Speeches by Hall.

“I absolutely agree; my hon. Friend makes an important point. In September, we came within inches of another major event. The emergency services set up a temporary command post, and we were preparing to evacuate homes again. Then, just last Friday, we had another flood alert, with modelling suggesting that we were headi…”

“Thanks, everyone. It has been a fantastic debate.”

“I absolutely agree and would be more than happy to do that. Residents across Bewsey, Dallam, Sankey Bridges and Penketh are doing everything asked of them. They sign up for alerts, check river levels, move furniture upstairs and support one another through the worry. But what they cannot do is hold back water that rise…”

“That leads me on to my actual question, which is about data. This is to you, Isabelle. In terms of the data and understanding the needs of children in the homes and settings they are in, the NAO Report says that the Department for Education “lacks up-to-date information on the support children need, demand for places, …”

“Warrington is leading on that as well.”

“Are you seeing take-up from other areas? It is quite an ambitious programme, but it is incredibly effective. Essentially, the aim is keeping children out of residential settings and keeping them at home, but having that base where they have support from social workers, the police, CAMHS and all sorts under one roof. It…”

“Before I come to my line of questioning, I want to touch on one point that you made, Susan, about the wider care system. I again declare an interest: I was the cabinet member for children’s services in Warrington for a number of years. I saw that the edge-of-care or Lighthouse model was—or is—incredibly successful, but…”

“On the capital, do you think that, rather than pots of money being intermittently available to bid for, it should be a more sustainable, long-term influx of funding so that local authorities, if they choose to do so, can follow the invest-to-save programme? In my experience of the children in our children’s homes, it h…”

“On regional collaboration—you probably recognise this as well—there are often unofficial agreements among local authorities not to bid against one another for placements, but sufficiency is just so dire that that often goes out the window. A lot of the time, that is where you see the costs going up as well. Is that som…”

“Having that information and knowledge is important for future planning as well. In terms of that wider strategy, are you confident that you know what placements are going to be needed down the line, and are you putting steps in place to provide that going forwards, or enabling it to be provided going forwards?”

“I declare an interest: before coming to Parliament, I was the cabinet member for children’s services in Warrington for several years. I fully recognise a lot of the challenges and the issues that have been raised. During my time we started a programme to bring children’s homes back in-house, which has proved to be very…”

“I understand that, and it sounds great but, in terms of that support, the project that I talked about before—the children’s mental health and complex-needs hub—came on the back of a conversation that I had with my director because nothing else was being proposed. There were no other streams of funding and no other supp…”

“Can I stop you there? What does that look like? The NAO Report talks about forums, but also a lack of joint planning. Do you have specific people who are responsible for co-ordinating all this across Departments? In our various sessions we hear the same issue: everyone is very siloed and there is not that cross-departm…”

“The NAO Report states that the reduced use of wider settings has increased pressure on residential care. It points out that local authorities told the NAO that a decrease in youth custody places increases demand for secure home places, and that decreases in the use of mental health beds affected secure and other childr…”

“I am saying that you have an oversight ability, a lot of the need across the country is fairly similar, and a lot of local authorities are facing exactly the same pressures, so there has to be an understanding from the top of where we need to start. You have mentioned funding, but we are not talking about small figures…”

“That is not what I am saying.”

“Sorry to interrupt, but a lot of regions are already doing this unofficially, as I mentioned earlier. The challenge still comes: you can predict what you need collectively, but if the placements are not there, that is still going to be a barrier going forwards, which is what we are seeing at the moment. People are havi…”

“I mentioned before that we had exactly that in one particular case. That is why we provided the help that we did, but again you need the areas to be sharing that best practice, and to have the resources to be able to do it, which are scarce.”

“Thank you; it is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Furness. I am grateful to colleagues for securing a debate on this issue, because it is something that I am hearing more and more about in Warrington South. When people come to see me about it, they are usually exhausted and upset. Their home is supposed …”

“It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Dowd. On roads where people have raised families for decades, homes are being bought up, divided and converted into HMOs, often in what feels like a matter of days, and often by scalpers from out of town who are looking to turn a quick profit. My constituents tell me t…”