I have been waiting and it would be great to get a response.

Brilliant—so you do not have a date, but you look forward to getting one. The Government also announced the creation of a cross-party child poverty taskforce to develop a child poverty strategy for spring 2025. How will you contribute to this process, and have you started?

When it comes to child poverty, there are particular groups of children I am interested in. I was a poor kid—the fifth child of a steelworker, sometimes on free school meals—but I had the relationships around me and a school around me that allowed me to thrive. I meet children around this country—heads and others will often convene them for me—who are too small, who are not eating properly and who are living in accommodation so appalling that I would not even want to describe it here. For me, those children have always been a deep concern. When I spoke to children in The Big Ask and The Big Ambition, they did not talk to me about poverty, but they talked to me about their parents being worried about the cost of food, and having great ambitions but being worried whether they could afford them, and they were concerned about other children. We might use a word like “poverty” but they had a lot to say about what that looks like in real life—housing, being moved out of your B&B, not being about to eat properly. I am particularly worried about that small group. The Government have asked us to bring children’s voices to the poverty commission. We are doing that energetically and trying to show the nuance. The last thing that I want to do is pathologise not earning lots of money. I was a proud, working-class girl, and I do not want to say that my life was in any way less, but I do feel that there are some groups of children who are feeling that, particularly through housing and a range of other issues. We need to address their needs. That is what I want to do with the poverty commission.

What should the strategy look like?

It is interesting, because everybody focuses the debate on the two-child limit, so I will get that out of the way nice and quickly. I am a third child of five, so when I look at the two-child limit I think, “What about me?”, so I am against the two-child limit. I understand why it is there, but I am against it. But we miss a trick if that is all we look at. I want to see policy on children and families that supports families with children. When I look at welfare policy, I worry that if you are without children, you are better served than if you are with. We need to be supporting families to be able to thrive—to work, succeed and have good lives. For me, it is about the whole of DWP’s policy focusing on families with children. One of the things that I proposed in our family review was our family test, which I know that that was picked up in the manifesto—that we look at every policy through the lens of family and how it will affect family. That is what makes up the country and is the most important part of it—children and their families.

You have touched on an idea that might reduce the impact of child poverty, but is there anything on which the Government could take steps today, ahead of spring 2025, to help immediately reduce the impact of child poverty?

We should be making sure that local authorities in particular have the funds to deal with child poverty issues immediately. Housing is probably the most important. I have kids talking to me about moving B&Bs and the instability of doing so. A large percentage of the schools I visit are finding a way to deal with the housing crisis, particularly in our bigger cities, and that is critical. Of course, things like breakfast clubs help. These are simple things but I would advise getting the funds down to the people who deliver the services locally so that individual needs can be met.

I am fully aware of the different definitions of child poverty. My opening remarks on poverty were to try to put a bit of context around what I am talking about when I talk about children in poverty, which is children and families in deep and desperate need. I do not want to pathologise people who are working for low pay but doing incredibly important jobs and bringing up their families perfectly well. I do not want children in families like that to think that there is anything amiss or awry. I am focused on those children who are at the absolute extreme edge—where housing is inappropriate, where there might be food issues, where their absolute basic needs are not met.

Yes, that is what I said. You said it better.

I am willing to do whatever children are telling me their experience is. My job is to reflect the experiences of children and what they are telling me. One of the strongest things that they talk to me about is their concern about their parents. There is that side of it but there are also children who tell me about some of the dire circumstances they live in. There are facts of the matter, which you are probably alluding to—things like the impact of family breakdown and other things.

I have always secretly seen myself as the children and families’ commissioner. Children talk to me about the importance of their families all the time, whatever shape or size those families are. They talk a lot about grandparents, and about the extended family that often the Government do not see. That is one reason that I am so supportive of kinship care: those deep bonds can be hugely supportive. In my family review, I spoke at length about how both children and adults in this country see their family life and families as the most important thing.

I will be pushing those with those the DWP Minister this afternoon.

No. I have been working through—Ministers have been really good. I am still doing the welcome meetings. I met Justice this week and I am just starting with DWP now. I always had a regular meeting with the Department for Work and Pensions, and I am setting that up at the moment with other Ministers.

No, I do not think that there is anything there. I am an independent Children’s Commissioner. I have built relationships with both Government and Opposition. I have an expectation, which has always been met, that I have regular meetings with the key Cabinet Ministers and junior Ministers who have anything to do with children. That expectation has been borne out. It has taken a little bit of time because it is a new Government. With a new Government come lovely new ideas and opportunities but they have to get used to governing—but, no, I have not had any difficulty. If I did, I would tell this Committee.

Earlier, you reflected on some of the important work that you are doing on the justice system, particularly the work that you are doing speaking to child victims of crime. Can you talk to us about the impact of the Victims and Prisoners Act 2024 and whether it has had the desired effect to better include the voices of children and child victims?

It is early days. I was absolutely delighted to be able to work with the Lords and the Commons to ensure that children were recognised as victims. I was able to take Members of the Lords—including one who is now a Justice Minister—to see the Lighthouse in Camden, which is a fantastic, multi-service way of working to support child victims. That service is police, health and social care. Children can give evidence there, and a service like that is so important because children tell us that they are victims of crime in a different way and need a different kind of support. Having ChIDVAs and ChISVAs—advisers for children—is critical. I will judge that the Bill is working well when I see provision as good as that right across this country. At the moment, it is early days. It is good that the language was there. I did not get everything I wanted. I did not get a statutory expectation that every child would have a ChISVA, but we did get children recognised. There is best practice in this country; we now need to make sure that reform happens and that those funding streams are used so that every child who experiences crime and is a victim can have such a positive experience as the ones at the Lighthouse.

To follow up a bit more on your expectations of what the Act would achieve and the delivery in practice of a child-centred approach to commissioning, what do we need to see more of that you are not seeing at the moment?

The reason I use the Lighthouse as an example is that it is an absolutely paradigm of good practice. A child has an adviser right from the start. They have a range of professionals—social workers, health and others—who can support their physical, emotional, health and legal needs. At the moment, that is not the experience for most children, yet we are funding silo services. My expectation is that the recognition of child victims will bring about a reconsideration of how child victims should be supported, at the very least with their own adviser—someone who can help take them through this experience. I brought in the voice of children and young people who have been victims. It is very rare to be able to do that, but a number of children came and spoke to Ministers and professionals about their experiences as a victim. It was an “Aha!” moment, with people thinking, “Oh, it’s really different, isn’t it?” in terms of maturity and how people need to be dealt with to thrive afterwards. We need that multi-agency working to be able to support children who have been victims of serious crime, and particularly sexual crimes, well. I will be following up with the brilliant colleagues—in the Lords, for example—who supported this, to help them keep the pressure on.

The new Government manifesto promised to build on the Online Safety Act. What should that look like? Upon reflection and practice, where is the legislation lacking?

Since I came into post, I have been taking children’s voices through the Online Safety Bill and doing research. We have done lots of research with children and children’s voices about their experiences. They live in a completely different world from the world we grew up in; you do not need me to rehearse that. To put that in a stark way, when I ask children around this country—in schools, in rural schools, everywhere; we have the data to back this up—“When did you first see serious anti-women porn?”, the answer is normally around 11 or 12. When I ask, “When did you first see extreme violence?”—I am talking about things like beheadings, gore, and other hideous things—the answer is around 11 or 12. We have also done significant research in the office, looking at police transcripts of peer-on-peer sexual abuse and victims’ transcripts, and you can absolutely see the influence of the online world in what is being enacted and the abuse that children have experienced, to the point that I would talk about causality. We have done a lot of work on this, as well as taking children’s views and meeting parents whose children have taken their own lives because of pro-suicide material—a range of work. I also call in the tech companies regularly and hold them to account, and my young ambassadors hold them to account. One of my young ambassadors was recently with X, and told them that they were not X but triple X—and that was absolutely appropriate. There is material on social media that our children should not be seeing, even if they are going on there at the appropriate ages, and in fact most of them are not; most of them are younger, let’s be honest. The reason I brought up the age of 11 or 12 is because that is when most children get their phones, and even if they do not, someone else will be showing them it, so we must do more. The big opportunity of this Parliament is the children’s code, which is being put together by Ofcom at the moment. I have submitted my thoughts and spoken in public about it. I do not feel that it is strong enough. I feel that it leaves it to the discretion of, and is almost written for, the tech and media companies, rather than for children. I do not think that it is written for children, and I do not think that it shows children’s voice. My young ambassadors recently did a podcast—which you can see on my channel—with Melanie Dawes, who is working very hard at Ofcom to try to get this right. I think we should be challenging the children’s code and ensuring that it is a children’s code for our children, protecting them from the wild west of the social media.

Interestingly, you mentioned the important role that Ofcom should be playing, and you spoke about a few strategies, but you mentioned the importance of pace at the start of this morning’s Committee meeting. How important is Ofcom being able to liaise with the tech companies to bring the pace of change that is clearly needed?

Ofcom has ensured me that it will take action, and it will make prosecutions if necessary. It is working on the children’s code, but absolutely I can concur that pace is critical. It needs to be yesterday in terms of what our children are experiencing.

Our predecessor Committee’s inquiry into screen time found a lack of support for parents and schools to effectively manage children’s online presence. What should this new Government be doing to help parents and schools keep children safe online?

There are a range of things, and they are all things that can happen now, assuming the children’s code moves quickly too. Most schools in this country restrict phone use. In my school survey, I am asking them. We will find out for the first time the full national picture of how far and just how much schools restrict phone use and what their policies are around it. There is RSHE—and we might get to pick that up later. One thing that children say they want in the curriculum more than anything is to be taught about how to be safe online by people who know about it. That is critical. There is a huge amount of advice out there for parents, but it is an absolute minefield. We need to have that public conversation, and we need our schools and others to explain to parents why this is important. One of the things that I did early doors in my role was to get 100 16 to 21 year-olds into the DfE and get them to write a booklet with me: “What do I wish my parents had known about the online world?” I thought that their voices were the most powerful. They said, “Don’t give them it too young. Don’t let them take phones to bed at night. Talk to them about what they are seeing. Put boundaries in place. Don’t just take phones off them and not discuss. Discuss it with them—talk to them”. There are some powerful children’s voices there that we tried to get out, and the more of that that we can do, the better.

Would you agree that more or better training for teachers and support staff is important to ensure that through the curriculum we have digital literacy training that is consistent across all schools?

There are two things. There is the curriculum. One of the subjects that has been squeezed the most is RSE, and that is the absolute right place where children should be able to express their concerns. It should be of high quality, and children tell me that it is not in lots of cases. There is also something about ethos. Young people talk to me a lot about needing a trusted adult in school to talk to, and ensuring that the school ethos—the pastoral system, the way that the head teacher leads their assemblies—reflects what children are facing and gives them advice, support and helps them. Both the pastoral ethos and the digital literacy in the curriculum are important.

Yes. We have spoken about schools and a lot of the conversation has been about older children. What more could you do in your role—with support for early years educators and childcare providers—to help parents support children to not be so reliant on electronic devices at such a young age?

That is really important, isn’t it? We want children to be able to explore the world, play and communicate with each other. Certainly, we publish advice and can talk to early years educators about that—it is an important and well-made point.

Dame Rachel, you submitted evidence to the previous Committee’s investigation into children’s social care. Obviously, events happened; there was the general election. What are your reflections on what has changed since then and what the new Government now needs to do to reduce the problems in children’s social care?

We have to be honest about the parlous state of children’s social care. I would start by saying that we have children in the care system being looked after but that half our local authorities are not even good for children’s social care. There are lots of reasons why. I run an advocacy service; 3,500 children a year—the most complex children in social care—talk to me about their experiences. We have children being sent to live in children’s homes too far away from home, children not involved in decisions about their care, and real issues around who is running children’s home—profiteering. The situation is as serious as it was when the care review was done, and it needs our absolute focus and the absolute focus of this Committee.

One recommendation that you made in The Big Ambition report was for a children in social care funding formula. How do you see that working?

Put simply, in education there is a national funding formula, so whatever type of school you have, there is a national threshold. We need that in social care. At the moment, we have 150-plus ways of funding children’s social care and we have directors of children’s services, desperate to deliver for the children in their care, who are being set annual budgets; and they are competing with bin collection, adult social care and others. One of the most powerful things that we could do would be to have a national funding formula that set an agreed threshold. That would also allow longer-term planning. I have been talking recently about children deprived of their liberty and the lack of secure beds. It would not be wrong to say that probably even up to £1 billion is spent on children—some in the most egregious placements with security guards—because local authorities are not planning the capital build of secure beds that they need. A formula would allow the system genuinely to be a corporate parent, because you could plan and do capital. You could plan your support, and keep your children with you.

Are you having conversations with Ministers about that?

Yes, and I published a paper on this from The Big Ambition. It is something that we are talking about. When I became Children’s Commissioner I was shocked and horrified by what I found in children’s social care. We had seen so much improvement and support in the school side and I could not believe that children’s social care was in the parlous state it was in. I have challenged many Ministers and junior Ministers and people who had oversight of this, and I can only think—there were obviously political issues—that there was something about the fact that it is not seen as a national issue in the same way that education is. We have to change that. It is not enough just to talk about early support and the hugely important care and love and things that we need to give to children. That is important but it needs some hard pounds and decisions to allow the local authorities to plan for this.

What would a better advocacy system look like in children’s social care?

It is interesting because I run an advocacy service, but my advocacy service is for those children who are absolutely at the acute end, often in the youth justice system, maybe on a DoL, maybe on whatever. I also get referrals from every children’s home that is judged inadequate—far too many. What I have realised from looking at those is that we need an independent advocacy service. I would like to see an independent advocacy service so that every child in care has a genuinely independent advocate who can support them. Too many children tell me that their needs are not taken into account when it comes to where they live and the decisions that are made about them. It was heartbreaking; many of the children we interviewed for deprivation of liberty orders were not even allowed to speak to the judge about their futures and found out that they got their deprivation of liberty order afterwards, and decisions were made about them afterwards. An advocate to listen to child and be their mouthpiece is critical.

To turn to your report on deprivation of liberty, you have pointed out that a growing proportion of children are being deprived of their liberty outside a secure setting, through the use of High Court deprivation of liberty orders. How are you working with the DfE to address this problem?

I am speaking to Ministers and giving advice to DfE. We have just done our recent report to try to raise the issue and raise awareness of it. At the moment, we are using the media to provide the challenge and using our report to give recommendations. The president of the family court is totally supportive as well and sees some of the placements that children are getting—in tents with security guards—that are inappropriate. I also think that this is where opportunity and care missions could really do something, because a lot of this is coming about because of the siloing of different services. When I first came into role one of the first children I had to advocate for was a girl who literally had been in a mental health ward and had been thrown out of it. They had to sit on her for 12 hours to stop her killing herself. It was an extremely serious case. Social care took her on and put her in a B&B with two security guards. I convened all the professionals—a screen full of them—every week to try to get them to take responsibility. It became a race to the bottom on money, rather than, “How can we help this child?” That child ended up getting a DoL every week until she turned 18 and then everyone dropped her. It is really serious. These are our most vulnerable children, and I need Government Departments to work on this, but more importantly some of the unintended incentives of the way that we fund health and social care and other areas disparately to be sorted out and reformed so that we work around the child. It is complex but that is what I am arguing for.

What is a reasonable timeframe to get those measures that you have just outlined fixed?

If people want to fix things, they can do it incredibly quickly. I would like to see it fixed within this Parliament. We are talking about 1,000 children a year, so if we focused health and social care’s minds on it, I am sure they could slow down these difficult situations and get them fixed quickly.

There was another report published this week—the Government’s Command Paper. Were you consulted on the proposals?

Which one?

Yesterday’s report on children in social care.

Yes, we were.

What was your input into that?

It is early days. We had conversations with officials, and we looked at a draft. I am the Children’s Commissioner, and I am going to want to go further and faster. I am doing some work at the moment on using my statutory powers on the costs of children in illegal children’s homes—on profiteering. If you look at my year’s work, I am looking at those things. I will be hoping to take those to strengthen the Government’s hand on the recommendations here. I would like to see the recommendations on profiteering and illegal children’s homes strengthened even further, and I have made that clear.

You mentioned the child poverty taskforce earlier in the discussion. What steps need to happen to address the link that we often see between child poverty and those requiring social care?

This is one of the areas that is so important, and the poverty taskforce and the missions could give us a vehicle to genuinely address that. One point that I was trying to make when we were discussing poverty and definitions of poverty was that we need to look at how it comes out and how children experience it. Children in social care often have the largest health needs, mental health support needs and poverty needs. One thing that I was hopeful about that happened last week was that the ministerial care leavers board was convened. I was able to go along to that and tell Ministers that I was holding their feet to the fire about the needs of care leavers and children in social care. There was real commitment from the Deputy Prime Minister about being corporate parents. I have asked her to speak loudly about that, because as one of the most powerful women in the country, that will have an impact. It is making the case and helping people to understand how our most vulnerable children—children living away from home, children living without their families—are suffering the most from poverty, from heath issues and a range of things. There is nothing that we should not be doing for them. We are all corporate parents. I am pleased to see the extended view of corporate parenting as well. It is the least that can be done.

That is welcome to hear. I have a final question. We have touched a bit on the single unique identifier measures that have been proposed. You obviously welcome that. What difference will that make to the child who now knows that such a thing exists? How will it help them?

One of the things that children talk to us about a lot is the fact that they have to retell their stories and re-explain, and how re-traumatising and upsetting that can be. The thing with children is that sometimes they do not quite realise how it will benefit them, but it absolutely will. For me, the moment the scales fell from my eyes was when I sat in a police station and saw a list of children who the police had found who were not on any GP’s roll or on any school roll. They were clearly not safe, which has to be a fundamental first priority. They were clearly not getting the support that they needed. For all children, but especially for vulnerable children, we need services to be talking to each other, understanding what those children need and hopefully what a child would experience. A child does not see health, social care or education. A child just sees people. What a child would see because of a unique identifier is that all the people around them are there to help them—helping them properly and understanding them. That is the dream, on top of safety.

I want to come in very briefly on something that you were talking about, systems thinking. I was talking recently to an expert in systems thinking and we can see it particularly in justice and the impact of the care system on what then become people who are involved in the justice system later on. Do you see any indication that this new Government is open to more systems thinking rather than siloed working, which is so traditional in our Government Departments that the walls are hard to break down?

What you have just said is what I would absolutely exhort this Government to do. The opportunity missions are a hopeful start. The tough thing is that to do it in practice—it cannot just be worthy words—is difficult, and also it has to go down to the local level, because it is delivery where the silo working is causing genuine difficulties and harm to children. I am hopeful, and we will keep at it.

I want to stick with children and social care for a moment. You spoke about the accommodation issue and the horrendous situation that you have highlighted on deprivation of liberty orders, and about the need for local authorities to build their own children’s homes. There is not a capital funding stream for that that is immediately apparent. Are you making representations to the Government that there should be a capital allocation for transition arrangements so that local authorities can develop the capacity that they need to make that transition?

Absolutely, yes. With a DoL situation, we are talking about secure beds and the most vulnerable children. I cannot see any better way than local authorities being funded to have secure beds. It has to work. Even where I see those children in justice beds, they do better. What I would want and what I am saying is that LAs should have some funding formula. Their problem is that they cannot plan. It would be great to have a proper funding formula for children in social care, the ability to plan and some transitional capital funding to get going on it.

Thank you. Let us turn to the part of the children in social care system that happens earlier than a child being taken into being looked after by a local authority. Your report in March 2024 highlighted the huge discrepancies across the country in child in need plans. How could child in need plans be improved, and what are the best mechanisms for getting better consistency of practice across the country?

It is incredibly variable. I do this with EHCPs and child in need plans. We pick a few authorities, pull them and look at them. With the child in need plans, you could not see who was responsible or timelines; the ones that we saw were not where they should be. Maybe because it is a new Government, I am thinking big. This is why I was advising that we look at the Children Act,: child in need plans embedded in a renewed and revivified Children Act would help us. If we are trying to keep children out of the care system, then strong CIN plans with real responsibilities and actions—it is often children living on the edge of care who are having the worst experience—should be the thing that makes a difference. I am advocating for it, and I hope it is done. They are really important.

The aspect of the children’s social care system that is probably not talked about nearly enough is the care and support that is provided to disabled children. You will be aware that the Law Commission recently published a report that advocated for a new legal framework for the care of disabled children through children in social care. Are you engaging with that review, do you agree with that assessment, and what do you think is the way forward?

Yes, basically. We have engaged with the review, we do agree with the assessment, we are providing the support around disabled children’s voices, and it is has been an often overlooked area and it absolutely needs support. That group of children, because of their exponential growth in EHCPs and everyone being funnelled through there, perhaps have not been focused on as much as they should, so we need to get Health working there too.

You mentioned already mental health services and children. Obviously, we now know that in the period 2022-23, nearly 40,000 children waited over two years to access mental health services. We know that even when they are in the system, they then experience further delays in accessing treatment itself. What recommendations have you made to the Government on children’s waiting times for mental health services, and how receptive have the Government been to your proposals?

I use my data powers to publish waiting times for children—not just waiting times but also how many are turned away, and how many at first appointment, second appointment and so on. Because the NHS does not have it, we cannot quite get the impact of the treatment. That is what I would love to see, but we certainly see waiting times. It is incredibly variable across the country. We have made numerous reports and given lots of recommendations to Government on mental health, on waiting times and on CAMHS. To summarise, I think we would split it into the good, inclusive practice with mental health support teams in schools, and training of senior leaders. There is a lot that has been done and needs to be done there to avoid problems becoming worse and to pick up problems early. That has to be the big focus of our work. We have also done a lot of work on those children who are at the more serious end, ensuring that they are dealt with quickly. Again, they are waiting far too long. I have always said that CAMHS needs not to be shifting its boats around on the deck. We need a serious, in-depth look and change. If we can do the good, inclusive school with proper mental health support bit well, it will give a far more focused and smaller group to work with on the serious mental health needs that need dealing with straightaway. Waiting times are unacceptable and childhood lasts for a short time. The experiences of children and parents on the edge of desperation are not acceptable, so we have given multiple recommendations for how this could be done in the best and most cost-effective way. We will be engaging with Minister Gwynne and the Heath Ministers to make sure that it is done properly.

The Government promised in its manifesto to provide children access to specialist mental health services in every school. How quickly will we see this implemented?

One of the interesting things with my school survey will be to see how many schools have this already and have made their own arrangements, and to get a national picture for the first time. The rollout of the mental health support teams into schools has been well received by headteachers; they want more of it. I am totally supportive of getting that across the country, but it will be interesting to see what schools have in place as well.

I have another question about the transition between children’s mental health services and adult mental health services; parents tell me that they are very, very concerned about how this transition gets managed. They fear that the child might be put at the back of the queue or that there will be even more delays. Is this an area that you will see? If we have a 17-year-old, how is their transition managed?

What is very interesting is working with the children’s hospitals. A child is identified as a child up to 16. That is one of those anomalies that we need to straighten out if we are going to have everyone working together properly. When I talk to children who are engaged in health, that 16 to 18 bit is really, really tricky for them: “Am I a child or am I an adult?” So it is not just transition at 18; it is transition at 16 as well, and that is something that we ought to look at.

Finally, what more should the Government be doing to tackle the mental health problems affecting children and young people in England?

We have covered some of the important things. The first question that we need to ask is: what should childhood be like in this country? How can we ensure happy, healthy children? We started talking about that and that is where we should go at this from. We definitely have a long tail of lockdown, where we saw an exponential rise of anxiety, school refusal and mental health issues—no question. Children who were holding things together before lockdown were not during and after. There is a bit about dealing with that. It will cost but that particular generation need our support. Then—and I hope that we will do this as a committee—there is something about childhood being important in and of itself. A happy, healthy childhood should be a right and that is what we should be supporting. It is about all that early, upstream work. It is about how we are talking to children in schools, what education looks like, what play looks like and what we are doing about the online world. It is about all those wider things, and how we, as adults, are supporting children. Those things are very much embedded in the UNCRC, so it is something that I am very alive to. It is what children talk about. We want children to have joy, happiness and fun. That is what we need to be working on.

I have a few questions on jobs and skills. How should PSHE—personal, social, health and economic education—be changed to better equip young people so that they have life skills ready as they navigate adulthood? As well as that, what additional support should be provided to schools to better equip teachers to prepare children?

I taught RSE for many, many years. This is my absolute bugbear, but I will try to be brief. When I ask children—I am talking about 1 million children—what more they want from the school curriculum, you might think that they would say to me, “Oh, we want written assessments, not exams”, or “We want this. We want that”. No. The biggest thing that they say to me is, “We want to learn how to be good and effective and successful adults”. That is what they tell me, “We want great jobs when we grow up. We want to know what they are and how to get them. We want to know how to manage our money”. I have talked about this in hundreds of places—hundreds of schools, children in prison, children in rural schools. They all say, “I want to know what a mortgage is. I want to know what debt is. I want to know how to be successful”. There is all of that side. They also want to know how to be successful parents. They want to know about RSE. One of my absolute most shocking moments in the last couple of years was when Chris Whitty called me in, spoke to me, and said, “Do you realise, Rachel, that the gonorrhoea and syphilis data is the worst since 1918 and 1945 respectively, when it started being gathered?” The second-fastest growing group is 13 to 20-year-olds. One 13 or 14-year-old is diagnosed every day. All I can say to you as a former head teacher is that the first question I ask myself is: what are we teaching the kids in school about RSE? Are we teaching them how to keep themselves safe? Combine that with services not being drop-in anymore; when we were young, you would just drop in—but not now. You have to make an appointment now, so kids are not there. They want to understand how they are going to be adults, how they will keep themselves safe, how they can look after their health. These things come across so strongly in their responses to us and in every conversation that I have. I have teenage boys who say to me, “We’ve had 20 lessons on consent, and consent is important, but I want to know about feelings, and I want to know about how to make a family and I want to know about how to have a mortgage”. They really want well-taught lessons about how to be the adults that they want to be.

So it is clear to you—you have mentioned talking to headteachers, schools, and so on—that it is quite an inconsistent picture. Are you feeding into the curriculum review?

I am, and the children are as well. Becky Francis, who is leading the review, met my young ambassadors, who told her this and talked to her about their views about the curriculum. My worry is the scope—I hope that this is in the scope of the review. I am unclear as to whether it is. We should be pushing hard for excellent RSE in schools. I know that many parents would say that they want to be the first teacher of their children in lots of these areas, but many parents also tell me that they want the school to help too, and there are children who do not have that adult support. Everywhere I go that is what children tell me—that and changing tyres.

Let us go back to your point about children saying that they want to know what they can go on to do in life and what opportunities there are. It was one of your big ambitions to produce, “Access to high-quality careers advice, information, and guidance which is tailored to their interests”. What would you say are the priority steps now for the new Government to start making that a reality?

High-quality work experience, particularly for older teenagers—that is one of the No. 1 things that children and young people want. They want to go out and see it and experience it. Obviously, lockdown put paid to a lot of that, but we could really get behind that. As a headteacher, I look at the situation and think careers has improved but it has not improved enough. When I asked children what they really wanted for their futures and what they thought about school, I was hoping that they would tell me that they loved reading Dickens. No—they want great jobs. They are ambitious and they want their careers to keep up with that. We have to be as ambitious for the children as they are for themselves. So we need great careers education. We have to get business into schools and we have to get children having high-quality work experience. There is something I think we should all think about. How old were you when you had your first job? I was a paper girl at 13; I worked in the market on a Saturday at 15. Children are not getting those experiences, and we need to think about how to help them get some paid experiences in a safe and good way. When we talk about a happy childhood, part of development is taking more responsibility and being able to do things.

Post-16 outcomes for care leavers are a cause for concern, and this was highlighted in our predecessor Committee’s report in 2022 on children in residential care. What should the new Government be doing to better support young adults who have come through the care system?

It is clear that they need to be a corporate parent. We are the corporate parent of care leavers. We need to be thinking, “What would our children have—or what would we have as children?” We would have someone to talk to—to give us a bit of advice, to make sure that we had something to wear, to get us opportunities and introductions. There are 1,000 little things that we need to do to make sure that they get a fair playing field and the ability, despite having a tough start in life, to do well. The care leavers ministerial board is looking at some of those potential things. There are things that can be done with money, for sure, but it is relationships, mentoring and support that makes the real difference and that takes the time. I am interested in how we can think about corporate grandparenting and corporate aunt-ing and uncle-ing, and being able to get the support for care leavers. The Government can be doing this—a good internship scheme, and convening business to try to do more in terms of interviews and other things. John Lewis does very well; I am on their board. There is no limit to these things. On the money side, making sure that utility companies recognise care leavers would be a massive start, because one of the hard things is setting up your first home. You are 18 and you do not have the money to pay your care bill. Those very practical things on the money side need to happen. I have just written a HE care leavers handbook. It has gone on the UCAS website and was launched with the Children’s Minister down at John Lewis. We are making sure that every university realises that a care leaver might not have somewhere to go home to at summer. I get calls from kids at Oxford—care leavers who got into Oxford University—and they say, “They’re telling me I’ve got to go home for summer”. I say, “I’ll just phone the vice-chancellor.” We have done the HE handbook to try to get that message out. We have to do for care leavers what we do for our own children. My 29-year-old still comes home. It doesn’t stop, does it?

Is there a case for an expansion of corporate parenting duties to other parts of the public sector?

Yes. The whole public sector should think of itself as a corporate parent. Take the GP as an example: our care-leaving young people often have the most challenging experience with trying to get healthcare, whereas it could be, “Ah, care leaver—this is priority support.” We need to realise how rubbish and difficult and hard some of these children’s lives have been, and we need to take our responsibilities seriously and everyone put back. I would like to see business more engaged as well.

That leads me on to when you were describing how awful some of these kids’ and young people’s lives are. You used the phrase “better world” in your last report, which encapsulates all the findings into one. It is good to hear that you have met over 30 Ministers and civil servants and that you have a programme ahead. This is your first Select Committee that you have come to in this Parliament—so that is reassuring. What can Select Committees like this one do to ensure that children’s voices can be heard, in formal and informal ways?

I would love to bring my young ambassadors to speak to you. I have a trained group of 16 young ambassadors, who applied from across the country. They are from every background that you can imagine. They got the job to represent the young people of this country. Two of them are care leavers; they are children with a wide range of experience. Either formally at this Committee or informally, I would love to introduce you to them, because they are so good at speaking. They speak to Ministers. They are very fresh. They are not professional children; they are very real, and they come up with the best ideas. So Select Committees could actually listen to children. I will always bring you the voices of children and you should challenge me and ask me for those on every single policy area that you are looking at. We should be challenging our leaders—both in the public sector and in Government—to do so as well. Like I say, I want to talk to another 1 million children at least. I talk to them in the places where are they are the least heard. One thing that I realised when I was youth justice settings was that half the kids who I was talking to had been in care. It is about doing those things. There is something important about this Committee getting out and talking and going to those places too. I am very happy to facilitate anything there. Getting the voice of children there is very powerful. Whoever the Minister—whatever hue, whether last Government or this Government—when I tell them half a million children said this, they tend to stop and listen. Therefore, getting the power of children’s voices and genuinely listening to them is key, and I would definitely ask you to hold me to account to do that and also to do it as well.

To finish, do you think that so far this Government is listening to children’s voices?

We surveyed children just before the election and got 400,000 responses. The biggest thing that came out of it was that only one in five said that they thought that the people in power listened to them—only one in five. What is interesting is that they are not cynical about politics. They saw their schools closed by politicians and they saw the vaccine rollout done by politicians—so I think they are not cynical, but they are not getting the political and citizenship education that they need at school, and they are getting a lot of it online. I think they do not feel listened to, but this Government could make sure that public bodies consult children, and that they are visible. When I go back to them at the end of my term in two and a half years’ time, I want to do my last survey and I will ask them, “Do you think that the Government is listening?”, and I want to see the dial turned.

On that note, thank you very much, Children’s Commissioner, for answering our questions today. We look forward to ongoing engagement with you through the life of this Committee and we look forward to seeing you again before too long.